Disclaimer: Marvel's properties are Marvel's, used without explicit permission. The Shadowlands concept in this context was set up by Alicia, and is used with explicit permission. Enjoy.

Unexpected Companions
by Persephone
Chapter 2/10

They took him home, of course.

Cable went back to Earth with them, seemingly in shock, and promptly disappeared again two minutes and forty seconds after landing. So did Domino. The natural supposition (which was in fact accurate) was that they had disappeared together. Members of X-Force who were fairly well disposed toward both parties regarded this as somewhat encouraging, if irritating, and due to a lack of further data no one could really contradict them.

X-Force, not surprisingly, was moved en masse into Xavier's mansion. Some of them made a fuss. Sam wound up as a sort of liaison, once a reconciliation was induced regarding the surrounding issues. Sam's having been drawn off to the X-Men, the X-Men's having imprisoned X-Force, the X-Men's having now taken in the man who'd done what they'd been pursuing Cable for at the time... that sort of thing.

As a matter of fact, the X-Men were still, or again, pursuing Cable. After a fashion. More accurately, they were trying to find him, and encountering a distinct lack of success. Cerebro could not locate him. The combined efforts of all the telepaths they could bring to bear could not locate him.

"Stryfe, are you sure you can't --"

"Think about what you are asking for a few minutes. If Nathan and I could find one another telepathically as a general rule, at least one of us would have been dead for several years by now."

**********

The watching Nathan, of course, knew exactly where his alternate had gone. Greymalkin. He had essentially fled there when it really registered that Stryfe was being taken in as Scott's and Jean's son, and a sort of ward of the X-Men. Of course, he also thought he himself was the clone, still, and Stryfe the original.

Nathan could only imagine how those would have felt, in combination -- there was, of course, no way he would have come to any conclusion other than that he would be unwelcome, to say the least, even though as an observer with a little distance he could see that no one had tried to exclude him.

He was only surprised that his alternate had had the presence of mind and the confidence to ask Domino to accompany him -- and somewhat that she'd been willing to do so. It wasn't, though, as if they'd really abandoned X-Force; the kids could do just fine without them, and had all the X-Men as mentors if they wanted them.

Now, there was a daunting thought....

So the timeline had been different because the Stryfe dozing on the other side of the fire had had sense enough, or nerve enough, or something, to take Jean at her word. Cable still had doubts about how much sense Jean had been exhibiting when she made the offer, but given this Stryfe's behavior to date, apparently there hadn't been too much of a backlash.

After a few more moments of reflection and some calming breaths, he looked back into the scryer. Fascinating, the way it showed him the timeline and yet almost told it as a story, half-buried beneath conscious perception.

The next scene he chose to watch was actually a little earlier, coming before they'd really had a chance to start seeking their Cable. It also showed a little more of the bent Illyana had mentioned, toward focusing on her and Stryfe. A blink, an intention, and he was drawn almost into the scene of their first meeting....

**********

Having just gotten back, the X-Men apparently considered introductions to be in order. "...And this is Illyana, my little sister," Piotr was saying. Stryfe forbore to point out in exasperation that he already knew perfectly well who she was, and in fact knew perfectly well who all of them were, and had studied them in considerable detail. This was probably wise.

There was also to be considered the fact that while he could identify each member of the X-Men, not to mention assorted associates and satellites thereof, on sight, his predictions regarding their behavior -- at least Scott's and Jean's -- had failed, and failed in spectacular fashion. This rendered him more cautious than usual. Wary.

Secretly, he was both cynical about the likelihood they were sincere, and dubious about their sanity if they in fact were. Of course, he hoped the latter, and that they wouldn't come to their senses any time soon. Stryfe would, he decided, rather to his own alarm, genuinely prefer to die than find Jean's offer false, or revoked.

He was... fearful?

Stryfe slammed that thought instantly and furiously into the back of his mind and tried to ignore it, concentrating instead on the present as Colossus picked up the small blonde girl -- about nine years old, it appeared, though chronologically she should be a year or so older. She'd lost the time she spent with the New Mutants as well as that in Limbo, during the still-bewildering chain of events two years ago.

Illyana was comfortable, cheerful, and quite without fear, perched on her brother's hip and encircled by his arm. She regarded Stryfe with wide, dark blue eyes and only looked a little bit shy. "My precious Snowflake -- Illyana, meet Str-- er, Christopher." Piotr looked toward Scott for confirmation.

"Snowflake?" Stryfe muttered. "You are aware most of the snowflakes I've encountered in my life have been corrosive?"

Colossus drew his brows together, eyes darkening a little at the less than civil response. Illyana, either too innocent to consider that she might have just been insulted or simply too inclined toward friendliness to assume it, twisted slightly in his arms and smiled, appeared to consider, and then held out the pine branch she'd been carrying.

