Growing Pains:
Part Three
"How is she?" I ask Henry McCoy, otherwise known as the bouncing blue-furred Beast. He sighs, and pushes his half-moon glasses up his pointed, slightly up-turned nose.
"That depends on your point of view," he says, gesturing at Rebecca's charts, as if that will tell me something insightful or revolutionary. "Her charts are excellent, as always – her physical condition is not in question; she is an exceptional specimen as far as her physique and metabolism, and for that matter her control over her powers, are concerned. It's her mental state that I'm worried about – she doesn't want to see anybody at all, and she rails against my even trying to strike up a conversation with her. It's as if she's shutting herself off from the real world, as if she thinks she's not worthy of it any more." He pauses to scratch behind one pointed ear, and smooth out a troublesome tuft of cobalt fur. "Perhaps you or Warren or Scott might have better luck than I, but I would urge you to be as gentle as you can, Betsy – she's been through a lot these past few days, and even a girl as strong as Rebecca can only take so much."
"Thank you, Henry," I tell him, "for taking care of her." He smiles, and pointed fangs peek out at either side of his mouth.
"'Twas my pleasure, maiden most fair," he says, bowing expansively, and then picking up a pen and scribbling something on a piece of paper on a clipboard. "It is what I'm here for, after all." He shrugs. "In between providing battlefield reports, costume fittings, Latin refresher courses and lemon-meringue-pie baking classes." He shrugs. "Good luck, Betsy." I nod in thanks, and then walk away towards the door beside the plate-glass window that leads onto the main part of the infirmary. I recognise this part of the mansion well – almost too well for my liking; I was confined here for weeks after Sabretooth gutted me. And now the bed that was stained crimson with my blood is the place my daughter is trying to withdraw into, as if to avoid the real world. She suffered two broken ribs and a lot of serious bruising at the hands of her clone, which is why Henry remanded her to the infirmary – and I suppose that's when I should have noticed the difference; when she didn't protest, instead simply agreeing without a word. Before, Rebecca would have at least come up with a barbed comment or two, but that time, she was silent. And it's been downhill from there. She looks up at me from the magazine that Henry evidently brought for her to read while she was recovering – a teenage coffee-table affair that tells its readers how to apply make-up in such a way as to snare their perfect man, and tells lurid stories of relationships gone wrong. She looks at me in barely veiled surprise.
"Go away," she says, sullenly. "I don't want to see you."
"Why not?" I ask. I could just as easily have reached into her mind and taken the information for myself, but this seemed more natural somehow. "Why is that?"
"Why do you think?" she snaps. "I treated you like crap! I treated you like crap because I thought Sinister loved me more than you did! How do you think finding out I was wrong makes me feel?" Moisture beads at the corners of her eyes, and her hands close into fists. "How do you think I felt when he told that clone to kill me? I felt so betrayed. I felt like I'd lost everything." I slip my hand over one of her fists, feeling the soft, supple skin give slightly beneath my own fingers, and open it out so that I can hold her hand gently.
"But you didn't lose everything, Rebecca," I tell her firmly. "You still have me. You still have Warren, and Scott, and all the others here in the mansion. We can be your family now, if you'd like."
Rebecca's face becomes a dark glower. "Why are you being so kind to me?" she demands, jerking her hand out of mine. "I told you to leave me alone!" She shifts away from me, and faces the wall, kicking her feet obstinately. I get up out of my seat and get up onto her bed so that I can kneel behind her and put my hands on her shoulders.
"I told you before, my darling," I say softly. "I'm your mother – it's my job. I love you, Rebecca. Nothing you can do or say will change that, and I hope you can learn to love me, too. I know you must be feeling lost and lonely right now, but that's what Warren and I are here for. We wouldn't be good parents if we weren't. If you want me to go right now, then I'll go, but just remember that I'll be back tomorrow at the same time." I rub my hands along her delicate collarbones and feel the knotted tension in her shoulders easing slightly. For a moment, I think she might actually let me stay so we can talk this whole mess through.
