Unexpected Companions
by Persephone
Chapter 5/10
In what passed for morning, they moved on. Nathan found himself awakened by Illyana crouching just out of arm's reach and whispering at him -- an odd method, to be sure, but apparently she wasn't certain of his mood or reflexes immediately on awakening. This was, most likely, wise.
He didn't know whether Stryfe had slept or not. The man seemed moody, but not significantly more or less so than the previous day.
A shiftline swept over them, making Nathan shiver despite the oppressive, humid heat on the other side. He raised his head sharply, fighting the sudden weight of air that, despite its comparative clarity, felt far heavier with moisture than the fog they'd just left behind. There were more coming, moving in clusters; all the laws of probability said that with that many together there would be a deadly zone in the mix, and Murphy lent his considerable mass to the equation.
His eyes narrowed and his steps slowed as he concentrated on the approaching shifts. Those approaching, and those --
Forming!
"Stop!" he barked, grabbing at the two just ahead of him and halting Illyana in her tracks -- and jerking Stryfe backwards as a shiftline ripped open where he'd been stepping.
Stryfe stared at him. "I didn't even sense that," he began, eyes a little bit wide. He stopped as Cable shook his head urgently.
"No time to discuss it. There are more coming, as if there weren't enough around already -- it's like a breeding ground; we need to get out --"
They were out. A thin line of silver passed across his vision and drew a completely different universe around him, and he couldn't feel the shifts anymore at all.
"Well, that was disorienting," he muttered. "Limbo?"
"Yes." Illyana was standing poised, as if expecting something to jump at them, but her shields were low and he could sense no real anxiety from her. "If this wasn't what you meant by 'out,' tell me now."
"Not exactly what I had in mind, but it works...."
Stryfe, Nathan became aware, was still staring at him, as if the change of venue hadn't even constituted an interruption. Then again, since they were the same height, maybe it hadn't. "Thank you." Nathan turned around at that and returned the stare for a moment.
Manners, Nathan, Redd's voice said calmly in his head, and he jumped and actually looked around, drawing a rather mystified element into Stryfe's gaze, before mumbling slightly over the words "You're welcome."
Illyana saved them from further awkward conversation by asking for directions to a relatively shift-free area, which proved difficult to locate since they first had to find a way for Nathan to sense the shifts from Limbo. He hid his reluctance to do so -- Limbo wasn't precisely pleasant, but the absence of the grimy transitions was rather a relief.
Silver-white plates finally deposited them in the middle of a vibrant green meadow, with what looked like a fruit tree a convenient few meters away and pink flowers dotting the grass. It looked idyllic.
Nathan was utterly certain it was not.
"Well," Illyana observed, looking around in some surprise, "this seems nicer than I was expecting."
"Seems," Nathan murmured. "Good choice of words." It should be safe enough to walk. He kicked at the grass, which patted his foot a little reproachfully, and went over to the tree, where he stopped and stared up at it.
"Waiting for anything specific?" Stryfe's voice inquired from a few steps back.
"Me? No, just watching the leaves grow," Nathan replied airily, still studying the tree. Stryfe made a slightly impatient noise. Nathan could see why. The fruit looked delicious. Inviting, bright ruby-red, almost like jewels set among the leaves and bowing the slender branches with the weight of their sweet juices. He felt his stomach growl. The tree could almost have been designed to act as a lure.
He shrugged and, still warily, reached up and closed the fingers of his left hand around a fruit.
There was a drawn-out, vicious hiss and he drew back quickly, shielding and dropping the fruit to bounce on the soft grass, as something wriggly shot down the length of his arm to end with a loud clang and a faint snap. He noticed something small and sharp-looking arc away and fall while he snatched the little wriggling creature away from the side of his neck and held it out to look at.
He found himself looking at a devastatingly beautiful little serpent with glittering emerald-green scales, a swollen triangle of a head, and a jaggedly broken ivory fang. That had been too close, too, and he'd been expecting a booby trap. Just not quite such a fast snake.