Stryfe looked at it in some confusion. She shook it a little and held it out farther. He took the branch, rather uncertainly, but felt completely ridiculous carrying it around and handed it back at the first opportunity. Illyana, by that time on her own feet again and running around, nonplussed him completely by shortly leaving it on the ground on her way to some other game.

**********

Cable stopped to consider. There was something odd about the cast of that first meeting, as shown in the scryer; it hadn't really meant a lot to either one of them at the time, though in retrospect it had taken on a little more significance, almost more intellectual than otherwise. Still, he wasn't sure whether or not the device would have shown it to him had he not specifically thought to seek Illyana's and Stryfe's first meeting.

He relaxed his mind a little, choosing by some instinct or feeling he couldn't quite identify a specific kind of relaxation that seemed to cause the bizarre device to skim through events in a way that gave him a general sense of things, but gave it a certain freedom in what it showed.

There was something obscurely satisfying about learning that Stryfe was not so very readily accepted -- oh, everyone tried, to be sure, but for obvious reasons tended to be uneasy around him. And of course Stryfe could tell. He would have had to be not only mindblind but fantastically oblivious to avoid noticing.

Xavier was exceedingly polite and outwardly unflappable, and never in word or gesture made reference in Stryfe's presence to the bandage around his head. The two tended to prefer not being in one another's company, however, perhaps due in part to the instinctive tensing that occurred in everyone else present whenever they were. Every other mind in the room was always on the topic, it seemed.

Conversation with Warren was especially interesting. A few days after everyone returned from the moon, things seemed to be settling down when Warren happened to give an account of his last encounter with Apocalypse. Stryfe's roar of "You just LEFT him there ALIVE?" rattled the windows, and he was all for going back in the remote hope of finding and finishing off the Egyptian External.

Cable, frankly, could sympathize. All hearers, however, seemed more of the opinion that Stryfe was simply overreacting. Stryfe went back anyway, surreptitiously, in the course of a series of excursions that Cable realized with a kind of morbid thrill were primarily aimed at retrieving or deactivating all specimens of Legacy. It would appear that the plague had been released, in his own timeline, sometime very close to Stryfe's death.

Well, that only made sense, if Stryfe had thought of it as a "legacy." But hadn't Xavier named it? Maybe Xavier had known more than he was telling. He usually did.

The relatively bland documentary unreeling itself sedately against mind-blanketing liquid silver-white suddenly grew more vivid, resolving with a feeling of sliding into place from summaries and generalities and samples -- all pervaded by mixed apprehension, resentment, and cautious hope from Stryfe, and by blithe joy from Illyana -- into a specific setting and event, at first glance far too serenely domestic for any real drama.

Nathan was almost made dizzy for a moment as he noticed the plurality of viewpoints, both physical and mental -- views from opposite directions that somehow left the laws of perspective perfectly intact, thoughts and emotions from separate people alternating or jostling together.

He was only disoriented, but wondered briefly how long it took non-telepaths to adjust to the divergences -- before surrendering to the fascination the scene almost seemed to hold for the device itself.

**********

Stryfe was sitting in a comfortable, deep armchair with a book to which he was paying limited attention. Scott and Jean were sharing the sofa and, judging from the quantity of newsprint, three or four different newspapers. Piotr was painting the scene. Stryfe appeared to be trying to ignore him.

Illyana was perched behind her big brother, leaning on his back to watch him paint and sniffling intermittently with a winter cold. It was getting boring, though, and she wanted a lap. And Piotr was busy, and Scott's and Jean's both had papers in them.

She headed over to the armchair, picking up a slightly battered copy of _The Velveteen Rabbit_ on her way, and climbed into the large silver-haired man's lap. He wasn't doing anything, just staring into the fire more than he looked at his own book...

The person who owned the lap jumped and looked down in shock. "Read to me?" Illyana asked with her best irresistibly cold-roughened voice and pleading eyes.

"Read?" Stryfe asked blankly, still lost in a strange land.

Illyana held up the book. "I'm bored and I feel yucky..."

Stryfe took the book, as he was obviously supposed to do, and tried to restrain the half-afraid nervousness at having his personal space invaded without so much as a "please." "Read... this aloud?"

At least she had gotten the word right; for a minute she'd almost wondered. Illyana squirmed slightly, sniffed again, and nestled against him. "Please?"

Stryfe fought back the instincts. She was a small, sick child. He did not need to check her for weapons.

She rubbed the back of her hand under her nose. He wasn't answering. "Everybody else is busy," she said carefully. "Please read to me?" Illyana squirmed again and scooted a bit sideways. His lap was awfully hard, like he was tense. Her lip trembled slightly. "If... you don't want me here, I'll go..."

