Love, Like A Splinter
If I were a more philosophical man, I would call this my karmic revenge for what I have suffered.
If I were a more philosophical man, I would say that my pain is about to be soothed, however briefly.
If I were a more philosophical man, I would say that my vengeance is about to crash down on the head of my enemy like an axe.
But I'm not a philosophical man. I'm just Neal Shaara, former X-Man-stroke-diary-hunter, here to exact my revenge on the man who killed the one thing in the world that mattered to me.
Storm and the others tried to dissuade me from following through on this, telling me that Betsy would not have wanted me to throw my life away in pursuit of quick vengeance. Hank told me that to face Vargas alone would be tantamount to suicide, his chair creaking as he wheeled himself after me hopelessly. Rogue showed me the bruises on her supposedly invulnerable flesh, in order to show me that this madman's powers were a force to be reckoned with – as if I did not know that already.
For his part, Bishop took me aside and said that he felt the same way after his sister got killed by the Emplates… whatever they are. He said that revenge solves nothing. He said that death was always a danger, whenever you put on the uniform of the X-Men and fought the battles that they fought. I remember he gripped my shoulder then, and sighed deeply, as if the buried pain of the memory was momentarily too much for him.
"Don't," I told him bluntly, ignoring his own discomfort. "Don't even try to stop me, Bishop. Just don't. I love her – I loved her – so much… do you expect me to just forget that she was murdered? Did you forget your sister when she was killed?"
Bishop sighed then, and shook his head. "No, Neal, I didn't. But –"
I shook my head then, holding up a hand to silence him. "Then you know why I have to go." I leant in close to him then, gripping his arm with fingers that felt like claws, and made sure that my eyes were totally focused on his. "Don't get in my way."
Something flickered in Bishop's eyes at that moment, which I think approximated to sympathy, and he nodded resignedly, looking down at his feet for a moment or two, before gesturing towards the door of the elegant villa that we had been staying in for the majority of our time in Spain up until that point.
"Go," he said quietly. Then his face twisted into a small, unfamiliar smile, and he said "If you need help… I'll be there, rookie. Just say the word." He saluted with a clipped gesture, his hand straight as a knife edge against his brow. Then he gripped my hand, and I felt him slip something into my palm before turning and leaving me alone in the corridor. When he was gone, I looked at what it was that he had given me, and I saw a small pistol. It was of the same type as Bishop uses himself, and it was primed and fully charged, its black muzzle promising the spilling of blood.
I slid the gun into the waistband of my costume before I clutched at the silver, red and black X-badge pinned to my chest and threw it to the floor, in a last symbolic act of defiance. If Storm would not help me, then I would not respect something that she held so dear.
I smashed the circular plastic emblem with two driving blows of my heel before I turned and stalked out of the villa, leaving behind me the sounds of Rogue and Storm arguing over what the team ought to do next.
And now I'm here, outside Vargas' home, watching and waiting for him to return from a night out carousing with his female bodyguard. I am no longer clad in my uniform – I discarded it weeks ago, changing it for more appropriate clothing; which for tonight means "as dark as possible". I disabled the security systems on my arrival here, melting the control box mounted high on one of the walls with a single concentrated beam of microwave heat, turning the expensive circuitry inside to bubbling slag. It dripped down the walls like water, cooling and solidifying into misshapen lumps that clung to the wall like fungus.
Anything to make this a little easier, after all…
Creeping towards the door of the mansion, I can see that the lights are still on inside the mansion, which means that the male twin is very likely to still be there, guarding his master's lair like a mindless attack dog. Looking in cautiously through one of the windows, I can see that he is sat cross-legged in the centre of the mausoleum-like entrance hall, facing away from the window. Surrounding him are numerous artefacts and trinkets that Vargas has obviously collected through years and years of travelling – which only makes me wonder just how old this man is. Has he been on this Earth longer than his physical description suggests?
And then…
And then I see it.
