by Drucilla
Author's Note: Almost almost done! One more chapter! And then, depending on how many reviews I get, I may or may not write a sequel. I have no plans for it as yet anyway, except a bunch of story ideas I want to put into a coherent storyline. Including elements such as Eckhart's kids, Eckhart's ex-wife, Angelique sending Eckhart into remission for various periods of time ending in various degrees of lethality for her, Eckhart losing his memory, Adam going AWOL, various other such things. Anyway.. thank you all for reading! Thank you so much, Sllea, for reviewing, you made it so worth while! Hope you enjoyed the ride as much as I did. :)
Angelique Marie Delacroix. The Angel Mary of the Cross. Ironic, Eckhart thought with a smile. Ironic and yet somehow fitting, considering her personality and the intrinsic need to mother and care for everyone that he'd seen in the years he'd known her. And now he was being put into the position of caring for her, which was the ultimate irony of all. He, who had never had a single being solely dependent on him. Which was perhaps a good thing, but there it was.
The stasis pod was prepared, and so was she. The drugs in her system kept her sedated and in a regulated coma, perfectly preserved until such time as he could revive her and put her to work for GenomeX. She should have come back to work of her own volition, but he had known (had been too afraid) that would never happen, and so took the alternate (crueler) route instead. So now she was frozen in time, his very own Sleeping Beauty. He chuckled mirthlessly. Somehow he didn't think he was anyone's idea of a Prince Charming. She was laid out on the pallet, which had only to be slid in and locked into the stasis pod, but he wanted a few last moments with her before locking her away for what might be a very long time.
Black, slightly wavy hair was bound neatly in a braid behind her. He resisted the urge to undo it, to lay it over her shoulders in a messy waterfall as it always fell when she slept. He knew that if he did, the lights would glint blue highlights off of her hair, and make it seem to shine if she moved. Her eyes were closed, but he knew that if they opened they would be a warm, welcoming deep brown, so dark as to almost be black. Her skin, less pale than it had been in the years when she spent all of her life indoors, was now a light gold from all the time spent outdoors working with recalcitrant horses and humans. He brushed her shoulder where the simple stasis uniform left it bare. Her skin was soft, he could feel it even through the gloves. Full, blushing pink lips on a smiling mouth. He wondered what it would be like to kiss that mouth. He wondered if he had ever had the chance.
She really was beautiful. She must have been stunning when she was seventeen, twenty, back when she had first come to work for GenomeX. Yet somehow he hadn't noticed. The wisdom of hindsight, he supposed. And amazingly tolerant, for someone who espoused views so similar to his and was at least as much of a loner. Perhaps that was why he'd first tolerated her; she hadn't insisted on socializing him and making him a part of the social group. Instead, somehow recognizing that he absolutely hated that unless it was necessary to achieve a goal, she had simply spent time around him instead. Quiet time: she would work on whatever it was she was working on, legal pad in hand, doing equations, and leave him to work on whatever it was he was working on. Occasionally she would disappear, and when she returned she would have two Styrofoam trays of food, and put one firmly on his desk.
Eckhart chuckled softly. That had been the one point she had always insisted upon: eating at least once a day and sleeping for at least six hours. He remembered her tucking a blanket around him when he had fallen asleep at his desk one late night (the care he'd never known).
He took her hand in both of his, careful of the IV. It was limp, as though she weren't simply asleep but entirely gone. The thought made him frown, and he had to check the monitors to make sure she hadn't … left (died. Just say it for what it is, died) while he wasn't looking.
"Why did you do it?" he found himself asking quietly of the unconscious woman, thoughts becoming words before he realized he was voicing them. It was the first time in the last few days to sit and think calmly about everything that had happened. "Why did you leave? You could have done everything you wanted to at the Institution. We needed you there, Adam and I. You kept us going, kept us sane. Wendy and the Lost Boys," he chuckled softly. "You took care of us so well."
"And you seemed to be so happy here," he mused. The walls of the stasis room seemed to disappear, as he traveled back twenty years and a few miles to the old complex where they had all worked. "At least, you never objected to working here. You were so intense and passionate about everything. You thought the world was a marvelous place. For a little while, I thought that you might be right… you know, no one else has been able to do that. I had never seen any evidence to contradict my opinion that the world was a harsh and unforgiving place… I suppose I never wanted to. And yet…"
He looked down at her. "Why do you always have to be so goddamn cheerful?" he asked, more wry than angry. "Why did you have to work at GenomeX? You took everything I took for granted and threw it all out the window, and then I had to go and find new ideas to put in their place." He squeezed her hand gently, reassuringly, as though that made a difference. "Well, it wasn't your fault. But life would have been so much simpler."
