Disclaimer: Marvel owns some,
history the rest.
I said 'I love you'.
He said something about having won.
We laughed.
And then we ceased to be.
At least for a while.
I thought the battle was over.
In fact, the battle had yet to begin.
***
I have never been known a rash
individual. I don't make choices by the seat of my pants. I am so far from
spontaneous that my wife likes to tell people that she can time my
decision-making with a sundial.
Truth be told, it is am image I don't
mind fostering. I'm a leader and I'm supposed to be responsible. If they're
complaining that I'm ponderous, that means that they know I'm thinking, even if
they don't like the speed (or lack thereof) at which I do so.
I'm not impulsive, so what am I doing
now, trapped in a moment that is neither here nor there? Actually, it's
familiar surroundings. I've been here before, watching Apocalypse trying to
merge with yet another cheap copy of my only-born son.
We stopped him before, too – me, Jean,
and Nathan – even with my son too young, too inexperienced to have much power
or much control. Which, apart from the lack of youth and too much experience,
is pretty much where he is right now, sprawled out on the ground somewhere in
my peripheral vision. We should still be able to do it again.
But I can see Nathan's face and I know
that expression. I've known it since he was a babe, just barely old enough for
Jean to teach him how to hold his body together. Which is what he's trying to
do now, brow creased in concentration as he tries to fight back the
techno-organic virus that has been eating away whilst he battles his life-long
foe. Nathan's in no shape to do much of anything.
Neither am I. For I am watching
Apocalypse and Nate Grey as I watch my son – clearly, without the crimson haze
of ruby quartz. As Slym Dayspring once did – and will do – I gave all that I
could with my optic blasts. So now I stare with harmless eyes as the scene
unfolds before us. And Jean, the light of my soul and the fire of my heart, my
precious, brave Jean, can't do it alone without us.
Slym Dayspring was a much better father
than Scott Summers ever ended up being. He was there to watch his son learn to
walk and learn to talk, he was there to teach him to play catch and to soothe
away his nightmares. I'm best remembered for missing out on the birth and then
walking out on my son and his mother.
My one advantage over Slym Dayspring is
that I have two good knees. Two good knees on which to pray. Two good knees on
which to send one last message to my wife along our telepathic bond. Two good
knees on which to rely to carry me forward and into my one last chance to
soothe my son's nightmares. And the X-Men are about nothing if not second
chances.
I hear Jean scream, but I don't *hear*
her – I've cut the bond so that she doesn't try to stop me and doesn't have to
be such intimate witness to what I know will happen next. I can sense Nathan's
realization, can feel him trying to pull me back telepathically, but mass times
velocity equals a momentum that can't be overcome by even my son's psionic
yank.
And then there is pain, pain unlike
anything I've ever felt. And then there is pleasure, like the longest, hardest
orgasm I've ever had. And then there is the sound of laughter that I can feel
comes from me.
***
I've been in this game too long not to
realize when I'm being watched. Sometimes it's pleasant, like when I can feel
Jean on the other side of the bed watching me sleep. Sometimes, it feels like
spiders crawling up and down my back, like any of the myriad times I've woken
up a prisoner shackled to some wall in some dungeon.
This is more like the latter, so I open
my eyes. And see nothing. I can't tell if I'm blind or if it's perfect
darkness, but it really doesn't matter. The response is the same: stay calm.
I've been blinded too many times in my life to freak out whatever the answer
is.
"So, how long have you been watching me,"
I ask conversationally as I sit up. The ground is firm and cool, but not
uncomfortable. I'm wearing clothes, at least, ones that feel somewhat like what
my early X-Men uniform used to feel like, back before Shi'ar fabricators and
after lycra.
There is a long pause and then a dusty
cough of a laugh. "A week, a month, six hours, six years? It does not matter."
The voice is both accented and
accentless, the way white is both no color and all colors at once. Even if it
didn't sound like an old man, I'd know it was one. It is the voice of too many
experiences collected together for any one to take precedence. Face enough
Externals and Eternals and all of the others who count birthdays by the dawn
and nova of stars and you eventually start to pick up on things.
"If I asked any of the obvious questions,
would you answer?"
There is that dry, dusty laugh once more.
"We are in limbo, Summers. We are waiting."
I nod, although I'm still not sure
whether my companion can see me.
He says nothing after that and I have
nothing else to ask. At least nothing that would give anything away. If I'm
blind and powerless, there's no point in announcing it to anyone.