Or rather, I see her.
Behind the blond twin, she is standing proud and strong, as she always used to. Her stance is confident, relaxed, yet filled with the same strength that she always used to demonstrate in life. For a moment I am tempted to call out to her, to try to attract her attention, but then I see that what I thought was Betsy is simply a statue, painted to look like her. Small spider-webbed marks in the stone's texture run through her flesh and her clothing like the tributaries of a river, the perfection I saw in her clearly absent in this crude facsimile. I tear myself away from the statue's meticulously painted face and return my attention to the man sitting before her.
I aim my finger straight at the back of the man's head, feeling the solar energy pulse through my body in increasingly strong waves. All I have to do is release that energy in one concentrated wave and direct it right into his skull, and he will be of no further consequence – now, or ever again.
But I won't. Against every dark urge that burns beneath my skin, I will not punish this man simply for being a lapdog. I will hurt him, but I will not kill him. I raise my hand and fashion a small ball of plasma that hums with a subdued low-frequency moan until I release it from my palm with all the force of a gunshot. It punches through the window in front of me and cannons into the man's back, expanding and flowing like burning water until it covers nine tenths of his body. He thrashes and screams with pain as I follow my handiwork through the window, shattering the already fractured glass into hundreds of razor-sharp fragments. Cuts zigzag across my flesh, opening like bloody flowers on my skin, but I hardly notice them.
The man sees me as he convulses, pain-filled eyes realising that I am the source of his agony. He screams in rage and barrels towards me, flames licking off his heavily-muscled body, and swings one meaty fist at me in a wild attempt to incapacitate me.
"Don't even bother," I say coldly, swaying aside with almost contemptuous ease, the giant's manic attack without forward planning and fuelled by instinctive anger. I take a step back and click my fingers, extinguishing the plasma flames in the blink of an eye. The giant stands for a moment before the shock of the pain hits him like a magnum-load between the eyes, the air gnawing hungrily at his seared flesh and knocking him unconscious almost instantly. Then he falls forward onto his face, hitting the carpet with a heavy thud and staining its blue fibres purple with his own blood and charred flesh – unpleasant, yes, but nothing like what he deserved.
Nothing like what his master will get.
It's funny… a few weeks ago I would have balked at such visceral uses of my powers. Now, however, I feel vindicated, in a black kind of way. Should I be worried about that, I wonder?
No, I don't think so. I did what I had to do, in order to whittle down my opponent's numbers. Bishop would have approved, I'm sure. He's done far worse in his time, after all…
I pull a chair into the centre of the room, placing it over the fallen man's body, and sit down patiently in order to wait for my prey to arrive home again, absently scratching the full beard that I have cultivated these last few weeks in order to hide my face from view. As I do so, I look up at the statue's immobile face and smile hopelessly. "Look at what I've become because of you," I whisper. "If you were still alive I wouldn't be this way. If you were still alive you would have stopped me. If you were still alive –"
"Nothing would have changed," booms a voice from the doorway of the room. I look up abruptly, to see Vargas stood majestically in the centre of the arched portal, his long raven hair tied back over the long overcoat that extends down to his ankles. "Why are you in my home?"
"You killed her," I say simply, struggling to hold my rage in check as I throw a hand back to point at the statue. "You killed her."
"I did," Vargas agrees, matter-of-factly. "It was… necessary, in order to dissuade you and your companions from competing with me. And yet you haven't stood aside." He laughs, the sounds sending a shudder of disgust down my spine. "Why are you here, boy? Are you here to… avenge her death, perchance? Do spare me the charade, won't you, and admit it?" He gestures contemptuously at me with a black-gloved hand, a twisted sneer on his face. "Arrogant little whelp – you haven't a chance against me! You are nothing more than a mutant – a mongrel mistake of evolution. You don't have a prayer, child!"