Then, she says "Please go," and my heart sinks. Disappointment floods my soul, but then I realise there is always tomorrow. I sigh, and nod almost imperceptibly, even though she can't see me do it.
"All right, sweetheart," I tell her. "I'll be back tomorrow. Try and get some sleep before then, all right?" She hangs her head and stares silently at her toes, not saying a word. I slip lightly off the bed and towards the door of the infirmary, my footsteps light and noiseless, even in the silence of the ward. I open the door with a push of the button at its side and slip through, to find Henry standing off to one side at a workbench, examining a rack of test tubes that contain various unidentifiable substances. He turns in surprise to look at me, and his expression falls.
"How did it go?" he asks, his tone and his thoughts making it plain that he is anticipating the worst.
"Well, she didn't try to kill me," I say, with the ghost of a smile on my lips. "In my book, I count that as a plus. We'll see if we can progress from there tomorrow, I suppose." I play with a blonde ringlet of hair that has escaped from the clip holding it back along with the rest of my ponytail, idly twisting it around my finger and pulling a few loose strands from their moorings. I open my fingers and let them float gently to the floor, twinkling as the soulless electric lighting catches the facets inside them and makes them gleam. It's… beautiful. I have precious little of that in my life these days, so I treasure this for the rarity it is. Spotting what I'm doing over his experiments, Henry adjusts his glasses again and raises a shaggy eyebrow.
"Please, Mrs Worthington, if you continue to insist on dropping pieces of yourself all over my laboratory, I shall have to ask you to leave." I snap out of my trance-like state and return to the real world abruptly, plucking the hairs out of the miniature air currents that have kept them aloft so far.
"I'm sorry, Henry," I tell him absently, before moving to leave the infirmary. "I'll try and be more careful next time."
"There won't be a next time if I have anything to do with it, Betsy," Henry says sternly. "How am I supposed to operate under proper lab conditions if I'm constantly visited by women who insist on moulting more vigorously than I do?" He chuckles. "And Betsy? Do try to call me Hank in future. The only people who insist on using my given name are my parents and the Professor, and you're neither of those – unless Charles recently visited a California cosmetic surgery clinic without my knowledge." That brings a smile to my lips.
"Point taken… Hank."
Hank grins – a sharp-toothed, friendly grin. "That's better." He watches me moving towards the exit door of the laboratory and says "Business elsewhere, Betsy?"
"Yes, Hank," I tell him. "Family business, I suppose you could call it. I'll see you later. Try and let me know if Rebecca asks for me, would you?"
"Consider it done," he replies, flipping through a textbook on nuclear physics as he lights yet another Bunsen with a long match. "Same time tomorrow, if nothing else happens, then?"
"Same time tomorrow, Hank," I say, as I leave the lab to its guardian angel. Taking the lift up to ground level, I find Warren and Scott standing in the lobby of the mansion, with the guest that I had been expecting standing between them. Warren is still a little uneasy around him, despite the way that he has proved himself a loyal supporter of Xavier's dream (albeit with a few modifications of his own).
"Nathan," I say, knowing that Cable is a man of few words, preferring to let his actions speak for him. He nods to me, briefly.
"So do I have to call you 'Mom' now as well?" he asks gruffly, but with a rough smile on his unshaven face. He laughs – to my surprise; I'd never really heard Cable acting like a real human being before. "Don't tell me I gotta call Wings 'Uncle Warren', too. That's gotta be a fate worse than death." Warren grits his teeth and clenches his fists, forcing a smile onto his face.
Behave, Nathan, I tell Cable bluntly, wagging my finger at him.
And spoil all my fun? Oath, you do sound like my mother.
Stepmother, at the most, I tell him, laughing. Count yourself lucky that Rebecca isn't from the future. At least we don't have to worry about working out any chronological headaches where she's concerned.