It hissed again, angrily, and he tightened his grip on the writhings of the rest of its body and removed his thumb from the head. It promptly struck at him again, lightning-fast, and snapped its other fang off short on his metal thumb. Another hiss of pain and it tried a third time, flinging a drop of blood into the air from the tip of the shorter broken tooth.
"Well," he said to it. "Aren't you cute."
Stryfe emitted a rather choked noise from behind him, and then added, in the mildly strangled tones of one who suspects the person to whom he is speaking has abruptly mislaid his wits, "Cute?"
"Well, it is," Nathan replied, fighting a grin without turning around. "Absolutely adorable. Great at ambushes, too, except it missed the lesson about not biting victims with metal skin. Unless you have metal teeth, of course."
"Nathan, it is a venomous snake," Stryfe pointed out, obviously putting some effort into sounding composed instead of irritated.
"Really? I'd never have guessed. What tipped you off, the venom running out of the fangs it snapped off when it tried to bite me?" He'd managed to get his thumb past the thing, and while it tried to gnaw at what should have been the nice soft web at the base, he massaged the venom sacs until they spent themselves. The runnels actually seemed to be starting to corrode his hand by the end, but he wasn't too worried.
"Nathan...." His clone was beginning to sound exasperated.
Cable turned. "Yes? Here, catch." He made as if to toss the snake Stryfe's way and almost laughed aloud at the other man's expression and the quick preparation for a telekinetic block.
"NATHAN!" Illyana snapped at him.
He managed to look a little sheepish even as the grin tugged his mouth wider. "All right, all right. I was just kidding." He looked back at the snake. "I wonder if I should put it back or keep it? Not like it's in much shape for hunting anymore."
Stryfe warily lowered the shield he'd raised and gave Nathan an incredulous look. "What, you're thinking of keeping it as a pet?"
Nathan hadn't really been planning on it, but it was starting to seem like a better idea, at least for teasing purposes. "Why not? It's adorable, and it can't eat much...." He was going to persuade himself in a minute if he didn't watch it. Besides, he had damaged it already. Of course, it had been trying to kill him, but still.
Having run entirely out of venom and mostly out of energy by this point, the snake's frantic assaults on his hand had dwindled to sporadic squirming. Nathan thought the head massage might have had a relaxing effect, too. It was a pretty little thing, and would probably die if he just let it go....
Besides that, judging from the look he was currently getting, keeping it would drive Stryfe crazy. Crazier. Whatever.
"Yes, I think I'll be keeping it." Oh, definitely crazier. He watched Stryfe get control of his features with considerable effort. And grinned.
Illyana looked from one to the other of them and shook her head. "I'd say I was in a way glad we aren't all our right ages, because if we were I'd have probably had to babysit the pair of you, except for one little problem. I didn't get out of it after all!"
"Oh, don't worry about it...." He held up the snake and peered into the lidless eyes for a moment, feeling about telepathically for the tiny mind and lulling it into recognition and calm. Not to mention reinforcing the lately-conditioned impression that biting him would HURT, though he didn't have much faith in the efficacy of the latter part, as it hadn't seemed to have any influence at all so far. "Perfectly safe and docile now."
The serpent hissed a little weakly and thrashed as if to belie his words, but when he dropped it serenely into a pocket it simply slithered down to the bottom and lay there. It did nothing more than wiggle occasionally until he took it out and fed it a small glob of what Illyana claimed was liver jelly when they made camp for the night. The fangs looked as if they were coming loose; he began to wonder if they'd grow back in.
It didn't try to bite him again, and apparently went to sleep while he lost the battle with curiosity and again accepted the scryer he hadn't noticed Illyana take back the previous night.
**********
As neither Stryfe nor Illyana had actually been present (they had, in fact, still been alternately arguing and being mushy in Limbo, which apparently found such proceedings a little unusual), Nathan found it slightly difficult to persuade the scryer to focus on his own alternate's return to the mansion in much detail.
It cooperated eventually, however, and revealed a scene of general pandemonium and welcome, eventually broken into by the arrival of the X-Men in X-Force's vicinity, whereupon confusion dominated, especially once Piotr ascertained that his sister was missing. Concerned, he eventually resorted to taking on his armored form in order to get close enough to Cable to inquire after her without being squashed.
