Unexpected Companions
by Persephone
Chapter 4/10
Stryfe and Zero arrived on the scene just in time to hear Illyana's final words and see her put the Soulsword in Cable's hands and offer to let him kill her.
A strange and different metal began a campaign up over Cable's arm as soon as his hand closed around the sword. The techno-organic virus fought back, inimical metals clashing in silence.
Nathan looked down at the sword as a bizarre, icy, tingling pain began climbing his metal arm, and yelled both at the agonizing sensation and at the sight of the armor.
Stryfe, in the same instant, cried out against Illyana's offer to die. Not that he was terribly articulate about it, but that was the idea.
Cable, thoroughly disturbed at this point both by Stryfe's arrival and by the armor that was unnervingly and with great determination waging war against the techno-organic virus for possession of his arm (with no apparent concern from either party as to the fact that it was HIS arm), finally forced his fingers to uncurl, and the Soulsword clattered to the floor. Its intangibility didn't seem to extend to flooring.
Then he whirled again, raising his gun as Stryfe took a step forward and stopped. "You."
"Yes," Stryfe spat, contriving to make the monosyllable nasty. "If you --" he added tightly, then looked to Illyana.
She picked up the Soulsword again and stood slowly, eyes darting from one to another of the four other people in the room.
"If I -- what?" Cable mocked. Domino shifted her weight and moved her own gun to cover Zero, who stood in perfect serenity while Stryfe and Cable glowered at each other.
Stryfe thought quickly. He had Cable's attention, which meant it wasn't on Illyana. Which meant, in turn, that Cable was not likely to attack the girl. It was possible that he didn't plan to, but given what he'd heard and seen, Stryfe was not prepared to risk it.
And while he might be... somewhat distracted, he really shouldn't have any trouble baiting Cable. With their history, it didn't tend to require terribly intensive concentration. One reckless move from Nathan, incapacitation so the man couldn't decide to take the vengeance Illyana was offering....
It occurred to him that the whole idea of his making calculations to protect an innocent child from Cable really ought to be hysterically funny in other circumstances. Then again, in other circumstances it wouldn't be at issue.
With growing exasperation at the entire train of thought, Stryfe derailed it and tried for something more productive, like thinking of a provoking comment.
"What's wrong, Nathan? I thought shooting the messenger was a practice normally employed in the case of bad news."
The first thought that penetrated through Nathan's natural and rather territorial interest in killing the old and very personal enemy who had just appeared on his space station ran along the lines of What is he TALKING about? Curiosity failed, however, to override the threat perception. Stryfe talked nonsense fairly regularly; it was probably some sort of smokescreen.
As the man was almost certainly ready to deflect a shot, even if for some reason he didn't appear to be wearing armor (No, he could NOT have lent it to the blonde girl. It would never have fit.), Cable growled out, "Have I gotten GOOD news lately about something?" and tackled him instead.
Stryfe lashed back, telekinetically, and threw Nathan off him, shielding at the same time against a shot from another direction as Domino jerked her gun to him from Zero and fired as soon as he'd thrown Cable clear.
Illyana shrieked at them to quit, first in Russian and then in English. Neither one paid her any attention; Cable didn't quite hear her, while Stryfe merely wondered irritably what she expected him to do instead.
Stryfe prepared mentally to try to slice through Cable's shields, moving forward with the intent of providing his own distraction.
Cable lunged to meet him, firming up his shields.
And pools of light rose up from the floor and swallowed them both, depositing their feet on some other landscape before their eyes found the dim light of what had to be Limbo. Something, or somethings, grabbed them roughly from behind and held them tight, arms pinned and -- somehow -- powers blocked.
Domino and Zero were nowhere to be seen. Illyana stood a few yards away, face white and lips set.
"Both of you. Stop it. Now. Please." Her voice was strained. Cable's head jerked up, eyes slightly wild.
"If you think you _owe_ me so much, let me kill him! Or... you do it."
"Christopher... that's one of very few things you could have asked of me that I would refuse." She lowered her eyes. "I've killed too many of my friends already."
"Don't let that slow you down." Stryfe glared across at Cable. "I don't have friends, do I? It's not allowed."
