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Chapter 38: A Lie For a Life Part 1

"Maybe you shouldn't go." I blurt somewhat randomly. I had been seeing Erik out of his palace, refraining from voicing my many concerns, but I just couldn't hold my silence any longer. Erik stops short of his jet, waving the Scarlet Witch ahead of him, and half-turns, feigning confusion, as if he doesn't know what I'm talking about. I take the opportunity to step forward and speak my piece, "This could be a very real threat, Erik. What if something should happen?"

"Then I trust my guards will be very well-prepared in the event that something should happen." Erik states without skipping a beat. I press my lips together in frustration. It just doesn't seem right to me. I've got a very bad feeling about all of this. "But I have full confidence," He pauses for effect, then smirks and says confidently, "That you are worried about nothing."

I shake my head slowly, still not convinced, but, remembering that I'm on a mission, I gesture towards the jet and say earnestly, "For once, I hope you're right." I stand back and watch the jet take to the air, waiting until it's completely gone from view before turning back to the mansion. I give a start when I find none other than Lorna hiding behind the large, metal-plated fountain in Erik's front lawn, watching me. She gasps, blushing furiously, and ducks back behind the fountain.

Erik wasn't kidding. She really does need protecting. Erik's only instructions for caring for his almost seventeen-year-old daughter were to make sure she doesn't stray outside of the palace and to keep her away from guests and other guards alike. No wonder she's so awkward. She's entirely reliant on her father and sister. They take care of her excessively from what I've seen, to the point where she can't do anything on her own. I'm not surprised she's too afraid to move into her own home (the one I'm currently occupying). Magnus says she was always timid, soft-spoken, but I highly doubt keeping her locked up is at all helping.

I put on my best, friendly, I'm-on-your-side smile and start towards her. She fidgets, looks down at her hands, a curtain of pale green hair framing her face. "I take it you're Lorna." I say in a normal voice. The last thing I want to do is baby her like I've Erik and Wanda do. Before they left, the spoke to her as if she were a frightened child! Maybe it'll do her some good to have someone talk to her like an adult for once. "It's nice to meet you." I say, offering my hand, which she takes in her own, dainty one. "I'm Elizabeth, otherwise known as Nightshade, and I'll be your body guard for the next couple of days." Erik never specified how long he would be gone. Nor did he say what he would be doing during this venture. The longer the better. I need time to get my snoop on.

Lorna chews on her lip—tinted with green lips stick— a moment before saying in a small voice, "It's nice to meet you. I'm Lorna." She blinks and blushes an even deeper red, saying hurriedly. "I mean—oh, you already said that, didn't you?" She groans, turning away.

"It's fine," I tell her with a snort. "I do that all the time."

She peers at me, "You do?"

"Well—" I grapple for what to say. I'm sure everyone's done that at least once, right? "Sure. But mostly I just forget people's names." I give her a questioning look. "What did you say your name was again?"

Recognizing the joke, Lorna gives a soft chuckle. I think I've succeeded in breaking the ice because she turns and waves me over, "Come on, Nightshade. I'll show you around."

I smile to myself, feeling all of a sudden very sneaky.

"Please, do."

"I couldn't imagine life outside of Genosha," Lorna is tell me as I struggle to keep up with her down the hall. She's practically skipping, bubbling with excitement as she leads me from the Piano Room to the West Wing Library. The hall is impossibly, ridiculously, unnecessarily long and I find I have to jog a little to keep up with her. How can I protect this girl if I can't even catch up to her? "I was practically born here!"

Lorna opens the door to the West Wing Library, letting in a stream of afternoon sunlight (yes we've been on tour that long) into the vast, heavily booked room. Dust particles float serenely around me where the light cuts through the curtains covering the window that nearly reaches the ceiling. Wondering where one orders 12 foot long curtains, I promptly pull them shut, growing more and more paranoid by the second. I keep imagining something bad happening (a sniper assault for instance) but so far, all seems clear.

"I grew up in this room," Sighs Lorna, depositing herself in one of the jade-green lounge chairs with a happy sigh. "When Daddy first built Genosha, Wanda and I were just kids. I don't remember anything about our lives before then. It seems so scary out there now."

"The world isn't such a bad place, Lorna." I find myself saying, but the moment it's out of my mouth, I feel incredibly foolish. Did I really just say that? After everything that's happened? But, I mean, no one can stay cooped up in one place forever. Eventually, Lorna will have to deal with the outside world. What will happen when that day comes and she's faced with an entirely different reality? "Haven't you ever, you know, wanted to get out of the house?"

Chewing on her lip, which I see is a habit of hers, Lorna thinks about this for a while then practically whispers, "Yes…But it's so dangerous! Daddy says bad things are going on back on the mainland. The Humans are hunting us down and Daddy says it's only a matter of time before they declare war!"