Domino apparently had established some reasonably friendly relationship with Zero, as the two arrived in company. This generated still more confusion, as Stryfe's (or Christopher's) mode of transportation had returned without him. It was a situation somewhat akin to an empty saddle, though as Domino pointed out -- loudly -- there was no reason to assume the teleporter who had yanked Stryfe off to who knew where -- "Limbo," Cable inserted -- couldn't bring him back, too.
Illyana solved that particular problem fairly handily by emerging from a stepping disc, in a well-selected area of bare floor. It was perhaps fortunate that she was still holding the Soulsword and hence armored, though probably if she hadn't been Piotr would have stopped to think and de-armored himself before scooping her up into a hug. As it was, the embrace clanged.
The clamor finally died down long enough to let both Cable and Stryfe answer the numerous inquiries as to where they had been all this time, which was perhaps a more apt question for Cable, as he'd been gone for significantly longer. For the most part, Cable opted to be evasive, but got the distinct impression he was going to have a lot of trouble if he tried to avoid continued contact. He was also, he suspected, going to have a lot more trouble if he attacked Stryfe, as the man had actually offered to leave and been threatened with being sat on if he tried. Not that this would probably be terribly effective, but it was probably a figure of speech anyway.
"All right, if you're Christopher, what are we supposed to call Chris, uh, Stryfe?"
"I'm Na--" Cable began, but was overridden.
"I mean I suppose we could call him Chris, too, but it would get confusing."
"How about Stryfe?" Stryfe suggested, a bit dispiritedly.
"I guess that could work."
The babble continued. Stryfe and Cable spent much of the next few days growling at each other, but refrained from actual assaults as long as someone watched them like a hawk the entire time. Mostly. There was one occasion when Stryfe incautiously, or perhaps maliciously, made reference to the wars of the thirty-eighth century in answer to someone's attempt at making conversation.
Cable tackled him into a large schefflera. "How DARE you, you --" Nobody except Stryfe and possibly a few other telepaths followed the rest of what he said, and they steadfastly refused to translate for anyone else.
"Both of you, cut it out!" Illyana snapped from the nearest doorway. "Do I have to send you both to Limbo again?"
Cable glared at her but didn't try again when Stryfe cautiously removed him to the other side of the room and righted the plant, seething inwardly. "I seem to keep ending up there by your machinations, don't I?" he growled. Illyana went white.
Stryfe turned and took one step forward before Jean stalked in from the hall behind the young sorceress, who moved into the room and towards Stryfe to get out of the way, and possibly to help keep him in line.
"That was uncalled for," Jean said firmly. "I won't argue over the grudges from your... shared history, though I do expect a certain standard of behavior." She ignored the involuntary snorts. "But you have no business talking to Illyana like that: I don't know what impression she gave you of what went on when you were almost sacrificed, but it was hardly all her fault! Some of her... um... servants staged a rebellion and dragged Madelyne into it; Illyana opened a portal, true, but she was tricked too. She had nothing to do with wanting you killed; that was supposed to take control away from her, as far as I could tell."
Illyana made a faint noise, as if to protest some or all of what Jean had said, but didn't get any further. Cable folded his arms and transferred the bulk of his attention from Stryfe to her. "That's very interesting and not very close to what you said." He frowned at the medallion around her neck and jerked his head. "What is that thing?"
Illyana looked down and lifted it cautiously. "This?"
"Yes."
"It's -- a sorcerous tool." She obviously didn't want to be talking about it, and bit her lip before flipping it open and going on. "Each stone is a bloodstone. They stand for evil in me -- not really fractions of my soul, which I thought at one point, but... acts... I've performed, that -- that stained it badly, that were in a certain... category, or level, of evil."
She swallowed. "At least by the definitions in Limbo black magic. Some systems, the rankings vary, but that's the rulebook for here."
"A tool for what?"
Illyana went very white. Stryfe looked daggers at Cable from behind her. "Belasco said filling all the spaces was to make me into a gateway so the Elder Ones, whom he serves, could leave their prison dimension and come through Limbo to Earth," she said wretchedly.