Illyana looked up sharply, sapphire eyes shadowed. "Well. I thought we were friends. Though," she admitted hollowly, "you might do well to avoid me, after... this morning's developments."
Stryfe watched her tensely. "Why avoid you? Because you told me my existence was pointless? Nathan here does that all the time; I still talk to him far more often than he'd like."
"Where does pointless come into things? I said you weren't one of the kids I was responsible for getting kidnapped by demons!"
"Which made me his clone." Stryfe laughed humorlessly. "I should thank you for that?"
"I wasn't expecting thanks, no. For what? NOT nearly getting you killed? Not exactly something that requires a lot of gratitude." She stared blindly at the Soulsword's blade. "What do you mean, made you his clone? I had nothing to do with that. Does it matter?"
"It matters to ME." Stryfe tugged angrily against the restraints.
She glanced toward Cable, eyes troubled. Cable glared at her and growled, "You claim to owe me for some previous mess with demons. But you won't kill him. You won't let me. And you have demons hold me here, again? This, after you try to get me to free you from your guilt. Live with it instead. Coward."
Illyana froze, and bowed her head. "I offered you my blood to spill because it was yours by right of revenge according to any number of sorcerous traditions. I don't know for certain it would have killed me..." she hesitated, and her voice held a hint of a wail. "Do you really think I want to die? I don't." She took a deep breath, not seeing Cable's accusing stare falter. "I will live, and work out the debt as I see fit. But I will not kill for you one who has been kind to me."
She turned back toward Stryfe. "Why does that matter to you? You are who you are."
"Shut up, you self-absorbed waste of protein," Stryfe snarled at his brother. "You found something you can't blame on me so you're taking it out on her. If you kill her...." He glared and strained forwards again. "Then there'll be nothing to protect you from me, will there?"
Cable glared back. "I wasn't the one who offered blame, she was. I said I'm not going to kill her just to let her get out of living with something she thinks she has to atone for!"
Illyana blinked at Stryfe, ignored Cable, and repeated herself. "You are who you are. Please stop insulting your brother and answer me? He's more likely to have some measure of control over Limbo than you are anyway."
Stryfe looked away. "You don't HAVE to atone for anything; it's a choice you make. And playing the martyr isn't a particularly useful way to go about it."
She sighed and walked over to him. A demon grabbed Stryfe's head and turned his face toward her; she glared at it until it let go. "He had the right. I may have stained most of my soul, but I can still choose right on some occasions. For that matter, I'll probably be more use to him alive."
Cable elbowed the demon holding him sharply in what passed for its ribs, and shook his head incredulously. "Use! I don't want you to be useful; I want you to leave me alone -- and not do any MORE damage than whatever it is you've already done -- and stop expecting me to give you some kind of absolution! I'm hardly qualified to give absolution even if I wanted to." He twisted and got his left arm free for about four seconds before it was pinned firmly behind his back again. "And let me OUT of this," he growled.
Illyana looked at him over her shoulder. "Fine." She raised her eyes slightly. "Let him go." The command was obeyed. Cable staggered forward a step before running into some invisible barrier. "I'm going to send you home," Magik said quietly, "to get reacquainted with everyone. You can leave when you want, of course, but I'm warning you: I've got friends, old teammates, in X-Force who MISS you. If you don't at LEAST stop in on them and say hello and leave some sort of forwarding address, I'll track you down again and again and bring you back as many times as I have to until you do."
A stepping disc swallowed him as she turned back toward Stryfe. "Now." She flicked silver-clad fingers at the demons who held him, and they retreated sullenly. "Without the interruptions...." She trailed off, looked frustrated as he continued to scowl, then lowered her eyes. "What is it you're telling me I've done to you? I don't understand."
"You don't... understand." His voice rose. "You don't UNDERSTAND? No, of course you don't." The words dripped venom. "You've always been the special one everybody pets and adores, haven't you? Haven't you?" He gave a contemptuous snort. "So of course you don't understand."
Her eyes darted up to meet his for a moment, sea and sky, then fell again. "Yes." Her voice was almost inaudible. "I suppose, pretty much, I always have been."