"We'll see," I say, not getting up. Every fibre of my being yearns to leap out of this chair and wrap my hands around his smug, gloating throat in order to choke the very life from him, but I hold that in check for the moment, using that rage to fuel the furnace at the centre of my soul. "But while we're discussing weaknesses, why don't we talk about yours? You're overconfident, you have a tendency to underestimate your opponents, and you made an enemy of me when you killed Psylocke." I smile icily, baring my teeth like a cobra preparing to strike. "As my former colleagues might say: 'three strikes – you're out'."
Vargas smiles back at me humourlessly. "I… highly doubt that, child. As I said, I killed the woman to make a point, and I will kill you to put an exclamation mark behind it. How will your team-mates react, I wonder, when I send them your hide?" He sneers again. "Perhaps we should find out?" From the doorway steps his blonde companion, appearing as if out of nowhere. She has a long broadsword in her hand and is evidently ready to attack me without hesitation. Her red silk cheongsam evening dress allows her easy mobility, split to the thigh as it is, and I can tell that she intends to use that mobility to great effect. She raises her sword and is just about to charge me when Vargas holds up his hand and waves her back. "No, Thais. I don't think I need your services tonight. I will deal with this myself." He points to the door. "Go."
The blonde woman hesitates for a moment or two before nodding uncertainly and retreating back into the shadows. When she is gone, Vargas nods towards me and smiles wolfishly. "Lay on, Macduff," he says shortly.
"And damned be he who first cries 'hold, enough'," I finish, a predatory smile of my own flashing across my lips, too, as I rise from my chair and ignite my plasma flames with a single thought. My body is instantly surrounded by flame, and I can feel the innate power of the sun coursing through my veins, alongside the burning pain of my grief.
This is for you, Betsy...
Vargas leaps at me with an unholy speed, his right fist cannoning into my cheek. I can hear the bone shatter cleanly, and feel my teeth loosening in my jaw, and I understand now what Beast and Rogue were trying to tell me, in their own ways.
And again, I did not listen to them. I am a fool, and I am a dead fool, at that…
"Stupid… child," Vargas growls, in between unloading his fists into my torso, their impacts like cinder blocks crashing into raw meat. "Ignorant… stupid… arrogant… child!" Every punch brings a new explosion of agony into my flesh, each impact of Vargas' fists like a train driving over me. Vargas moves too fast for me to effectively land a pinpoint-accurate blast with my plasma bursts, so in order to get him away from me I have to generate a wide blanket of super-heated flame. It surges through the entire room, surrounding him and turning his overcoat into a flaming ruin, destroying his priceless relics and melting his possessions into slag.
As I said, no more than he deserves.
The force of the blast hurls him backwards and enables me to rise to my feet again, my breathing heavy and laboured. A searing agony in my side tells me that at least one rib is broken, its snapped-off edges pressing into my right lung whenever I take a breath.
Vargas crows with laughter as he tosses his overcoat casually to the floor, where it smoulders dully. "Is that the best you can do, boy? You should have died in your woman's place, boy – at least she put up a decent fight!" He snorts. "At least she made up for her stupidity by letting me kill her –"
That spurs me into action, through the pain in my chest, and I cannot think of anything except exacting the vengeance that I have thought of almost continuously since leaving the X-Men. "Shut up!" I scream, the flame in my lungs intensifying with every word. "Shut up! Don't you talk about her that way!" I leap forwards, the pain in my chest carving into my heart and almost making me fall back down again. Only my hatred for this man keeps me standing.