A muscle in Cable's jaw twitched as he stared down at her. "Let me see?" He meant it as a request. It might as well have been a command.
Clearly reluctant, unwilling yet with the air of being unable to refuse, Illyana dragged the chain over her head with motions as ponderous as if it held a millstone instead of a small bejeweled medallion, and dropped the pendant into Cable's large palm.
He frowned, transferring it to his left hand on instinct at the strange, not entirely physical prickling he felt from it.
Cable looked back up from the necklace, chain dangling from his fingers as the pendant nestled in his palm. "I still don't completely understand what went on," he admitted, meeting Jean's eyes and ignoring Stryfe with difficulty, "but stab my eyes if I know why she spilled that nonsense about letting me kill her! What you've said doesn't make it sound one BIT like her version; what did she think she was doing?!"
Stryfe started forward a step. "She is a child and she was hysterical at the time! What did you think YOU were doing?!" he demanded.
Cable turned to glare at him, a bit defensively, wondering in some layer of his mind when Stryfe had developed this bizarre protective streak. "Minding my own BUSINESS until she showed up!" Almost absent-mindedly, he fingered the pendant, turning it in his hand and thumbing irritably at the bloodstones in turn with his metallic nail.
And the bloodstones crumbled and fell away in sticky russet crumbs like picked scabs.
He looked down at his hand in surprise as Illyana gave a low, choked cry. A little puzzled, he rubbed out the remaining residue from the sockets, turned his hand over and let the crumbs fall, and then held the pendant somewhat uncertainly toward the girl.
Illyana stared up at him, sea-blue eyes wide in shock, then snatched at the medallion with trembling hands and sank to the ground weeping, and laughing through her tears. "You did that," she choked out between sobs, "cleansed -- you said you wouldn't absolve me, but you did, you did."
Watching through the peculiar scrying device, Nathan Summers shook his head. His alternate obviously had NO real idea what he'd just done or how, despite Magik's admittedly bewildering explanation. Not that he himself was completely sure what the "Dark Ones" were, but then, he didn't know of anyone besides, perhaps, Illyana or Belasco or Dr. Strange who did know.
In the image, Cable frowned uneasily at the child at his feet as she continued. "You don't know, do you? You just wiped out... all the progress of that spell. All of it. And put me that much farther from being lost for all, and the world from the Elder Ones' return." She looked up, eyes bright and wet, and leaned back against Stryfe's shins as he approached, looking... about as confused as Cable, actually.
Attention drawn back to Stryfe, Cable felt hate surge again, but knew better than to start.
**********
The task of separating the two fell to Illyana less often than might have been supposed, as she was occupied being exclaimed over by her friends from when she was a New Mutant and being quizzed on whether she really remembered everything until she wanted to cry, no matter how kind the intentions.
They weren't always precisely kind. She made them nervous, now, as she had as Magik before, and since Stryfe had never fully stopped making people nervous, there was a good deal of low-level anxiety all around.
Magneto's next move was unfortunate, to say the least. Nathan compared the scenes in the scryer to his own timelines and didn't recognize the beginning at all, but when word came from Israel that David Haller had vanished and from Shi'ar space that chronospatial disaster was looming, he realized it didn't necessarily take either a space station or a mindwipe to send the boy over the edge.
Old grudges were put on hold -- even to the extent of persuading Magneto to join them in Israel for the repair effort, and even to the extent of Cable and Stryfe very grudgingly agreeing to work together.
"The fate of the world -- the entire timeline -- is at stake, and you two are fighting each other again?"
"Yes!"
"Well, DESIST!" Thunder cracked overhead as Ororo began to lose her patience with the two. "You are brothers. You might consider acting the part."
"We are," Cable protested quickly. "Cain and Abel."
The ambient temperature dropped several degrees. "That is hardly acceptable."
They looked at each other and each thought about the world at large and the family they'd both come to love, and came to a tacit agreement to cooperate. For now. If they had to. Which they did.
Curiously, as failure seemed imminent and -- true to form -- various pairs who either were couples or wished to be met what they believed was the end of their existence with a kiss to be caught in crystal, Stryfe looked around at the scattered embraces and swept Storm into one of his own.
