Hello again! As always, I admit I have no rights whatsoever to Xmen, including any and all characters and events you are familiar with! I solely claim rights to Zezelia and her journey alone. I'm so excited to keep this story rolling….starting with chapter 4 the chapters will begin to get a little longer now that we are officially getting into "Movie territory" so sit back and get ready for the good stuff to come! Xoxo- NickyLynn
Charles gripped the steering wheel tight, his knuckles turning white as he drove down the isolated road. He glanced over to Erik who's mind had been a tangled web thoughts since they got back into the vehicle. "Erik." Charles began, pulling his friend from the depths of his thoughts.
"Yeah, I know, Charles. I'm thinking." Was Erik's mumbled response.
Charles let out an exasperated sigh. "Erik I can't just keep driving around with a dead woman in the back of my car."
Erik's eyes snapped over to Charles. "Well, what was I suppose to do Charles?! I couldn't just leave her there!" he yelled, his voice bouncing off the small space sharply.
Charles's eyes softened at his friend. He could feel how much the woman had meant to him. He could feel the lapels of grief threatening to take over Erik's mind. The only thing keeping it at bay was the intense shock and suddenness of it all. It was hard for either of them to grasp what had happened and how quickly it had happened.
Erik's eyes fell on the lifeless form of his former friend, laid across the back seat. "Just-" Erik began, before coughing to cover up the break in his voice. "keep driving."
After around thirty minutes of taking her own life, Zezelia finally emerged from the darkness of death, her eyes snapping open. The first thing she noticed was that it was drastically quieter now than before on the street. A few voices floated through her mind, but it was far less overwhelming than before. The second realization she had was that she was no longer in the street. She seemed to be in a moving vehicle. Alarm flashed through mind and in a fear-driven, split-second reaction, she used her powers to latch onto the vehicle with her mind and stopped it in it's tracks.
Charles had been focusing so hard on blocking out Erik's intense thoughts from his mind that he didn't notice when the mind behind him snapped back into existence. One moment they were continuing down the road, going close to fifty miles per hour, and the next he and Erik were slammed forward as the car came to a careening halt. Pain blossomed into his face as they were thrust harshly into the dashboard from the momentum.
Before either of the men could register what had happened, Zezelia burst open the door with her mind and took off as fast as she could. She had no idea where they were. They were on a single stretch of road, surrounded by nothing but fields and wooded area. She pushed her feet as fast as they would go and set her course for the trees. Hoping to get lost in them. She didn't know if the men behind her had any connection to Schmidt or not, but she wasn't going to hang around to find out.
As Erik had pushed himself off the dash and had turned his head at the sudden sound of a door being thrown open. His mind refused to process what it was seeing as he watched the back of Zezelia flee from the car. She was running. She was fast. And she was very much alive. Once his brain caught up to his eyes, he fumbled with the door handle before pushing it open and jumping out of the car behind her.
"ZEZELIA!" he shouted after her.
She heard her name being called, and that only fueled her fear more. There was no way these men could have known her name, as she only ever used fake names and aliases. They had to have been sent by Schmidt. So, she pushed her legs harder, only to let out a pain-filled grunt as something caught around her mid-section and pulled her harshly back, stopping her mid-step. She reached down to try to pry the arm off of her, only to find that there was nothing there. Confused, she looked down to find the thing halting her attempts at escape was her own belt buckle, that dug sharply into her abdomen.
"ZE!" she heard called from behind her, this time the voice much closer.
She froze. There had only ever been one person to call her that in all her life. Her breaths started to come in and out quickly as she glanced down at her belt buckle, connecting the dots before slowly turning her head. The man was stopped about twenty feet behind her, his hand stretched out towards her, keeping his hold on the metal. He was tall with short dark hair and she would be lying if she said she recognized his face, but as she locked onto his eyes, her heart stopped. She knew those eyes.
"Erik?" she gasped out.
He nodded his head once, before dropping his arm and the hold he had on her belt. The sudden release from his hold sent her stumbling. And she kept stumbling over her feet until she was running again. This time, however, she wasn't running away from the man. She ran towards him, throwing her arms around him as she slammed into his frame and wrapped herself around him.
The sudden impact of her hug caught him off guard with surprise, but he quickly wrapped his arms around her small body and reveled in her touch. The touch he never thought he would feel again. He could feel her body shaking with silent sobs and they held each other. Both scared to let go of the other or risk losing them all over again.
"How is this possible? I thought I lost you. This must be a dream. I saw you die. Twice. How are you here? How did you get away from Shaw? Where have you been all this time? It feels so good to have you in my arms again. I'm never letting you go again. How is this possible? I saw you die." she heard his voice whispering in rapid succession.
She pulled herself out of his embrace. "Wait, wait, just slow down." She told him, putting a hand on his chest to push him back far enough to be able to look up at him. "Just one question at a time."
Erik still under her touch. "I haven't said anything yet."
She looked up at him, confused. She opened her mouth to question him when the words died on her tongue. "I think there is much we have to tell the other." She heard him say, before realizing his lips never moved at all.
She pulled back in shock, bringing her hands up to the sides of her head. The voices. All the voices she had been hearing inside her head since she woke on the road. Had they all been thoughts? How could she be hearing thoughts?
"I'm afraid that would be my fault." A new voice spoke in her head and she stilled. It hadn't been a whispered voice like when she heard Erik's swirl of thoughts, but a strong clear voice. Like it had been spoken right in her ear. She had heard that voice before, too. On the street. When the voices had been overbearing. She had heard the voice then too. Her eyes swept behind Erik's shoulder to see another man leaning against the side of the car that was now pulled off to the side of the road. He lifted his hand in a small greeting as her eyes took him in. "Hello." The voice said again.