I don't know how much time passes before
I think I see a light high above me. Not a bright light, so I can't tell if my
eyes are playing tricks on me, but after it flashes a second time, I am sure
that they are not.
I am also sure of a few other things by
this point. First, I am not blind, just sitting in pitch blackness. Second, my
optic blasts aren't working. Actually, that should come first, as that was
immediately evident. Third, I've realized who my companion is.
"Do you know what that is, Nur?"
Apocalypse. En Sabah Nur. The Tomorrow Walker, the (original) Chaos Bringer. A
million other names, a million other lifetimes. Except right now, he's here
with me. Wherever that is…
"What we are waiting for," he replies,
unsurprised that I've figured out who he was. It certainly took me long enough.
"The prize."
"The way out?"
"Among other things."
We fall into silence for a while longer,
watching the light appear and disappear, like the laser at a light show at the
planetarium. Sometimes bright, sometimes dim, sometimes seemingly closer for
its size, sometimes seeming distant and tiny like the furthest star.
I have time to think then. To think on
his words – 'the prize'. The way out of this dark prison. A way back to Jean. A
way back to my wife, my life, my son… Nathan. Who, despite my apparent
sacrifice, I have still failed so long as Apocalypse lives, even if this isn't
life.
I'm not sure what this is, though. Or
whether it qualifies as living. I think, therefore I am, at least according to
Descartes. (And yeah, Hank, I know that's really supposed to be a proof of the
existence of God, but work with me, okay?)
But if I am, then there is an awful lot
that I am not. I'm not hungry, not cold, I don't have to go to the bathroom and
I don't need to sleep. Maybe we're both dead. But not dead permanently, not the
two of us. Nur is an External and I am the next best thing – an X-Man. We are
harder to kill than cockroaches.
Nur must enjoy this. It is the ultimate
test of the strong. Only one of us will get out, that much is obvious. Else, we
would be collaborating our efforts. The strong shall survive, indeed. I wonder
if this 'younger' Apocalypse knows what sort of decadent, cankered mockery of
his precious maxim will persist unto his death. I wonder if he cares even if he
does know. I'm constantly thinking of ways to correct my own mistakes. But
maybe that's what made me (and my wife and my son) victorious in the end – we
were never complacent.
My wife and son. Jean. Nathan. Is this
what Nathan felt like while he was doing mental battle with Stryfe? To be
trapped within his own mind, to be the prisoner of his greatest foe in a jail
made from his own memories… Is that where we are?
I can't claim to remember much else from
my philosophy classes beyond Descartes, but I have dim memories of collective
souls and eternal souls living on past their mortal bodies. But even if we are
just souls, we still have to be somewhere. It almost makes sense we're in my
head. Apocalypse needed a new body. Nate Grey's was the one he wanted, but mine
would do in a pinch, right? We have to be somewhere.
Where we aren't is somewhere
familiar to Nur. He's as lost as I am. Even if he does know where we are, he
doesn't know how to get out. Else he'd have done it already.
The light gets closer again, close enough
that I can see it's really a ball of light, like an energy web of some sort. It
is, but is more than that. For something so bright, it doesn't throw shadows
along the wall I know I am leaning up against, it doesn't illuminate the hand I
know is in front of my face. It doesn't show me where Nur is moving around to,
or even what his face looks like.
As the ball comes lower, I stand up and I
think I can hear Nur shift as well.
Seemingly simultaneously, we both must
have made a jump for the ball, like the tip-off at a basketball game. Where I
made contact, gold colored the white flash. Where Nur did, black. But neither
of us can grab hold and we fall back. As I hit the ground, I get this bizarre
mental image of two sperm fighting for an egg.
The ball comes lower still, so we try
again. I don't have to jump to reach out, but as the flash of gold burns
brighter, the pain grows more intense. When it starts to feel like the flesh is
burning away, I pull my hand out.
With the ball of energy so close, I can
see Nur. He looks like he did when we killed him two millennia from now –
wrinkled and leathery. This is what he looks like without a host, I suppose.
"Only the strong, Summers, only the
strong," he calls out as he pushes further in. The ball's light darkens – it
doesn't dim or fade, just blackens as it absorbs Nur's essence.
But where his pain threshold may be
higher (if that is in fact what it is – I'm more concerned that I'll need the
hand later on), Nur's strength (and it is Nur here, not Apocalypse) is not
sufficient to hold on. He gets in as far as his head and shoulders before he is
thrust out again. I can't see where he lands because of the darkness, but I can
hear the grunt as he makes contact with the ground. The energy ball's light
brightens again, although it is obviously still affected by Nur's black aura.