A scene flickered at the side, whether the true incident or only something Stryfe had remembering at the time, where he watched from the ground -- no, only a tiny rock jutting from the sea somewhere -- while Ororo rode the fury of a hurricane and for once abandoned herself to it, laughing. He barely shielded from the lash of wind and water, and startled her badly when he finally rose into the air himself, drenched and windblown. She hadn't known anyone was there; she hadn't meant -- but he met her apologies with a grin and congratulations on her mastery of chaos.
She didn't fight the kiss.
**********
Nathan looked up from the scryer briefly. "You kissed Storm?"
Stryfe stared back for a moment. "What is that thing showing you anyway?" He was interrupted by a muffled giggle from Illyana. "Yes, I did. Why not?"
Nathan hesitated and then shook his head. "It just seems... odd." He didn't want to go into why it seemed so odd; the attraction they'd held for a while in his own timeline only made it stranger. "... Were the two of you together when --?"
Stryfe shook his head. "We dated for a while, but not. She and Mikhail eyed one another for a time as well." He sighed and looked away. "Perhaps it could have been more. Then again... just as well, most likely."
The words reminded Nathan of what had probably happened to that Storm, to all Storms, the burden, the nightmares, the guilt... the horrible deaths he'd seen give release to some. He shuddered and didn't answer, letting his mind be caught by shimmers into another past.
**********
The temporary end of the world managed to reconcile Cable and Stryfe, however uneasily, to the idea of not killing each other on sight. It did little, however, to alleviate the strain of daily conversation between the two.
"Good morning, Na-- I mean Chri--" Stryfe broke off in exasperation and glared at Cable as they tried without success to pass one another civilly in the hall. "Forget it! I am not calling you Christopher. Get over it."
Cable gaped at him for a moment before his response emerged in a muted roar. "GOOD! I've been trying to get everyone here to STOP calling me Christopher. My name is NATHAN. I have been called Nathan all my life and the next person who calls me Christopher is going through the WALL." He paused and glowered. "And if it had been YOU, it would have been SEVERAL walls. And a lawnmower."
Stryfe, who had naturally enough been being called Christopher right up until Illyana's passing revelation, not to mention having called Cable Nathan for several decades, and who was for these and other reasons having a very hard time adjusting to the new arrangement, tried to process this.
"You don't want to be called Christopher?" he managed, a bit faintly.
"NO. I do NOT. And the worst part is apparently YOU are the only one in the entire HOUSE who is cooperating!"
"I assure you I'm not doing it on purpose," Stryfe muttered, and they finally succeeded in departing the hall.
After that morning's outburst of corridor-bellowing, the occupants of Xavier's mansion began reverting to the more customary appellations, identifying Cable as Nathan and Stryfe as Christopher. They all felt kind of weird about it, but it did cut down a lot on the stammering whenever someone tried to address one of the two. It also cut down on the amount of unexplained glaring Cable did, which was a relief.
**********
Nathan looked up from the scrying film and directed a moody gaze at the flickering campfire before transferring it to Stryfe. "So should I be calling you Christopher?"
Stryfe, or possibly Christopher, looked nonplussed. As well he might, Cable realized with some chagrin, given that the question had been based on a conversation that had occurred some time ago. "Ah... it doesn't particularly matter; I answer to either one."
"Illyana called you Stryfe."
"Sometimes she does."
"Usually when he's in trouble," Illyana inserted, grinning.
"It's still my codename, actually...."
None of them noticed the approaching, nigh-silent footsteps until the looming shadow parted from the fog to rumble, "Greetings, fellow wanderers. May I share your fire?"
The words and tone were civil enough, but that voice! It haunted the second-worst parts of his nightmares, the ones that came a close second to the parts where Apocalypse spoke through Scott's mouth.
Cable snatched at his psimitar and stared up in horror at the towering figure of Apocalypse before launching himself forward, crying out incoherently in Askani and sweeping the psimitar blade around to attack. Out of the corner of his eye he glimpsed Stryfe lunging forward as well.