If he didn't comply, they'd think he wasn't trying. How hard could it be? Well, mortifying, but he didn't see much of a choice. If you didn't treat sick children nicely, you were a Bad Person. "Fine. But bear in mind, as English is neither your first language or mine, I'm not sure how much you will be able to understand."

Illyana nodded, a little reassured. She didn't mention that she knew the story by heart already. He might refuse then. She nestled down.

Piotr, who had looked over first in guilt and then in some alarm at Illyana's previous two comments, relaxed slightly.

Just as he got the book open to the first page, Illyana picked up her head again from where she'd rested it on his rib cage. Her nose was running slightly. "Are you sure you don't mind?" she asked anxiously, and rather stuffily. "You're..." she hesitated briefly, "tense."

Jean looked over and gave a very tiny, approving smile. Not that Stryfe was looking her way. She telekinetically lofted the Kleenex box over to the table beside the armchair. It looked like it might be needed.

Stryfe looked down at the small blonde child and wondered how in the world such a creature had survived Limbo, based on what he'd been able to find out about the place. He looked at her face, looked at the box of tissues that had just floated over to him, and tried not to grimace in disgust. Fortunately, telekinesis did mean he didn't actually have to HOLD the tissue to wipe her nose.... The point became moot, as she took the tissue and did it herself anyway.

She was still looking at him expectantly with gigantic, slightly worried dark-blue eyes. Oath, she expected him to answer her... and she'd just announced to the entire ROOM that he wasn't relaxed.

"Just a little uncomfortable." That was definitely the truth. He lifted her a smidge telekinetically and made a small show of rearranging himself. What do I do if she falls off? "There, much better." Forcing himself to relax, he looked at the book. Illyana settled herself between his arms so he could still turn the pages, and looked expectant.

Horribly aware that Jean was watching his every move, he tentatively opened the book. There seemed to be... an awful lot of pictures.

Illyana settled down anew and leaned her head on Stryfe's chest, sighing happily at the sight of the first familiar picture. It felt so much better, having somebody nice and warm to sit on when you were sick.

He hadn't started yet. Perhaps she should make polite conversation; he hadn't read to her before, after all. "Do you like rabbits?" she asked, craning her head back so she could see his face. Or at least his chin.

Stryfe thought quickly. He did remember tasting rabbit once... but that wasn't what she was asking. "I... am not sure. I haven't met one."

"I have." Her neck was starting to hurt a little bit, so she looked back at the book. "Some of them are to eat, and some of them are for pets. The pet ones are cuddly and they like carrots. Toy ones aren't really either one, but they're still cuddly. But I'd rather have my Bamf."

Stryfe took a deep breath and recited to himself, "This is a small child. She is not a threat. And I am supposed to be 'nice' to her," silently like a mantra, and finally located the story's first words. And blinked at them.

"There was once a vel- velveteen rabbit, and in the beginning he was really splendid. He was fat and... bunchy, as a rabbit should be; his coat was spotted brown and white, he had real thread whiskers, and his ears were lined with pink sateen." Stryfe winced slightly and eyed the picture. It looked far too Christmassy for his comfort.

Illyana always liked commenting in between lines, and only hushed if it really bothered people. "He was cute. But not cuddled yet." She patted one of the large arms she was sitting between. "That comes later."

"I'm sure it does."

On the couch, Scott looked up curiously. Then he grinned and looked back down, pretending not to notice. Fighting back a blush (chaos bringers don't blush, even if he wasn't being one actively anymore), Stryfe continued. "On Christmas morning, when he sat wedged in the top of the Boy's stocking, with a sprig of holly between his paws, the effect was charming." The room's other occupants were certainly liking it. Illyana didn't seem to notice.

"Holly's a funny plant. It's very prickly. But people like decorating with it anyway."

Illyana decided that Stryfe was pausing longer than made much sense. Maybe he would rather just talk. She didn't mind, as long as she could sit and snuggle up on his lap. Or maybe she ought to quit interrupting the story? She looked up at him again, coughing a little bit. "I'll stop talking in between if you don't like me to," she chirped meekly.

Jean, smiling fondly into her newspaper, tried to squelch a hint of disappointment. The "in between" conversations sounded as if they might be VERY interesting to listen in on. Granted her son looked utterly mortified... but then, he was so cute that way...

Which was a rather unmotherly sentiment, perhaps, but... no it wasn't, she decided firmly, recalling the amusement with which her own mother had periodically told embarrassing stories.

Stryfe closed his eyes for a second and thought of past battles he really wasn't supposed to be proud of anymore. I can win against a book. "I will keep reading; say what you like. It's your story."

Illyana, ill as she felt, beamed up at him, a sudden wash of happiness going through her that he'd read to her and let her talk too. "Thank you!"

There was probably no psi on earth who could have completely blocked out perception of quite such a spontaneous emotional rush, despite the deceptive simplicity of its cause. At any rate, if there was one, it wasn't Stryfe. Not when his primary focus the past few minutes had been keeping his own emotions in. He blinked down at the small golden head.