I try again, my golden touch all the more
striking against the now-tainted light. The pain is incredible, but I persist
until I get my arm in to the shoulder and then my head, despite the feeling
like my eyelashes are frying off.
And then I am illuminated. In many ways
beyond the literal.
I thought the ball was just a portal, an
exit. But it isn't.
With my head inside, I can see the world.
Through somebody else's eyes. He (I can tell) is huddling on the ground, a
beautiful woman leaning over him, brushing his hair away from his eyes. I can
feel her fingers, but in an abstract way.
I can also feel her evil. It's not the
aura of a leaking telepath, just… a hunch. The kind you get after fighting
Brood Queens and Skrulls and other co-opters of physical appearances. She's
making all nice, but I can't help feeling like this poor guy's really just
dinner.
"Be careful!!! She's dangerous," I call
out in my mind. If the guy hears me, he makes no indication.
All of sudden, I feel something that I never thought I'd feel again, a burning
deep in my head that I'd know as well as Jean's touch in my mind. And before I
can say anything, I feel the hum that I have lived with since puberty, since
the doctors at the orphanage in Nebraska got to find out the hard way just what
part of the brain had been affected by my falling out of a plane. The part that
controlled my optic blasts.
ZAKKK!!!
And then the world disappears. He's
closed his eyes, never to re-open them if he's anything like me… which he is, I
mentally smack myself. As my son would say, that's you, you flonqing idiot.
And then it is not. Like a magnet
suddenly faced with its identical pole, I'm thrown out of the web, landing hard
on my shoulder.
I scrabble to my feet and reach for the
web again, but Nur's there first. Apparently, it'll only suffer one of our
touches at once, so I find myself unable to hold on. Nur doesn't push through,
but instead stands there with his hand in the matrix. When he's this close to
the light and to me, I can see his face, his eyes much more alive than the rest
of him.
"And now you see why I will prevail,
Summers," he says. "It is only a matter of time, now before I shall gain the
prize."
"What makes you so sure?"
"You saw Anais, did you not? Beautiful
girl. Her greed makes her most obedient…"
"What does the girl have to do with
anything?"
"Scott Summers is dead to the world,
lost. Nobody even knows to look for you. But I have been found. And soon, Apocalypse shall reign for eternity."
"We'll see," I grit out. I refuse to
believe he's right, that instead of nobody looking for me, it's just that
Apocalypse's minions found him… found us first. But, a nagging voice in
my head calls out, he's right. You didn't look for Jean. You haven't looked for
Alex… why would anyone think to consider that you weren't dead… Except… what
happens if I get back into my body, even for a moment. Get control, call out to
Jean…
"We have seen," he smiles
knowingly and pats the web with the hand that isn't already inside the matrix.
The longer he holds on, the darker it glows as his blackness pervades the very
strands. "And then I shall destroy you once and for all."
"You don't scare me, Nur," I shake my
head and smile. I wonder if I look like Nate when he's being belligerent, when
he knows that someone has mistaken him for an X-Man. I hope I do. "You aren't
going to do anything to me. You can't. Either because you need me – after all,
this is my body – or because you physically can't. You don't leave an
enemy sleeping peacefully if you don't have to."
"A temporary grace, Summers. A temporary
grace," he cackles as he dives into the ball. The taint of his essence has made
it easier for him to enter, and he gets his entire body inside before falling
out once more.
I'm not sure which concerns me more – the
ease at which he jumped in, or the fact that the ball has not purged all of the
blackness. The taint is permanent now, I'm guessing. If I want my body back,
I'm going to have to get it before the soul is corrupted for good.
That last thought overrides whatever
hesitation I had and I dive hard as I can into the web. The pain is worse than
before, I can feel Nur's corruption of the matrix fighting me off, but I grab
on and pull myself deeper inside, handhold by handhold. And unlike last time, I
don't let go.
There is darkness again, my eyes are
still closed, apparently. For good reason, though, as I can feel the hum in my
head that means my optic blasts are charged.
I don't want to waste time. I call out
mentally to Jean even as I feel around in my mind for any trace of our psychic
bond.
{Scott? Scott, is that you? Please,
Scott…}
Oh, god, a lifeline… Jean. I try to
answer 'telepathically', but all I hear is the echo of my own thoughts. This
may be my body, but I'm not in control, not just yet.