A streak of mist wrapped into his eyes, and Apocalypse dodged. Somehow. He simply wasn't there anymore to be hit by the attack, he was... over to the right. Cable pivoted, blood roaring in his ears and almost drowning out Illyana's furious shriek. "Sit DOWN! If he were hostile my wards would have alerted us; will you two show some sense -- augh! You IDIOTS!"
In his peripheral vision, he saw her as she yanked at the air with one hand, then cast a small dark ball sharply groundwards.
Cable had poised for just an instant, mind flying through calculations for his next move, one that should cut off Apocalypse's escape route. He sprang forward... and the next thing he knew, something seemed to explode softly yet concussively inside his skull, and he found himself flat on his face, half stunned, with his ears ringing and vision refusing to focus.
He tried to push himself up off the ground, but couldn't. As his hearing cleared, he heard a low grunt off to his side somewhere. Stryfe down as well? Fear shot through him. What had Apocalypse done, and where was Illyana?
Her voice floated to his ears, cool and formal but rather exasperated. "Sorry about that. They both have, well, issues with a number of other yous. I had wards set to warn of a hostile approach, and do not have the personal reasons that seem to keep them from hearing courtesy when it is in your voice."
"Quite all right." Apocalypse's booming voice was punctuated here by a heavy sigh. "Lately I seem to be running into a remarkable number of otherwise respectable individuals who want to tear me to shreds."
Cable heard a rude noise from Stryfe, and agreed fervently as he continued to imitate a landed fish.
"It's really quite distressing."
Illyana gave a rueful laugh and agreed, a bit faintly. "I would imagine. They do have reason to expect you to be an enemy, I admit -- not just these two, probably quite a lot of other people. To be honest, I'm a little surprised to find you so agreeable."
"I could be disagreeable if you prefer," Apocalypse rumbled blandly.
"No, please don't," she replied hastily. "That tends to cause problems."
Cable wondered whether to award the sorceress a trophy for Understatement of the Cross-Time Sludge or just for Stating the Blindingly Obvious. Or maybe he should just hit her over the head with both of them. Only he still hadn't managed to organize his limbs into anything resembling a cooperative effort, and his head still felt as if it had a small pillow stuffed into it, which was both what he was upset about in the first place and the obstacle to doing anything about it.
"Very well," Apocalypse replied amiably. Cable couldn't help feeling that there was something seriously wrong with that adverb, but the External really did sound... amiable. It was disturbing.
Illyana gave a rueful laugh and continued the conversation, beginning to attempt an explanation and send out feelers regarding why this Apocalypse wasn't attacking -- which he still wasn't. Cable quit listening. He still couldn't believe the foolish girl had felled him and Stryfe both -- they were supposed to be her allies, weren't they? Her friends? At least, she claimed Stryfe as a friend and Cable as someone she "owed" -- and she had attacked both of them in the midst of a battle with their worst enemy!
Frustrated, and with his initial suspicions of the sorceress companion to Stryfe reawakened, he charged at her when he struggled to his feet, instead of at Apocalypse.
Illyana looked towards him, eyes going wide, but did not draw the Soulsword; he would be able to --
And Stryfe lunged to his own feet and tackled Cable out of nowhere. Nathan found himself grappling with his clone, who projected fury and snarled into his face. "How dare you -- won't let you hurt her --"
"She attacked both of US on Apocalypse's behalf --!"
#I didn't like it either, but --# "She must have had a reason!"
Cable suspected Stryfe had not intended to project that first part. And then that voice rumbled in his ears again. "Would you care for me to separate them?"
"If you would."
As the import of those words registered, and before he had time to counter it, Nathan found himself and Stryfe grasped firmly and dragged apart by the back of the neck and shoulder by two huge hands, as if they were no more than squabbling puppies.
"Do you two mind?" Illyana asked, voice dripping irritation.
Cable glared at her, any hope of being reasonable lost in frustrated adrenaline and humiliation. "Yes, I do mind. I mind very much having HIM welcomed the way you did. I thought you considered me and Stryfe allies of one sort or another, and yet you attack us to protect Apocalypse?"