"If there's one thing I know, Lorna." I say, meeting her eye full on and speaking in a very low, very serious tone. "It's that bad things can happen wherever you are." That's something she needs to understand.

"But the Humans—" She starts to object, but I interject, saying, "Humans have families just as we do." I say, maintaining an even tone. I don't want her to feel like she's being scolded but I can't just let her remain ignorant of the truth. "They fear us just as much as we fear them. But your father is right," I add quickly, noticing the closed-off way she averts her eyes. "We may yet be on the brink of war. But that might not be for some time."

Lorna lifts her eyes to me once more and I feel relieved to see a faint smile touch her lips. I take a seat nearby and say, "This is a nice library."

Lorna straightens in excitement. "Isn't it?" She asks. "I only wish that more of the books had Mutants in them like this one." I blink in surprise when she lifts a hand and summons a book from one of the higher shelves. A comic book. When the book falls into my hands, I notice a thin line of metal going down the spine of the book. Erik truly thinks of everything. I turn over the book and read the title: "WATCHMEN." Scanning over the pages, I nod my head in approval. The art work looks fairly old compared to the new designs of the twenty-first century, but it seems like a pretty good drama about super-powered humans. Super heroes. "You know," I say, raising my eyebrows. "Maybe you could write a book about Mutants."

Her gaze is nothing short of stunned, "Do you really think so?"

"Absolutely," I reply, flipping back to page one with growing curiosity. "Have you ever tried writing or drawing something?" When she doesn't answer right away, I glance up and find her gnawing on her lip again, "Well…" Making up her mind, Lorna stands, replacing the comic book, to my disappointment, with the deft wave of her hand before taking me by the wrist and tugging me along, "Come to my room. I'll show you!"

We travel to the opposite side of the mansion, flying on a metal disc because I was "moving too slow," and, when we reach her room, she bolts inside and immediately begins rummaging through a chest at the opposite side of the room with the aid of a key. It looks like I'm not the only one who's paranoid here!

I take the moment to glance around, taking in the decisively green atmosphere of the room. Everything is green themed, with splashes of white and silver everywhere, but mostly green. Curious. When I met Pietro, he was mostly decked out in blue. Wanda, I notice, never goes anywhere without her standard reds on, and here Lorna is in her very own Green Room. What is the fascination with these kids and their favorite color?

"Here it is!" Lorna breathes, rising with a sketch pad in her hands. She studies me warily through doe-eyes and hesitates before handing it over, saying, "You're the first person I've ever shown this to."

"I'm honored." I say, inclining my head forward inquiringly. Rather reluctantly, Lorna hands me the sketch pad. I begin flipping through the pages and find myself, momentarily, at a loss for words. She's fantastic! Her art styles is much different from that of the comic book, "WATCHMEN," but in the best of ways. So much detail…

"Lorna," I breathe, flipping the page. "This is incredible!"

She's already started writing dialogue and creating new characters of her own. We pour over her sketchpad, with me asking questions about her ideas and her answering with growing enthusiasm. It isn't until both our stomachs start growling that I suggest we resume our discussion a bit later and we leave the room via flying metal saucer to get something to eat.

On the way, we pass by a large conference room with a long table that could seat at least forty people and I pause, asking, "What's that?" She stops our saucer just a head of the room, casting the room a brief glance before saying dismissively, "Oh, that's just where Daddy and his friends talk business. Now, I was thinking she could have orange hair," Lorna says, continuing on with our previous conversation, as we start moving again. I glance back at the room, keeping the location of the room tucked away in my memory so I can "tour" it later. "You know, since she can control fire and stuff."

"Oh yeah," I agree, zoning back in to the conversation. Boy, this girl can go on about her super heroes! "Maybe her hair could be on fire, too."

Lorna stops so abruptly, I nearly fall off of the saucer, and I have to clutch her arm to keep from falling off as she looks at me in awe. Then suddenly, her face breaks out into a huge grin and she grasps my arm tightly, squealing, "Yeeeess! Oh my god, that would fit perfectly!" She sighs, linking her arm through mine; shyness apparently evaporating into thin air. "You are too awesome!"

I smile in spite of myself. I almost forgot how much fun it is to be young.

"I try."

I slip through the halls under the cover of darkness, donning a guise of invisibility. Magnus has camera's all over the place (as I've seen with my very eyes) and no doubt he'll have the other guards looking out for me in the event that I go snooping. Which I am.

And I'm not even ashamed of that. I want to know exactly what Magneto is up to and I want to help Tarina as much as possible. If what she's saying is true, then there is a very high risk that an all out war between Humans and Mutants. The winner of this war, I cannot foresee, but death in numbers is certain. The Humans grow more and more advanced by the day. Those collars will prove to be a huge handicap for Mutants as well as those accursed sentinels. However, as more and more Mutants emerge, it may be that our numbers shall overwhelm…

What am I even saying?