Which does lead me to wonder exactly who
is driving this ship… If I'm going to get out of this, however, it had better
be me.
Thanks to my wife, I have a better
understanding of mind-body control than probably any other head-blind person
around. Back when she was still going by Marvel Girl and still coming to terms
with her telepathy, I used to let her practice on me. With the promise that she
wouldn't make me cluck like a chicken, I'd let her make me move my arms, stand
up, walk around, whatever. It was good for her to develop her powers, Professor
Xavier had said, and it was good for me to start developing more complex mental
shields. It was also very good for our relationship, especially after she
'made' me walk over to her and kiss her…
But back to the matter at hand.
Literally. I try to burst through the miasma that separates me from my body and
I can feel, slowly, as I gain control. It's a weird feeling, like warm honey
flowing through my veins, down to the hands that I need to push myself up off
of the ground, to feel around for walls, to help guide me away from Anais and
hopefully, eventually, towards Jean…
Jean, whom I can no longer feel. I must
have traded any presence on the astral plane I had for control of my body. But
Jean knows I'm alive now, so help is on the way, it has to be. In the
meanwhile, I run.
All of a sudden, I feel a shock, like I'm
being electrocuted. Not Scott Summers, blind bat feeling his way around in the
real world, though. But me, here, in the web. I open my eyes to see that the
web, which had been glowing black-laced gold, is now gaining in darkness. Nur
is here inside with me.
I tighten my grip on the strands of the
matrix, but it feels like I'm squeezing barbed wire and I know I'm losing
control. If this web that we're in is some sort of link to the astral plane,
then it's no surprise. Wrinkled old man or not, Nur is an External, far more
powerful than me. Inside this web, he will win any battle between the two of
us.
Which leaves me only one choice. Get us
both out.
I let go of the matrix with one hand,
ignoring the surge of black that accompanies the movement, and I reach for Nur.
I feel control over the body… my body slip. And so just as I found a boy
who is willing to help a blind, raving foreigner, instead of getting him to
call the Xavier Institute, instead of getting him to call the American Embassy,
I hear my voice asking to be led to Akkaba.
{Scott? Are you there? Scott? We're here.
Nathan's here with me. We've come to get you back. All you have to do is climb
out of the p…}
I grab hold of the matrix as tightly as I
can as I feel the connection with Jean breaking. Climb out, climb out… if only
she knew.
{Scott? No!!!}
Nur's got control of the body, he's doing
something to Jean? I can't see, I can't sense… He can have me, but he can't
have Jean. Never her. I'll let Nathan kill us both before I let him touch Jean…
I grab the scruff of Nur's collar, and to
my mild surprise, I can hold onto it. I half expected that both of us would be
ghost-like, like Kitty Pryde. But we're not and I yank hard with one hand,
trying to get the collar tight around his neck.
He turns to me and smiles. "Go ahead," he
croaks at me. "Do your worst, Summers. I will win in the end."
I twist harder and pull until I can feel
the material strain against his throat. The web is darkening with every moment
and I need to get him out of here before it goes black. Even if I it means
taking myself out as well.
{Scott, remember the ro…}
I don't have time to think about what the
hell Jean's talking about as I tackle Nur and we both go flying out of the
matrix.
The ball now looks like an overfed bee,
all black and gold and humming as it
pulses with energy.
"Can't you see now?" Nur calls to me over
the buzz. "Our essences, merging into one. And then we shall be one."
But not an equal partnership, he's
neglecting to mention. I'm starting to realize why Nur is keeping me alive. I
thought it might be because we couldn't kill each other – if were as ghosts, it
would be almost impossible. But I pulled him out of the energy ball, nearly
choked him, so it's inconceivable that Nur couldn't have done worse to me
before I awoke.
Instead, it is the other choice. He needs
me around long enough to imbue the energy matrix with enough of my essence to
give him better control over my body. This is what he meant by a temporary
grace. I'm saved long enough to be drained dry, then he'll kill me.
Except if I kill him first.
For a moment, I hesitate. Not the usual
X-Men-Don't-Kill kind of hesitation. Regular rules don't apply here. I hesitate
out of selfishness.
When I threw myself between Apocalypse
and Nate Grey, it was impulse, a drawn out moment of action and reaction
operating as one and the same. But now, I know what I am giving up, I have
tasted its sweetness once more and I don't want to not be able to taste it
again. There is a very good chance that I won't survive a second attempt on
Apocalypse's life. And for once, I find myself hesitating whether it's worth
the effort.