That's a flonqing relief, Nathan replies. I've dealt with time travellers for most of my life, and the physics of it still gives me migraines.
I can imagine. I probably can't, but it still seems like a horrible burden to bear. I usher Cable towards the room we have set aside for him, decorated as sparsely as he requested it be – a simple pallet has been placed on the floor, with no blanket or sheet to cover it, and no pillow at its head. Nothing else is contained within the room, except a small stand for Nathan's single item of weaponry – a spear-like weapon he calls a psimitar. He has used it to focus his telepathic powers in much the same way as my psychic knife or psi-bolts focus mine. From what we have managed to glean from Cable's brief comments about himself, he obtained it on the instructions of a friend of his, a man called Blaquesmith. Other than that, Cable remains that which he has always been – an enigma. Not even his own father truly knows him. With that in mind, I wonder why I have even brought him here – and then I am reminded that he is the closest thing Rebecca has to a kindred spirit. Nate Grey, I suppose, is closer to what Rebecca is in body, given his peculiar origins, but Rebecca has Cable's fire in her veins, of that there is no question.
Cable throws down his poncho at the head of the pallet and bundles it up so that it forms a makeshift pillow, setting the psimitar down in the stand prepared for it. He takes the gloves off his hands, flexing his techno-organic fingers lightly, and scratches his stubbly face. "I'll see you people in the morning," he says, and closes the door. Warren turns and looks at me with an expression that seems to say, "Sweetheart, pumpkin, what were you thinking?" I tilt my head and look at Scott for a moment before taking Warren's hands in my own.
"This is a very unique situation, darling," I tell him softly. "Cable was the only person I thought I could turn to, other than Scott. At least he has experience with this kind of thing, what with all the temporal paradoxes he's had to endure in his time here. Besides, he's effectively Rebecca's big brother, and that counts for a lot, I think. Don't you agree?"
Warren rolls his eyes, and looks to the heavens. "I hate time travel," he says simply.
The night is refreshing, and I sleep better than I have in a long time. The nightmares have receded, seemingly for good, to be replaced with hope for the future and… normality.
Something I haven't enjoyed for a while, that thought.
Warren slumbers beside me, and I wake him with a kiss, gently playing my lips across his. He opens his eyes and smiles at me. "Morning, gorgeous," he says sleepily. "Hey, I had the worst dream last night –"
"– That Cable was here, and that he was going to help our daughter reclaim her lost humanity?" I finish for him. Warren shrugs.
"It was worth a try," he says, sheepishly, scratching the back of his neck. "I'm starting to wish it was a dream, after all."
"You don't like Cable very much, do you?" I say, stating the obvious. Warren shrugs.
"Well, getting shot in the wing by his twin brother probably has something to do with it – my mind knows I shouldn't be so irrational, but since when have I listened to my mind? My eyes see Cable's face, they see the face of the guy who shot me. End of story." He pauses. "That, and I saw the guy show up and turn the New Mutants into a bunch of delinquent terrorists." I raise an eyebrow.
"And we have the moral high ground, I suppose? Let me remind you, Warren, we're not above destroying things for our purposes. Look at how many Sentinels – which are government property, no less! – we've turned into tin foil. We're not so far removed from Cable, you know." Warren shrugs.
"Maybe that's what makes me so uncomfortable."
Cable looks like he has been up for hours when we go to speak to him. He is naked to the waist, his body a railway network of scars criss-crossing and intersecting in thick bunches of flesh. His bionic eye glows in the darkness that he has deliberately kept, eschewing the light that the small bulb in the centre of the ceiling could have provided. His body moves and sways in fluid, elegant movements which look like tai chi, but are infinitely more graceful – which is surprising, since Cable has never seemed – to me at least – to be that graceful a man. He picks his psimitar up from its stand, running through a series of combat manoeuvres with it, its blade glowing with his psychic energy as it is channelled directly into the weapon through Cable's gloveless hands. "So when do we go and see my little sister?" he says, not looking in our direction, but continuing to stab, withdraw, and swing his weapon effortlessly. I shrug.