She had always been the special one. The youngest, the little girl, the darling -- and in between, though hardly "adored," she had been perhaps the most sought-after creature in that little corner of Limbo.
Given her state of mind at the moment, this was enough to keep her from arguing the point. Still, she folded her arms as if cold, somehow not letting go of the sword or slicing herself with it. "Sometimes," she added, just as softly, "being 'special' isn't all it's cracked up to be."
Stryfe glared at her. "I know that. I know that from times and places that make this pathetic attempt at hell look like paradise. here are nasty ways and nice ways, Illyana. And thanks to you, I don't have any nice ways left." Nor, he added silently to himself, the heart for most of the nasty ones -- but he would have to find it again, wouldn't he?
Illyana's head snapped up and she gazed at him in bewildered hurt before shutters seemed to go up behind her eyes. "Well, this IS one of the nicer parts of Limbo," she muttered. "You're not making any sense. You can do what you want, can't you? I'm not planning to keep you here."
"Do WHAT, exactly? I'm not even ME anymore! HE is, and I'm just some second-rate copy that was never supposed to exist! No matter what happens to you, you'll always know who you are."
She looked at him for a minute, then paced around him in a slow circle before facing him again. So that was it. Now that she thought about it, she cringed a little inside, thinking how much of a shock her hasty, half-coherent explanation must have been.
"You are you," she insisted again, forcefully. "And -" she shouldn't do this; she should just send him home. It wasn't as if she had any business acting as if she had the right to --"I don't think you're second rate." She looked away. "Not that my opinion's worth much now, I guess...."
It was Stryfe's turn to look incredulous. "Oh, of course you don't. This would be why you sent Cable back to them in my place? I notice I'm being quite effectively kept out of the way."
"I kept you here to talk to you. Of course I sent him there; they're his family too."
"Too?" he asked bitterly. "Too? They're his, period. I'm the clone, remember? The copy? I was just there by mistake, because they thought I was HIM."
Magik's eyes flashed with the first real sign of anger she'd shown since bringing them all here. "You still belong there as much as he does. He didn't HAVE to disappear like that, you know. What difference does it make for that, that you're his clone instead of the other way around? So you missed the near-sacrifice and the technovirus. Consider yourself lucky. You missed getting born on the kitchen floor and being held and cuddled and having your diapers changed by eventual members of X-Force --"
"Right. I wasn't born at all, and never got held and cuddled by ANYONE. Lucky me."
She stopped, mouth still open, then closed it and just looked at him for a few moments. "That's sad." She glanced sideways and watched a circle of silver sparks spring up around them, then thrust the Soulsword back into her body. The armor melted away and she took the two steps to reach him and put both arms around his waist, which for her was still just below shoulder-high. Her mind was screaming at her not to do this, not to risk it.
Demon sorceresses did not hug. They were not affectionate. It was too dangerous for both parties. Her evil would put him in danger, or if he had a bit more sense he'd push her away... but her heart said this was her friend still, and she had hurt him even if she didn't mean to -- see, isn't that what you always do to everyone, to everything you care for? accused her memories of Limbo -- and he'd held her this morning when she needed it. And she needed it again --no you don't, don't you dare think that, mustn't-- now, too.
Her heart told her mind to shut up.
Stryfe froze for several seconds, muscles clenched, forgetting to breathe. Illyana entertained for an instant the panicked thought that she'd somehow done him harm, before he drew a careful, very slightly shaky breath. They stood there a moment longer before he slowly brought a hand up and put a straggling lock of golden hair back in place, then tentatively placed the arm around her shoulders.
Illyana relaxed, through her worries desperately relieved that he hadn't chosen to shove her away on account of her reclaimed sorcery, and tightened her arms around him, almost convulsively, as she buried her face in his ribs. Stryfe closed his eyes and wrapped his other arm around her too.
She wasn't pulling away, he realized. It occurred to him that Illyana really would have been utterly appalled at the very idea that she might have baited him in this fashion only to thrust him away in scorn. She meant it. She must. But... that had been when she thought he was the real Nathan Christopher, hadn't it?
Still, she had made no move away from him yet, and... from what she had said, it seemed as if... as if it truly didn't matter to her.