She looked from the man to Erik, being lost for words. The whole situation being entirely too bizarre for her to form a sufficient thought. Erik gave her an understanding smile and held his hand out to her. "Come," he said. "there's someone I think you should meet."
She slipped her hand into his larger one and wordlessly let him lead her back to the car. As they got closer, she could make out the features of the other man. He was shorter than Erik, with startling blue eyes and brown hair that fell around his head in soft waves. He had a handsome face, she decided. A face that was marred by a blossoming bruise on the center of his forehead. His fingers reached up and gently brushed against the discolored flesh, making him wince. Guilt filled her as she realized he must have received it when she stopped the car so suddenly.
"It's quite alright." He spoke, pushing himself off of the car. She froze again as his voice hit her ears. It was the same voice she had heard within the confines of her head and it was almost unnatural to actually hear the sound with her ears.
"Ze, this is," Erik began introducing as they came to a stop next to the car.
"Charles Xavier." The other man finished, reaching a hand out towards her.
She stared down at the hand in uncertainty, still unsure about the whole situation. "And he's," Erik began again before she cut him off.
"A telepath." She finished for him. And now….. so was she. The side of her mouth slid down at the thought.
Charles dropped his hand with a grimace. "I am sorry." He apologized. "If I had known-" he began to explain before she shook her head at him and interrupted.
"But you didn't." she reasoned. "It's okay, it's just-back there it was all so…" she trailed off trying to search for the right words.
"Loud." Charles supplied for her, knowing just how overwhelming his gifts can be. His mind drifted back to the time when his powers had just begun to fester and how he had felt like he was going mad. Knowing he had put that burden now on somebody else….it filled him with guilt.
She nodded her head in agreement. "Yes…..loud." She said. "But I suppose it was better you had been the one to touch me other than someone else." She didn't want to think about what would have happened had someone else tried checking her pulse. She shuddered at the possibility of causing an innocent person that kind of pain. She then had a sudden thought occur to her. "What happened-" she began to ask before Charles spoke before she could finish.
"She's fine." He said, reassuring her. "She had a broken arm and a few bumps and bruises, but I'd say overall she fared out much better than you." Relief flooded her and she let out a shaky breath she didn't know she had been holding. "The man who hit you had offered to take her and her mother to the hospital for proper treatment. We managed to convince them that we would take you in as well."
"It's lucky we had already been there looking for you and happened across you when we did." Erik said from beside her.
She turned towards him, eyebrows drawn together. "You were there looking for me?" she asked him shocked. "How did you know I was there?" she asked panicked. After all, if they had managed to track her down, there was nothing to stop Schmidt from finding her too.
"Well, we didn't know it was you exactually." Erik said, scratching his chin, trying to think of how best to explain things.
"I found you using Cerebro." Charles voice said floating once again into her head, before images of a strange room and Charles under a strange helmet flitted into her mind's eye. She looked over at Charles as he sent the images into her mind. "We've been looking for mutants."
"Mutants?" she asked, never hearing the term before. "You mean people like us?" she asked, glancing between the two men. "Why?"
"We're going after Schmidt." Erik said, sending a shiver down her spine.
"Schmidt?" she repeated, stunned. "You're going after Schmidt?" she said locking eyes with him. The determination in them was more than enough to convince Zezelia that he was telling the truth.
"Though he's known by another name now. Sebastian Shaw." Charles said, and she had to force her gaze off of Erik and back to him. "Shaw is a very bad man, who's been doing very bad things. We're forming a team of other enhanced individuals, like ourselves, to stop him and bring him to justice. We came all the way here to find you in hopes we could convince you to join our ranks in our stand against him."
Zezelia's jaw clenched tight and her mouth went dry. They were really going after Schmidt? Even if they were, would they even stand a chance against him? "You'd be surprised at just how capable we are." He spoke into her head, smirking slightly as he thought about the undoubtedly impressive team they had managed to corral.
She felt Erik's hand slip inside her own, pulling her gaze back onto him. "Come with me…..us. We can stop him. Make him pay for what's he's done to us." He told her, a seriousness etched into his features she had never seen on him before. He gave her hand a squeeze before adding "Please."
Zezelia swallowed, suddenly aware of how dry and raw her throat felt. "I've been running from Schmidt for a decade." She told them quietly, looking down to the ground. All the emotions she had been repressing through the years suddenly erupting in her. All the fear. All the pain. All the anger. It bubbled inside her as a new possibility opened itself up to her. She could stop running? She could once again be at Erik's side? She could make Schmidt pay for it all? For everything? She brought her eyes back up and the fire in her eyes matched his own. "I'm in." she said.
Erik smiled down at the woman in front of him and felt her resolution like it was his own. Together they would take down Schmidt…he knew it. Beside them Charles clapped his hands together. "Marvelous!" he said happily.
"Where to then?" she asked, looking back to Charles who had started making his way back around the vehicle.
He smiled at her as he stopped at the driver's side door, placing an arm across the hood of the car. "Oh I think you're going to like it." He said before ducking into the car once again.
She quirked an eyebrow at Erik who only rolled his eyes at his friend's theatrics. "New York." He said as he, too, made his way back towards the vehicle. Once he redeposited himself in the passenger seat, the car roared back to life as Charles turned the ignition. Erik looked up to Zezelia, his hand on the handle, holding the door open. "Well? You coming, or not?" he asked before shutting the door.
Zezelia let out a breath and laughed at the absolute absurdity of it all and wondered how so much could have possibly changed in only a few hour's time. She shook her head before she followed suit and slid into the car through the back door that had been left open since her attempt at escape. She shut the door behind her with her powers and positioned herself in the middle of the seat, aware of the blood that had dried into the fabric. She looked back up and towards the front to find both men turned in their seats, watching her with matching smiles.
"Well," she said, waving her hand in front of her. "Let's go then."