"Whenever you like," I tell him. "She's probably up too, so if you don't want to waste any more time –"
"No, it's all right, Elisabeth," he replies, swinging the psimitar around, spinning the blade so that it is flat, and holds it against Warren's chin in a movement so fast that not even my reflexes can follow it. He grins, his teeth startlingly white in the darkness. "Getting slow, Wings," he says. "Maybe you ought to get your ass outta that boardroom more often, no?"
Warren moves the blade of the psimitar aside with a hand, scowling. "I don't need advice from you," he says darkly.
Cable's grin widens. "If you were Sam or Julio, or even Tab, I'd give you the benefit of the doubt. But you're not, so I won't. You're going soft, boy." He spins the psimitar around and slams the end of its wooden haft into the floorboards with a thud. A puff of dust rises off the ground. "Maybe you could stand to learn a little more about war."
"I've been doing this since I was just a teenager," Warren retorts. The odour of testosterone in the air is almost palpable.
Cable steps up, nose to nose with my husband, his thickly-muscled bulk almost half as broad again as Warren. He grins slowly, like an old wolf on the hunt. "So have I, kid. I killed my first man when I was thirteen. Can you say the same?" Oh, that's enough…
"Stop it – Cable, Warren. You're behaving like children." Cable shrugs.
"Sure. Let's go."
Warren scowls. He's just doing that to get a rise out of me, isn't he? He clenches his hands into fists and leaves beside me as Cable stows his weapon in its rack and then follows us, his body filling the corridors like a wall of flesh. He has slipped his blue kevlar shirt back on, a large red 'X' motif emblazoned on each shoulder and a smaller 'X' at his belt.
No, Warren, he's doing it because you're on Candid Camera. I brush Warren's chin with my hand, feeling the tiny nick that Cable's blade made. It's not bleeding much, but the skin is red and sore. I'm sorry he did that to you, but you must realise Cable doesn't do this much, even with his father. This is just as strange to him as it is to you. Try and approach it with that in mind.
Oh, wonderful. Warren throws his hands up in the air. All right, Betsy. I'll give it a try, but I reserve the right to say 'I told you so' if this all goes wrong. That draws a smile to my lips.
Very well, Warren. It's a deal. I'm sure you won't need to use it, but you have the right, nonetheless. Warren nods, satisfied.
Good, he says. I hope I don't have to use it, either.
Honestly?
Honestly, he repeats. I hope this works out just as much as you do, Betsy – even if Cable gets my teeth on edge.
If it's any consolation, Warren, I'm not exactly happy about this set of circumstances either, but it's the best we could have hoped for.
Cable catches up to us and says "Rebecca is in the infirmary, correct?" I nod.
"That's right. She's recovering from a couple of broken ribs suffered at the hands of her clone. She's also severely depressed, so you have to be gentle around her, Nathan." Cable touches a hand to his own ribcage, running his hand over some corded, thickly scarified muscle, his eyes glazing over slightly for a moment. Then, he is completely focused again.
"I know exactly how she feels," he says softly, and I know that he's telling the truth.
We take the lift down to the infirmary, and Hank raises his eyebrows in surprise at the sight of the hulking soldier behind Warren and myself. "If I may be so bold… why is the mutant version of Arnold Schwarzenegger in my infirmary?"
Cable steps past me and shakes Hank's hand briefly. "I was told I have yet another relative I need to keep track of. That's her, I assume?" He points towards Rebecca's hunched-over form through the plate-glass window. Hank's fur-covered face fills with comprehension.
"Yes, Nathan, that is indeed your new sister. On the plus side, she is not from a far-flung, apocalyptic future like so many of our recent acquaintances, but on the side of the minuses, she has had as natural a birth and childhood as your reality-displaced sibling Nate Grey. In other words –"
Cable nods, waving Hank silent, his scarred face taking on an even harsher look. "In other words, Sinister is involved. I might have guessed. Can I talk to her?" Hank nods.