Did he dare believe that?
Could he bear to disbelieve it?
Ever so slowly, Stryfe began to relax into the child's embrace. He almost flinched when she freed her hand, but it was only to pat him gently on the back.
Something small and light collided firmly with his nose and then clung to it. Stryfe snorted involuntarily and jerked backwards, knocking whatever it was away telekinetically and reflexively rubbing at his nose with one hand.
Illyana stirred -- actually, she stumbled forward rather ungracefully when Stryfe jumped, then got her balance back and peered up at his affronted grimace and the small, gaudily colored insect he held in a tiny golden bubble, just far enough from his face to be able to focus on it.
"What is this thing?" The thing gave an abortive buzz.
"I don't know. Let me see it," she replied sensibly. Stryfe hoisted her up one-handed, and she leaned her forearm on top of his shoulder while she peered at the creature. It was shaped like a housefly, mostly, but it was mauve -- with orange stripes -- and had 13 wings, the smallest a withered-looking little fragment of tissue in the exact center of its back. It was also partly crushed. She searched her memories. "I think it's a minor demon, actually."
He looked startled. Illyana winced slightly at his expression --way to go, remind him of that -- then glanced back at the insect, then at Stryfe again. He also looked a little skeptical. "This is a minor demon? It looks like a bug."
Her lips twitched. "Very minor. As innocuous as they come; it wasn't even enough to trip my wards."
Stryfe actually laughed, if a bit shakily, as he set her down. Feeling somehow that neither of them was really ready to let go yet, she leaned against his side and gazed up, studying his face. He looked... a little less stricken, at least. She felt another pang of guilt for being so abrupt with him that morning. And he'd still....
"Did you, ah, want it for anything?"
Illyana frowned for a moment, then shook her head. The bubble winked out and the creature emitted a rather dismal, whining buzz as it arced to the ground and bounced. She followed its struggling crawl into the shadows with her eyes, but made no move to help or hinder.
"Thank you," she said finally.
He looked down at her in genuine surprise. "For what?"
Illyana flipped long hair over her shoulder and stared at the dark, smooth, barren ground. Then she raised her head and met his eyes. "Well, among other things... thank you for coming to look for me, and --" she hesitated, and looked back down -- "and hugging me when I needed it." She didn't dare keep on "needing" hugs, though....
"Why wouldn't I come to look for you?"
She blinked hard, several times, without taking her eyes off the too-sleek dust at her feet. She was not going to cry. Really. No matter how warm it made her feel that he sounded as if she should have taken that for granted, and no matter how much it hurt to think of having to hide from him. She opened her mouth to say something, not sure what, but he continued before she had the chance.
"Of course I would." He laughed self-mockingly. "You've made yourself a part of everything between me and Nathan now, whether you meant to or not, and there you'll stay. No matter where you go, there we are. You might want to cut all ties, little one, run off and hide by yourself... but I guess 'Cable' just proved that it doesn't happen, didn't he?" He gazed off into the warped landscape. "And I'm going to hold you to it. You'll never get rid of me. I might hate what you've done to me, but you're still..."
Illyana, still pressed against Stryfe's side where she'd slid down from looking at the minuscule intruder, stiffened. Cut all ties... how had he known? She had thought she had shields, based on the sorcery she'd taken up, or had thrust on her, depending on how you looked at it. Then again, he was an extremely strong telepath, someone she was accustomed to trusting, and she... was somewhat emotionally ruffled, not to mention the interesting issues involved in evaluating her current level of expertise.
She didn't want to get rid of him, her heart cried out. She didn't want to cut ties. But she was so afraid of what might happen if she went back. Of the unease in their eyes, or worse, trust and later -- perhaps -- betrayal. "Still what?"
"You're still the only one who trusts me. Now more than ever, probably."
Illyana finally looked up again, at that. "I don't see why...."
"I'm not even someone they're supposed to care about anymore. I lied to them all this time, even though I didn't know it was a lie.... Their attention will be on Ca-- Nathan now, where it should be." "Should" had more than a little resigned sarcasm about it.