She looked so still, lying there. It felt wrong; Angelique had never been completely still when she slept, never so rigid and straight. The few times he had caught her asleep at her desk she had always been sprawled out over something, working, and her hair would always fall over her face, moving ever so slightly in the soft puffs of air of her breathing. There was none of that here, not even the rise and fall of her chest or a fluttering of her eyelids. She was still as a corpse, and he had to check the monitors again to make sure she was still alive.
"This really is the ultimate irony," Eckhart murmured, slowly coming to realize what he now felt he should have known days ago. "Here you are, exactly where I thought I should want you… and now here I am waiting for you to sit up and argue with me. Or tell me I'm not sleeping enough, again." He rubbed his eyes carefully. "Perhaps you're right about that."
"Damn you, argue with me," he snapped, suddenly angry at himself and afraid he'd fulfilled his own prophecy. "Tell me I'm being an idiot. Tell me Adam's right. God knows, you've said it enough before." He stroked her face before he thought about it. "I even miss hearing you say 'I told you so'" he murmured, smiling slightly. He could almost hear her saying it, as he finally consciously reached the decision he had made the moment he'd seen her lying there. He watched her for a few moments longer. It seemed almost as though she'd grown even more still, more unmoving in the last five minutes. He looked at the monitors… was it his imagination or were her life signs growing that much fainter? Never mind.
Eckhart reached over and turned the dials on the temperature pad up, raising her body temperature to a normal human 98 degrees. He disconnected the tubes which kept the stasis fluids and drugs running through her veins and waited a few minutes, preparing syringes. The seconds ticked by as he watched her not breathe and then finally it was time, and he slowly injected the contents of the first syringe into her IV. Then the second and third followed after another two minutes, then the fourth. He finished reversing the stasis process, pulling a small folded blanket out of the closet and tucking it around her in case the warming pad kicked off when she woke up. He'd never revived someone out of stasis himself before. And then there was nothing left to do. So he waited.
Angelique woke slowly, her mind coming to wakefulness before the rest of her did. The chemicals
from the stasis procedure were still in her system, and while she could begin the procedure to
filter them through she didn't have the energy to increase the speed more than twofold. She
increased the production of adrenaline through her system. After a few seconds she found herself
able to open her eyes.
Mason was near. She caught sight of the translucent white, wispy hair out of the corner of her eye. He must have started the stasis procedure himself, but then if that was the case… why had he stopped? Why had he reversed the procedure and allowed her to wake up? No restraints, either, although her weakness in and of itself was restraint enough. That was slowly starting to fade, though. She pushed more adrenaline through her system, increased the toxin filtration as much as she dared and shunting the toxins out of her body through the pores in her skin. Sweat began to break out, and she ignored it as a sign of a job well done. The white hair in the edge of her vision didn't move, but she could have sworn she heard a choked sob.
Finally she could sit up. Mason was sitting near her, elbows propped on his knees, face in his hands. No shoulder-shaking, no more noises, just silence, as though he simply didn't want to see what happened next. Angelique carefully slid the tubes out of her, swung her legs over the side of the pallet, and turned to face him.
"Mason," she said, soft and gentle as a touch to a sleeping baby. "Mason?"
He looked up. His eyes were as clear and cold as they always had been. "You're awake."
"Thanks to you…" she briefly thought about trying to stand then thought better of it. "Of course, it's thanks to you that I was there in the first place."
"We've been over this," he said, sounding almost angry and definitely tired, not looking at her anymore.
"You couldn't do it, could you?" she said at the same time. "You couldn't put me in a stasis pod. You couldn't lock me away forever, or until someone's whim thawed me out again. Why?"
"You could have gotten out," he still wasn't looking at her, "The security risk…"
"Bullshit," she spat angrily at him, and he grimaced. "You know once I'm unconscious I can't do anything. Security risk be damned. Why did you reverse the process?"
He was silent for a long time. "As the old curse goes. I finally had everything that I could ever have wanted, and found I no longer wanted it."