"I see no reason why not," he replies. "I would, however, urge caution. She is still very fragile and I would not be so bold as to suggest that she is out of the woods yet, as it were. Please don't do anything that would upset her, Nathan – I don't want to have to put her back together again." Cable smiles grimly.
"Don't worry, Doc," he says, cracking his bare knuckles absently. "I won't. I don't think I'm capable of upsetting anybody." He grins at Warren once before he enters the ward. "You coming, Dad?"
Warren shakes his head. "I think it'd be better if I talked to her by myself. You go, Betsy. I'll wait."
"All right, Warren. Don't be too long. I'm sure Rebecca would enjoy talking to you." I kiss his cheek and then enter the ward again. I walk slowly towards my daughter's bed, Cable keeping a small distance behind me. Rebecca looks up suddenly, and her face sours.
"What's he doing here?" she hisses through dry lips.
Cable holds his hand up before I can answer, and steps forwards so that he can stand at the foot of his half-sister's bed. "I came to see my new baby sister," he says – surprisingly softly, considering his previous mannerisms. "Something that big brothers have to do, isn't it?" Rebecca rolls her eyes.
"I don't want to see you either," she says flatly. She taps her head. "I know you, 'big brother'. I know what you are and what you've done since you came to the present. You're no better than Sinister! Why should I listen to you?" Cable shrugs.
"You don't have to," he says. "Like you said, I'm not exactly the best candidate for giving advice – oath, I'm not even that capable of giving directions! Flonqing maps give me a headache the size of Waikiki." Rebecca raises an eyebrow.
"So just how did you manage to become a mercenary wanted by the Pentagon and SHIELD?" Rebecca's eyes have flared with interest. Good. At least she's coming out of her shell. "I would have thought you had to at least be able to read a map to do that." Cable smiles roughly, the scarred skin around his eyes creasing like weathered papyrus.
"Simple, kid," he says, putting a finger to his own temple. "Telepathy. I just took what I needed from other people's heads. How do you think I learned to speak English?" He switches to what I assume is Askani for a moment or two, its elegant, lilting musical qualities entrancing my daughter – and myself as well, frankly. Once again Cable surprises me with his hidden self.
"What was that?" I ask him.
"Battlefield prayer to the Mother Askani," he says shortly, twisting in place so that he can look back at me for a moment, confirming my suspicions. "The Clan Chosen always said it before we went off to war. I heard it a lot when I was just a young man fighting the Canaanites." He shrugs, turning back towards Rebecca. "I used my telepathy to learn English and I used it to get directions from people, even if they weren't talking. They didn't resist much. Usually." An unpleasant flash of memory passes across the surface of his mind. Rebecca's face, I suppose, must mirror my own – the memory is repulsive, and it shows Cable as I have known him in the past: spattered with blood and merciless in his pursuit of his objectives. The memory clears shows that the man at his feet is broken, his face a bloody mess, and that he is choking to death, his windpipe in messy ruins. Cable notices our mutual revulsion, and he lets his head hang for a moment. "I don't like remembering those kinds of things," he says, his voice low. "I don't deny that I did them, but I don't dwell on them either." He sighs. "My life has been one long war from the moment I was old enough to pick up a gun – if I stopped to remember it all, I'd never fulfil my mission here in the present." Scratching behind his left ear with his metallic fingers, he continues "The past is gone, Rebecca. The future is all that should matter to us. I know that better than most." He shifts slightly in his seat, and gestures at his face with his organic hand, pointing to some long scars down the side of his neck that curve and run into each other like the tributaries of a river. "I got these scars in a battle with the forces of the High Lords, in the ruins of what I think used to be San Franciso. That battle won't come for another two thousand years, but I still remember it. To me, it's the past. To you, it's the future. It's my job to make sure that the past I can't change becomes the future that I can. It's the same with you. You can still change what you are, Rebecca. You're worth more than the purpose Sinister created you for. We both are. We're above his hopes for us, because we have a potential beyond his obsessions."