"They're 'supposed' to care about both of you!" she exclaimed, for the moment forgetting her own worries. "You're still their son. And if you think they won't pay attention to you now, explain to me how you reconcile that with all the time I seem to remember being spent trying to track down Cable... Christopher, Nathan, whatever."
"That's different. And don't try to tell me it isn't, because it IS. We're different. And I don't even know if I want their attention, let alone the dirty looks and the pity...."
She let go of him and folded her arms, leaning back slightly. "I never said you weren't different, but it sounds like you think just because they had it mixed up as to which of you was which, they'll stop caring about you because you're Cable's clone. When they thought he was yours, they still looked for him. So that doesn't hold water." Illyana shook her head. "And don't try to tell me you don't want to go home."
"If I have to go back, you're coming with me."
She dug a toe into the ground, not looking at him. "Who said I wasn't?" she hedged.
"You just did. I've known you since before you could read, Illyana." He'd watched her that long, at least. "Your lips might lie to me or try to distract me, but the rest of you can't. I've been where you are, and I can tell exactly what you're thinking. Without the telepathy, although I could do that too."
She closed her eyes. "I want to go back. Believe me. But I shouldn't." She had to force the words out through a throat that was much too dry, and was almost glad she'd pulled away from him so he at least couldn't feel her trembling.
"Why?"
"Because."
That wouldn't do at all. He was her friend. He deserved more of an explanation than "because."
He was her friend, and she had to find some way to give him up and keep him from trying to look for her again, so that she wouldn't yield to tempation and jeopardize him as well as the rest of the only world she really wanted to live in -- and hence didn't dare.
But to push him away, she would have to hurt him. But if she didn't, she might do worse.... He was still waiting. She compromised.
"Think about it, Christopher." So she'd called Cable that, a moment ago. She'd been calling Stryfe that for much longer, and the only first name she'd heard that Cable had given for himself was Nathan. She summoned a faintly derisive smile and hardened her eldritch shields. "I'm hardly prime company myself, right now. You say I trust you. But do you really think you can trust me?"
Stryfe winced slightly and almost took a step back. Calling him Christopher, now of all times, was almost a slap in the face -- and the girl had almost appeared to put on a new personality like a garment. He realized, with a slight chill, that after a fashion he had just seen Illyana give way to Magik.
Next he realized that she had done it on purpose, and the indignation of that knowledge was what let him catch himself before that backwards step.
Stryfe considered carefully. He wasn't about to tell her of the cold clenching in his gut at the thought of going back to the X-Mansion, back to Scott and Jean and everyone else and Cable, without even the one person there who had trusted him unquestioningly all along, however naive it had been of her.
Not to mention the utterly lovely prospect of having Piotr ask him where his little sister was.
"Are you telling me I can't trust you?" He was hardly in the habit of trusting people, even now, but some time ago he had discovered that he no longer felt like trying to get away when Illyana climbed on him or hugged him, and stranger still, he had found himself talking to her almost unguardedly.
Illyana turned away, and Stryfe couldn't help wondering why he'd felt such a loss ever since she pulled back from that first, terribly unexpected and almost impossibly reassuring hug. "That's just the problem. I have no intention of betraying you in any way I can possibly avoid... but... you'd be a fool to trust me."
"And you were a fool to trust me. Any trust is a risk, Illyana."
"Then why take the risk? I can send you back easily enough, no worries there." She turned to face him again, head tilted and lips ever so slightly quirked. "I do have the control I learned; there's no particular danger of my accidentally landing you in the wrong time, at least."
Stryfe shook his head. "That would be the least of my worries, I assure you." He fought off a shiver and finally realized that the chill he felt was not merely emotional -- the air was very cool here, and a light, frigid breeze wandered the bleak landscape.
"Really."
"Illyana," he began again, wondering at the absurdity of himself -- of all people -- arguing for trust. "If you're worried about whether we should trust you, does that not at the very least mean we can trust your intentions?"
She spoke very softly and very hollowly, with a wry humor as bleak as the horizon. "Surely you know what they say about good intentions."
He glanced around. "Aren't we already there? Perfectly safe, then."
Illyana's mood refused to be lightened. "Unless I leave, right?" She sighed and looked up at him again.