"Trés poétique," she said in sarcastic French. It had been their secret language at GenomeX, and her soft voice soothed over his consciousness like a warm blanket, comforting. It hurt, too, for some reason he could never have explained. He grimaced again, still looking away. "Mais vrais," was all he said. Angelique glared at him, getting tired of this. "Mason." She switched back to English. "Mason, look at me. Regardez-moi," she commanded, leaning forward and trying to get him to meet her eyes. Too far forward: she slipped, tried to catch herself, and crashed to the cold artificial floor. Mason lunged to help her then pulled back abruptly, but not before she grabbed him by his Armani-clad forearms and looked him in the eye. "Why?" He let go abruptly enough that she crashed back to the floor, stood, and turned around. She watched, slowly pushing herself up. "Je tu donnerai tout ce que tu désire, si tu m'as demande…" I would have given you anything you wanted, if you had asked.
He wouldn't look at her. "You have no reason…" he said quietly. "I have no right."
"You have every right, you arrogant idiot," she snapped, and then wondered why he was smiling.
"We were friends, before anything else. For ten years, we were friends. Et tu as toujours besoin d'un ami, mon cher. Je ne peut pas tu délaisse si je le veux." You were always in need of a friend. I couldn't have deserted you if I'd wanted to.
She looked away as his eyes widened slightly and his stance became tense. When he spoke again it was in English, and she understood why. Anything else had become too painful, as their sharp and defensive edges cut into each other. "You didn't tell me about a lot of things," was all he said. She shook her head slowly.
"I was scared," she sighed. "I was tired. It was all too much, everything with the experiments and with you and Adam, and… it was just too much. You were always too intense, never knew when to ease back. You could always have asked, but you never wanted to. You were always so proud and arrogant, thinking you were strong."
Angelique stood up slowly, using a wall for support. Mason slumped in defeat. She thought she heard him say "I didn't know what else to do…" but like before, he gave no sign either way when he looked at her again.
"All you had to ever do was ask," she repeated softly, and then in a moment of inspiration she reached out and touched his cheek. Cold synthetic material met her fingertips, but that didn't stop her mind. Biokinetic powers gave her insight into his crippled body, and she closed her eyes to focus better on what she wanted to do. It was a simple thing, really, but technology couldn't do it yet. She had to do it on her own. Slowly she coaxed the cells into renewal and replication. From somewhere (possibly her own body, she didn't know) she reintroduced leukocytes into his body, replenished his immune system. A thousand little fixes she made here and there, being thorough and quick. She'd done it often enough with FIV cats (and, once, an HIV+ human). It wasn't a permanent fix, but it would give him a week, ten days of normality. Then, slowly, it would wear off.
As she told him so his eyes widened, startled. He looked almost afraid, or sad. Or maybe he was just as tired as she was. Her hand on his cheek felt the warmth as his body temperature elevated to healthier levels. She wanted to do so many things. She did none of them.
"It's a reprieve, nothing more," she forced herself to sound harsh as she turned away again and tottered towards the door. Mason made no move to stop her, not even when Brennan and Shalimar appeared in the doorway and looked as though they might rip his head right off. "I've done what I can for you. I've healed the damage done to your body. It's up to you to do the rest."
Angelique forced skepticism and sarcasm into her voice, even though it felt like it would crack her throat coming out. "Not that you ever wanted any sort of human contact anyway. Maybe you're actually better off this way. It's certainly more fitting. No one and nothing can touch you; you can remain completely apart from everyone. Like you always wanted."
Mason must have been suitably chagrined, because he allowed Brennan and Shalimar to walk up and assist Angelique without so much as a snide comment or dirty look. Shalimar looked at the man as though she wanted to tear his throat out, but a head-shake from Angelique directed her attention elsewhere. "We have a clear path out," Brennan said softly. "You gonna be okay?"
"Just help me a few more minutes, I'll be able to walk soon. And then I'll sleep for a week." Angelique could already feel the increased adrenaline pumping through her veins again.
"Better than sleeping forever," Shalimar commented, glaring over her shoulder at Eckhart. The white-haired man gave no response.
"Let's just get out of here," Angelique requested, lacking the energy to keep the Mutant X'ers from doing something potentially rash that could get them all killed.
"What about Eckhart?"
She didn't even need to look back. "He's not going to tell anyone," Angelique said heavily. "Trust me." She straightened up slightly, still leaning heavily on Brennan's and Shalimar's arms, but managing to mostly move under her own power. The corridor was deserted when they reached it, turning the corner and heading out to the helipad. Behind them she heard the conspicuous lack of footsteps, and wondered what Mason was thinking.