"It doesn't feel that way," Rebecca says glumly. "All that I have in my head tells me that Sinister made me for one thing – to kill mutants he didn't think were worthy. I can feel him in my brain all the time, telling me that you're all weak, that you ought to be wiped out so that mutantkind can become stronger, but then I remember what he did to me, and I…" She looks briefly at the ceiling, rubbing her face with her hands. "I don't know who I am any more. I used to be so sure, but now? I don't have a clue." Cable glances at me for a moment, with worry uncharacteristically streaking his lined face, and then looks back at his baby sister, concerned.
"We can help you, Rebecca," he says, in an uncharacteristically kindly tone that I have rarely, if ever, heard from him. Cable always presented himself as a walking instrument of death (which, to be fair, is quite a justified description), but he has never really been that open with any of the X-Men other than Jean and Scott, and even then only sparingly. It is genuinely surprising to see him act this way. He sighs, touching his chin with his fingers. "I'm not… used to talking that much – Sam and Tab used to tell me I have all the conversational skills of a rock – but I'm a good listener. Seems being a telepath kind of makes that inevitable – so if you need a patient ear, I'll be around for another few days." He gets up off the bed, and grips her on the shoulder gently with his organic hand. "It's… good to have another sister," he says, his words coming out a little stilted, but otherwise sincere. Rebecca smiles weakly.
"Wish I could say the same about you, big brother," she says, her pale, drawn face nevertheless showing just how much Cable's brief presence has changed her opinion of him, perhaps irreversibly. "I'll take what you said under advisement." Cable touches her under the chin with his metal hand, tilting her face up so their gazes meet.
"Good girl. Don't take anything for granted." He laughs gruffly. "You'd have been a good soldier. The Askani would have liked you. I'll see you this afternoon, Rebecca." Walking towards the door, he speaks to her in Askani again, making a small sign in the air with his hands. I get up from my seat, kissing Rebecca gently on the forehead as I do so (this last is a rare privilege, so I make sure I take advantage of it), whispering my own goodbye to her, and follow Cable out of the infirmary's automatic door. As soon as we are out of Rebecca's sight, Cable's face darkens, and his fists clench.
"Stab his eyes," he mutters blackly. "Stab his eyes! I'll kill him…" He begins to move towards the exit of the laboratory, but I stop him with a hand on his arm.
"Kill who?" I say, redundantly. I know precisely who he intends to kill – and if the truth be told, I would gladly join him – but I stop him anyway.
"Sinister," Cable says coldly – a stark contrast to the sensitivity he showed only a few moments before. "How dare he do that to her?" His rage and his hate boil and sear my mind. I can feel him restraining them, but just barely. He tries to move away, so that he can leave. My grip on those chiselled muscles tightens and I stop him from going any further.
"Stop it, Cable – Nathan," I say. "You told Rebecca you would be back this afternoon, and you will be. I saw the way she looked at you – she was admiring you, almost. She thought you would be some kind of high and mighty messiah-figure because of Sinister's implanted memories, but then she saw you for what you really are, and she was impressed." I squeeze Cable's arm again. "Don't pull the rug out from under her feet again, Nathan, please. She needs you – needs us. Just for once can't you solve this with your voice, not your fists?"
Cable grits his teeth and scowls. Then he takes a deep breath and rubs the back of his neck, exhaling loudly. "All right, Betsy. All right. We'll do it your way." He turns to thumb the control on the laboratory's door, but I stop him again.
"Nathan?" I ask him hopefully. "What did you say to her before you left?"
"It was a blessing," Cable says shortly. "A blessing from the Askani'Son, passed down from the Mother Askani Herself." He shrugs. "I thought Rebecca could use it. I thought we all could."