Yesterday, her eyes would in all likelihood have been happy. Laughing. Not haunted. Yesterday she would never have even considered the thought of leaving her home with Piotr and the X-Men, and planning not to return.
Yesterday she would have flopped down beside him with a book, and melted his heart yet again after it started collecting flakes of ice from the uneasiness so few could keep from their gazes as they regarded him.
Yesterday he had thought he was Nathan Christopher Charles Summers, not some clone, and yesterday Illyana had not remembered Limbo.
The silence stretched until Illyana finally shook her head and huffed in exasperation. "That's why, you know. You asked why I shouldn't go home? Because if I do, I put everyone I care about in danger. Because if I do, you'll have a demon sorceress in your midst. Do you know what kind of peril comes from that? It's a taint at the very least."
She took a shuddering breath. "Because if I return, I will want to stay. And the longer I stay, the more I neglect Limbo and the more readily I can lose control of it. Few of the New Mutants did trust me completely, and as it turns out, they were right not to. I prefer Earth and its universe to Limbo, and therefore I have to live here, not where I would like to. I do not want a repeat of what happened when Sym and N'astirh got the chance to conspire against me. Surely you don't either."
Her words and voice remained precise, but a low shudder in the ground betrayed her emotion as the wards spat sparks in a rough circle.
"I knew, you realize," Stryfe said in response to the silent, defiant challenge that followed her words. "I'd watched you for some years well before we ever met in person. I even gave thought to whether as you grew up again you would remain the X-Men's... Siberian Snowflake, or become a sorceress again."
"Then you knew the risks --"
"I've taken worse ones, for less worth."
Illyana tried to ignore the implied compliment and stalked past him to pace the perimeter of the warded area. "If you know, if you saw, that's only more reason to agree I should stay away." She whirled on him. "Why do you want me to go back? After 'what I've done to you.'"
"I've told you, haven't I? It's worth the risks. You are. And -- do you really think I want to go back there alone, when Cable's there and they'll all be making a fuss over him, welcoming him home, and let them all assume I've been deceiving them on purpose the entire time? Hardly any of them trust me anyway, and about as few actually like me. Yes, I know, big surprise." His shoulders slumped. "And now it turns out I'm not even their real son. Just a clone, and a mistake at that. Not real."
"Of course you're real," Illyana said softly, turning to face him again. Worth the risk? Maybe it was, if Stryfe stood in that much need of a friend. "'People are always real. Everyone. Always.'" He raised his eyes to hers, mouth barely open in surprise or question at having his own words of what seemed so long ago repeated to him. She hugged him again, nestling her head against his stomach.
"What makes you think clones are people?" he asked hoarsely, arms still at his sides. "Or even can be 'real.'"
"You are. Madelyne was. That's what. 'Once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always.' And even if you hadn't been to start with, I'd have loved you into it by now." It had been so easy for her to love.
Illyana heard Stryfe's ragged intake of breath. She could feel how rigidly tense he was, and that he was starting to tremble. And a slight... tapping, almost... she let the gleaming mental shields dissolve. "You mean it..." he whispered, and finally put his arms back around her.
She felt something land on her hair and looked up to see that his eyes were tightly closed, that his lower lip was caught firmly between his teeth, and that there was a single following tear crawling down its sparkling path along the side of his nose.
"Of course I mean it." She closed her own eyes.
"You'll come back?"
"...Yes." She would. "I can't promise I won't leave again, but I'll come back. If I can, I'll always come back."
There was a certain relief to saying so, even accompanied by the dread that she'd bound her friends to her own taint. Perhaps, after all, it was better. Her arms tightened unconsciously as she considered how easy it could be to lose herself in Limbo, to the Darkchilde part of herself, if she could never go to her real home. If this were really all she had.
Her throat felt constricted, her eyes hot -- and dry. They burned, even closed.
Illyana wished for tears she could shed.
**********
Nathan looked up from the shimmering white film and loops of wire, his own eyes feeling a little too warm. He suspected he had failed to blink for a while, which didn't make too much sense considering he wasn't certain the images depended on normal vision at all. He found Stryfe sitting up cross-legged and watching him, Illyana's head pillowed on his thigh.