Slamming my fists together I unleash a searing burst of plasma flame, which impacts right in the centre of Vargas' chest, burning his clothes away and causing his flesh to crack and bubble. For the first time, he howls in pain and attempts to bat me away with one of those sledgehammer fists, but I am able to evade it, somehow – perhaps because he apparently cannot see, his superhuman eyes nonetheless blinded, albeit momentarily, by my flame. Precisely how, I'm not sure, but his flailing hand misses me in any case. Moving inside his guard I grab the remnants of his collar and flip him to the ground, using the standard self-defence moves that Betsy taught me. As Vargas crashes down onto his back, I encase my right hand in a cocoon of flame, and unload a boiling right cross right across his face, marking his skin with a gruesome fist-sized burn. "I loved her," I cry furiously, battering him with more flame-wreathed punches that are fuelled more by lost love, anger, and grief than by bodily strength. "I loved her…" I hit out at him again, my hands like axe blades. "She could have made me a better man. We could have been happy – and you took her away!"
Even through the rage, I know that I have to keep him disoriented and unable to focus, or he will shrug me off like he shrugged off Beast, Rogue and Betsy, and so I keep up my relentless barrage of fists and fire, every punch landing in the most vulnerable areas of his body, searing new scorch marks into his exposed skin with every movement.
All to no avail. Vargas roars with anger and hits out with his right hand, his fist hammering into my abdomen and sending me crashing to the floor without any effort whatsoever. The air is driven from my lungs instantaneously, rendering me unable to do anything but lie on my back and gasp for breath. I can feel something burst inside me as I do so, and a new pain explodes up my spine into the rear of my skull. I cough agonisingly, and blood flecks my chin, a long line of it dribbling over my lips. Even without Beast here to provide a diagnosis, I know that what has happened is bad – really bad. My insides are more liquid than solid now, blood pulsing out into my abdomen with sickening regularity.
Vargas stands over me, steam rising from his skin and his face scored with deep red lines, and smiles. The gesture is made even more surreal by the fact that his features are ruined, and I think Vargas knows that.
"Yes, boy, I took her away," he whispers coldly. "But don't concern yourself with that any longer… you will be joining her shortly." He cracks his knuckles and beckons the female twin over before bowing at me smartly. "Goodbye." He clenches and unclenches his fists for a second or two, before grabbing the front of my shirt and hauling me off the ground, dragging me close to his melted face. "Tell your whore I sent you," he sneers, his inhuman strength keeping me dangling off the ground effortlessly. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see the woman bringing him a long sword. Its edge glitters in the darkness, like the eyes of a cobra, and Vargas grips its hilt with practised ease, swinging it through the air so that it makes a humming noise.
And then he plunges it into my stomach, immediately making the previous pains I suffered seem like mosquito bites in comparison.
Dropping me to the ground after withdrawing the blade, he looks down at me with contempt. "I wonder, perhaps, if all your kind are as pathetic?" he gloats.
Then, abruptly, he begins to cough, clutching at his ruined collar as if to loosen it. Suddenly, he doubles over in pain, grabbing at his chest, scrabbling at it with claw-like fingers, before sinking to his knees inexorably slowly.
"That… pain… in your chest," I say through a lungful of blood. "That's… the air in your lungs… being superheated… by me. If…" I stop, coughing myself, only for far more visceral reasons. "If… I die… I'm going to take… take you with me." Vargas bellows with anger and rage, but his lungs soon shred under the tender touch of air being heated past its boiling point, too fast for his thrall to do anything about it. Blood oozes from the corners of his lips, mixing with chunks of cooked lung tissue.
The thought occurs to me that I should have done this before, when I still had a chance of living beyond this day. I quickly discount that notion – without Betsy, there's not much to live for. This way, I get payback, and I get to see her again.
Vargas' servant looks towards me suddenly, with blazing fury in her eyes. She still says nothing, but instead advances on me, picking up Vargas' fallen blade as she does so.
As the blade surges home again, I offer a small prayer up to Brahma, knowing my fate and accepting it. The woman backs away, leaving the blade embedded in my guts. She folds her arms and looks faintly satisfied that she has evened the score.
Crawling in a trail of my own blood towards the statue in the centre of the room, I look up at it for the last time. I curl into a pain-wracked ball at its feet and feel my life ebb slowly away.
See you in the next life, my love.