I reach for the matrix, hoping the
burning pain will clarify my mind even as it singes my nerve endings. And,
connected to the energy, I am once against connected with the outside world.
{Scott?… Dad?}
All of a sudden, I feel like I'm going to
vomit. Nathan. Oh, god, how in my greed could I have even for a moment
have forgotten my son? I have waited a lifetime – two lifetimes, if you could
that of Slym Dayspring's – to hear that word out of my son's mouth. How could I
have for a moment forgotten my debt to be paid?
Nathan Christopher Charles, born with the
Summers nose and the Grey eyes, but everything else he has been given has come
with mixed blessings. A chance to erase the holocausts of history, but he must
bear the scars of the past as it was; he could have gotten my perspective and
Jean's generosity, but instead he's got my tendency to keep my own counsel and
Jean's overly developed tendency towards self-sacrifice. This was supposed to
be my chance to save him from his fate, save him from himself. I can't let my
own wants get in the way.
I push once more into the matrix,
climbing in as Nur does and we battle for control both of the energy web and of
each other. The body itself is swaying between our thralls. I pick up thoughts,
sounds, but not every one, almost alternating.
But I can feel my grasp loosening. Nur
has started to tilt the balance of power, started to gain control. And I know
there is enough of me in this ball of humming energy that I am no longer
necessary. More of my essence would be nice, but not required, so Nur can kill
me as soon as he feels like I have turned from toy to threat.
"Nathan, do it," I call out as I feel
control of my corporeal body slipping finally from me. "Do what must be done."
And then I feel, almost hear, Nur mocking my son, daring him to commit
patricide.
{Scott, love, please, come back out.
Remember the rope…}
The rope… That's it. That's what she was
trying to tell me.
When my optic blasts manifested, I closed
more than my eyes. I closed my heart and closed my mind. I created a room in my
mind, a cave really, where I could sit in the darkness and be by myself. No
noise, no light, nobody I could harm and where nobody could harm me. I withdrew
so far into myself that nobody could come and get me. At least without
resorting to physical violence.
By the time the X-Men came into
existence, I wasn't visiting too often anymore. And even if I was there,
Xavier's gentle mental touch would retrieve me without leaving a welt on the
outside. Jean had stumbled across its entrance back in those same days when
she'd be telepathically getting me to poke myself in the eye, but hadn't ever
said anything.
Instead, she had acted on her own,
without telling me. I only found out when I saw her for the first time after
she.. after the Phoenix had died, when I was sitting on the dock, unshaven and
unhinged. I withdrew into that pit of despair (Jean's term) and found a glowing
rope hanging down from the mouth with a tiny sign written in Jean's rounded,
girlish script "tug once, you idiot." And I did, and the rope started to rise
into the darkness and carried me out of my cave.
The rope… I let go of the energy web and
grab on to Nur and we both come tumbling out of the matrix. I look around in
the pitch darkness, trying to find the rope. I feel a surge of energy, a sense
of anticipation akin to how you feel when you're playing chess and realize that
you're one move away from setting up an endgame. But much more intense.
I feel the rope rather than see it,
against the wall. It doesn't glow, but I can feel the sign at the bottom. Nur
is within the glow of the ever-brightening ball of energy, but he is still
outside, which means I'm probably stronger. I tackle him and drag him by the
arm back to the rope. It's a struggle, but I get him tangled up, if not exactly
tied up, and I yank. The rope, with its cargo, begins to rise into the abyss,
although not before Nur can kick me *hard* in the head.
I'm staggered, but I retain consciousness
and still have enough sense to head back to the energy mass. It is still black
and gold, the dark poison not fading even though I can no longer hear Nur curse
in languages too old to understand.
I touch the ball of energy, willing my
own essence to overcome the foul taint. It does, somewhat, but not enough, not
completely, by the time I can vaguely hear Jean calling to me. It's time to go
home.
I dive in to the energy mass and can only
wonder how much of this darkness will affect me. Because there is no way it
cannot. I feel my way through to the middle of the mass and focus on the miasma
that keeps me from my body, from my life, from my family.
But this time, I don't have to fight my
way through the haze alone. I see familiar blue and fire-colored light burning
through from the other side and don't look back. We are a family, after all,
and have gone through worse things together.
***