"So," he said in a low, rough voice. "Are you glad you didn't kill her after all?" He watched Stryfe's expression change, grow first -- could that be hurt? -- and then become guarded, with a sort of vindictive satisfaction.
All that, all those visions of Stryfe and Illyana together and so friendly with each other -- he really hadn't thought Stryfe capable of being that sentimental, not that it seemed that normal for the sorceress either, though the child Illyana had been sweet enough the few times he'd visited her -- clashed starkly with the thought of how she'd died in his timeline.
Stryfe straightened slightly, a hand going toward the hair that spilled over Illyana's shoulder in what looked like an abortive soothing gesture. "Yes," he said carefully. That was all.
"I bet. Sweet kid. Does she know how close you came to killing her? Slowly and painfully? Or is that something you haven't told her, maybe haven't told anybody?" He stopped and swallowed, thinking back to the frail, angelic little creature coughing her life out in an instrument-surrounded bed, intensifying his shields to hide the shudder and the guilt he'd felt over not stopping that before it could happen to her.
Then it occurred to him that there was no reason to hide it, not really, and deliberately, without batting an eye, he projected it across to Stryfe.
Image. Feeling. All of it, in brutal honesty.
He felt it sink through shields that were far softer than they should have been, and felt the mental quiver that went along with Stryfe's visible wince. "Stab your eyes, I told you my shields were --" And that, he noted wryly, was before the memory itself registered. When it did, the angry voice broke off on the instant.
"Like what you see?" he asked ironically. "That's what happened in my timeline. That's what you did to her; that's what you did to thousands of the mutates in Genosha before her."
"I didn't." It was almost a whisper. And Bright Lady, he'd seen that look in the mirror a thousand times. It never made him any less relentless with himself either.
"No, you didn't. Not in your timeline. But you planned it, didn't you? I saw the dismantling. You may have changed your mind, but you had planned it. Every. Last. Bit." All the anger from his own timeline, at Stryfe for causing the epidemic and at himself for allowing it, at all the pain he'd seen in its victims, at the anguish in their loved ones, at Moira's and Hank's driven exhaustion, distilled itself into his voice.
Stryfe looked hunted. "I did plan it. I didn't release it! None of that happened in our timeline; you can't blame me for yours!"
"Can't I?" Nathan replied levelly. "Oh, it obviously makes a difference -- to you and everybody else -- that you never did release it. But you did everything else. You meant to cause it." The why of any situation is secondary to the situation itself. What is, is. What he meant to do is secondary to what he did do. IF I QUOTE ANY MORE ASKANI PHILOSOPHY AT MYSELF I WILL SCREAM. I. DON'T. CARE!
"I know. Stab your eyes, do you think I don't? I chose differently from your Stryfe. I didn't kill her -- them. If you saw that much, didn't you see anything to make you realize I -- care about them now? Does it not make any difference to you that I didn't do it?"
"Why should it? It didn't help my version," Nathan pointed out grimly. "But how would you like Illyana to know you came one step from consigning her to waste away like that? Or see how her alternate died?"
Stryfe actually paled, before fighting a visible battle for control of himself -- and control of his shields, the strangely softened golden wall Cable had pierced, so much more easily than he would have expected. He tried to keep a foot in the door, a tendril of thought penetrating Stryfe's mind, but it didn't work. It just barely didn't work.
"I wouldn't," Stryfe managed finally, with a reasonable semblance of calm, "as you well know. And no, before you comment, I don't really expect that to make any difference to you. What might, though, as you're so concerned over her alternate, could be thinking of the effect on her...."
Cable glared at him. Stab his eyes -- he found the right buttons to push too, too easily. "Shameless, aren't you?"
Stryfe smiled thinly. "Under the circumstances... not precisely, but I'm choosing to ignore it."
Illyana chose that moment to stir, and Nathan choked back the bile at realizing he was doing as Stryfe wanted, and didn't tell her. Even knowing all he did about what the man across from him had done, could have done, had almost done, he didn't tell her, because he knew he'd hurt her worse that way than this Stryfe was ever going to do.
Then he slept. He wasn't sure whether he trusted the two... or if it simply didn't matter anymore.
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