A war would be disastrous no matter what side you're on. Scores of people would die and the battle would go on forever unless one side was ended forever. Extinction. I can't let that happen. There are good people on both sides. Good people who don't deserve to die. I'll do what I can to see that a war never happens.

I slip into the conference room, phasing through the door silently, and taking a moment to glance around the room. It's big and relatively empty-looking save for the long, extravagant table, a statue of what appears to be the Greek Goddess Athena at the far end of the room, and one particularly fancy chair at the head of said table. I take a look around, stopping before the large, leather-bound chair, discovering a hidden drawer beneath the table. I phase my hand inside, fish around, and withdraw (somewhat carelessly) a file of paper work. Determined to make off with the file and read it in the privacy of my room, I start towards the door, but am halted by a voice in the darkness, "I figured you would come poking your nose in here," I stop in my tracks, still as a post. I know that voice. "Ghostgirl."

"Mystique," I mutter, dropping my invisibility shield and turning to face her. She stands proudly, naked as always, in the place of the statue I saw when I first came in. She smiles triumphantly, having caught me red-handed. "Long time no see. Here to try and kill me again?"

"Kill you?" She asks incredulously, a sarcastic smirk tugging at her blue lips. "Whatever do you mean?"

I stare at her, an odd calm falling over me in spite of the rage coursing through my veins, "Vanhouven?" I prompt, watching her like a hawk as she makes her way around the table, towards the leather chair at its front. "You knew it was dangerous. Especially since you knew Azazel didn't remember me. He might have killed me by mistake if I'd simply confronted him in front of the Russian Mafia."

She chuckles; runs a hand across the smooth surface of the table. She seats herself in the leather chair, looking quite comfortable with herself. "I only meant to help." She croons innocently. I say nothing, seething. Mystique takes the moment of silence to study me a moment, turning from side to side in her swivel chair with the purse of her lips before saying, "I give it a year or two."

I know she's baiting me, but my curiosity outweighs my hesitance, "Before what?"

"Before you meet your demise, sweet one," She replies sarcastically, rising from the grand chair and digging her nails into the polished metal of the conference table. Her yellow eyes narrow maliciously. "You're a walking disaster and you know it. Sooner or later, someone'll put a bullet in your head. If you're lucky." My chest heaves as I vie for control over my emotions. I can think of about five different ways to blind her alone, but there's just no way I can get away with that. So I force myself to remain still, hands shaking at my sides, while she finishes her piece, "And they'll do the same to anyone and everyone you care about." Mystique's gaze hardens and she drops her sarcastic tone to say fiercely, "I won't let that be him. I merely wanted to speed the process along a little bit. Give you an early, merciful death alone, rather than see you drag anyone else down."

"Merciful…" I echo with a hollow smile, shaking my head. She really has no idea. Would it matter if she did? "You really are something, Mystique." She gives her head a proud toss in response, but I can see thin lines of anger forming between her eyebrows and around the corners of her mouth, "I'll take that as a compliment." Says Mystique.

"I wouldn't." I respond quite honestly, keeping the files tucked securely under my arm.

"You really think you're special, don't you?" She bites back, unable to control her temper. "Everyone acts like you're so innocent. Like you're the world's best friend. "We're all Human?"" She mocks, making my face flush. ""Mutants and Humans can get along?" Aren't you just a Saint? Well you know what? Saints die just like the rest of us. And not in the nicest of ways. But you already know all about that, don't you? I guess some people just can't be helped."

"And some people just can't get to the point." I snap back, growing tired of this. "What do you want from me, Mystique? What do you want me to say? I'm sorry? Sorry for what? What in this wide world did I ever do to earn your hatred?" We weren't exactly friends to begin with but her hostility towards me always felt so ill-placed to me. "I can tell you I never slept with him. Not that it never crossed my mind." I add, just for the satisfaction of seeing her twitch. "So tell me. What grievance have I committed against you?"

Mystique grinds her teeth, fuming, then suddenly, she sniggers, saying, "You really are clueless, aren't you?" She sobers up immediately, then crosses over to me, saying in a deadly whisper, "This is your last warning. Stay out of this. Stay out of Erik's way." She stops a mere foot away, her yellow eyes glaring down at me, bright as flames. Then suddenly, they darken into an almost black color. Almost. I can still see the faint tint of…green within them. Eyes black like a sharks'. "Or I. Will. End you."

Feeling suddenly short of breath, I merely stand, stiff as a board as she breezes past me, not even bothering to take the file with her. Before she goes, however, she turns back with one last word of parting, "I never lied to you, you know. I understand you better than most, Elizabeth Hawthorne. Do yourself a favor…" I glance over my shoulder at her numbly, and she does the same, pausing at the door just long enough to see the look of shock in my eyes as she says, "And forget about it."

Thanks for reading as always! More chapters to come!

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