Holding onto the contented feeling and taking a deep breath, Stryfe set out to do war for his small patron. He struggled through the opening paragraphs, then rallied magnificently at the prejudice of the more modern toys. If he ignored the childish language, it was a rather nice metaphor.

"They weren't very nice," Illyana inserted, naively but accurately enough. "I don't much like them. But maybe they didn't know any better."

Jean noticed the abrupt improvement as Stryfe progressed more comfortably when he reached one of the more negative portions of the book, and raised an eyebrow. Well, perhaps it was only to be expected.

"Maybe they were jealous, and tried to make themselves feel more important by focusing on what they thought made them special," Stryfe said with a restrained hint of irony and a baleful glance in Jean's direction.

Illyana looked up at him with a rather more considering expression than he would have expected from such a tiny face. "Do people do that a lot?"

"More often than they think they do."

She looked down at the book again. "I guess the other toys didn't think that was what they were doing either. They really thought they were better, didn't they?" She sighed. "So they were mean. That's very sad."

The other adults in the room exchanged looks.

Stryfe noted the looks and bit back a comment on how it was sometimes quite fun, simply clearing his throat and moving onto comparative Realness.

Illyana snuggled down. This had always been one of her favorite parts.

"...'The Boy's Uncle made me Real,' he said. 'That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always.'"

"Are people ever not Real?"

The question was completely innocent, but managed to send the entire room into silence and immobility but for the crackle of the fireplace.

"No," Stryfe said flatly. "People are always real. Everyone. Always."

"That's what I thought," Illyana replied, relaxing a bit more again. "And I guess if they weren't I'd just have to go love them so they got that way."

Jean pressed a hand hard to her mouth behind the newspaper, trying to quell both the urge to laugh that bubbled up behind her lips and the tears that sprang to her eyes.

It was very hard to strike Stryfe quite speechless, but the unfamiliar feeling racing though him stole all the words away. For a moment he just stared down at the strange little girl who wasn't at all as he'd thought she was. "That... that would probably work quite fast on people."

"You wouldn't even need to use the magic from the fairy," Illyana agreed. "They're already people."

"Fairy?" Stryfe asked weakly.

"Keep reading."

**********

He did, but Cable shook his head and quit watching before the book was over. Seeing Stryfe read sentimental children's literature aloud with a small child on his lap beat out a lot of the weirder universes he'd run across lately, for sheer incongruity. Had his clone really thought he'd get kicked out for not reading to Illyana?

Apparently the practice kept up, though. Mindful of the fact that the people whose past he was watching were only a few feet away, Cable tried not to snicker aloud at either the renditions of assorted Dr. Seuss books, or at Stryfe's consternation when the nickname "Snowflake" first slipped off his tongue.

_Pride and Prejudice_ and _Jane Eyre_ surprised him slightly, though he wondered if the title of the first hadn't gotten Stryfe curious. Nathan admitted grudgingly to himself that he shared a certain level of admiration with the rest of those who observed the reading aloud of _The Silmarillion_, _The Hobbit_, and the Lord of the Rings trilogy -- along with _War and Peace_ (in Russian), _Alice in Wonderland_, and _Les Miserables_ all in the course of one snowbound week.

It was impressive as a feat of sheer vocal endurance, even if Illyana did join in for some of the "voices." She could in fact read English quite well; she just liked being read to out loud. As well as reading out loud -- she really made an excellent Galadriel.

Cable did stop and listen at full length to a lively discussion of correct pronunciation and accent based on Tolkien's own explanations, and to every song Illyana lilted through in the elf-tongue. She sang very prettily.

He couldn't help noticing that the little girl shared none of the uneasy suspicion or discomfort about Stryfe's presence, accepting it as a matter of course and -- after a little initial diffidence about asking him to do things -- treating him with the same sweetly confiding trust and naturalness she gave Piotr and her other favorite adults.

Despite clear evidence from his own immediate past that no such thing had happened, the only reason Nathan could watch this without waiting for and dreading the moment Stryfe turned on her in some horrifying fashion was the device's insistence on showing him the timeline as much from Stryfe's perspective as Illyana's.

The former Chaos-Bringer had no intention of harming her. The irony of the Legacy release in Nathan's own timeline was wrenching, but this Stryfe actually seemed to be getting fond of the child, even protective. She even knew he had been a villain, and as long as he wasn't being one anymore it made no difference to her. He wasn't the only one, after all.

Nathan suspected Illyana might not really have a clear sense of scale, but she genuinely wasn't concerned. And Stryfe, much to his surprise, instead of taking advantage of the lack of concern for dastardly purposes -- seemed almost unconsciously grateful for it.

Even if he wasn't always particularly gracious.

**********