"Did it not occur to you, when he asked politely to be our guest, that it might be possible for some alternate version, even of En Sabah Nur, to be other than an enemy?"
"No!"
"Well, let it occur to you now," she snapped sullenly. Nathan folded his arms and was aware that he probably looked equally sullen. Stryfe looked from Illyana, to Nathan, to the impassive Nur, and Cable astonished himself by feeling a glimmer of sympathy for his clone, caught between a friend who'd just attacked him and two men who ought to be enemies but were not currently acting hostile.
"Perhaps," Apocalypse intervened, "I would do better to pass onward, rather than remaining as a source of discord." Illyana and Stryfe protested, Stryfe half-heartedly, while Cable grumbled that it was too late for that. Nur insisted.
Hence they learned little of each other's timelines at this juncture, though Illyana thought it behooved her to give some explanation of what pursuits Apocalypse was known for in the preponderance of timelines with which she or Nathan or Stryfe had familiarity, and of his role in the collapse. This Nur looked grave, and expressed regrets and a desire to help which Cable didn't believe at all, as well as registering an objection to being called "Apocalypse," and then departed through the translucent curtain of a shift that led to blazing sun over something that glittered white like snow but was coarse like sand, and blue cacti.
The three remaining watched the zone suspiciously until it drifted off away from them. This kept them from looking suspiciously at one another; Stryfe didn't seem to want to take Illyana to task for the assault with Cable present, but had been as humiliated as Cable -- and had considerably more reason to feel betrayed. Nathan was mildly disgusted with him for accepting Illyana's silent almost-apology before what passed for morning, and his own resentment -- and Illyana's, as she still appeared to consider herself in the right -- kept a chill over the party that couldn't be accounted for by the clamminess of the mists.
Still, though, they had to rest, and hardly breaking the discontented silence Cable stood -- or rather sat -- guard, and afterwards slept until the nightmares woke him. He froze instead of rising, mind racing to sort out what ought to be reality from the dream, and hence heard soft voices.
"You need more sleep. I'll keep watch now. It's not necessary; my wards should warn me early of anything they can't stop, but --"
"And if they don't?" Stryfe asked, his whisper much harsher.
"Then," she admitted, "we'd be in trouble. We could well get into trouble waking, too, though." A short silence, and then, "I told you I'd stay awake. You have to sleep sometime."
"I did."
"Not long."
"That's hard to tell here."
"It was very hard to wake you. That means it wasn't long enough."
It could have been something in the atmosphere, actually, Cable noted. She was leaving out that possibility for the sake of the argument. He didn't really think that was the case, though; Stryfe hadn't been all that extravagantly difficult to awaken.
On the other hand, when being completely honest with himself, Nathan had to admit that he was personally accustomed to sleep deprivation, which probably affected his perceptions of how long it was normal to take when waking up.
"I wasn't that slow to awaken, was I?" Stryfe returned, sounding somewhere between defensive and concerned.
"It depends on what you compare it to. It didn't take as long as usual, but it also took Nathan leaning over you."
Threat perception? An adrenaline rush could tend to speed things up too. He hadn't really thought of that, for some reason. It would probably have been more fun if he had.
"That didn't have anything to do with it."
"Oh? In that case I should probably be even more worried about you. Reflexes going, or something."
"Stop that."
"What? I'm not doing anything."
"Worrying about me."
"Somebody has to."
"No they don't."
"Do too. Go to sleep."
"No they don't. Not unless you mean as an opponent. Illyana --"
"Chris, please just go to sleep before the conversation degenerates to the 'Do not/Do too' level."
There was a faint noise Nathan suspected of indicating Stryfe had given in, at least to the point of lying down, and a smile in the next whisper. "You started it."
"Go to sleep!"
Nathan lay quietly in the ensuing silence until he judged sufficient time had passed to prevent suspicions that he'd been eavesdropping, and then sat up and reached for the scryer. Illyana frowned at him.
"You go back to sleep too," she said softly.
"Too?" he asked, feigning innocence. Actually, he feigned confusion, which was much easier, especially since he was still drowsy enough he would have liked to go back to sleep if it weren't for the dreams.
Illyana gestured towards Stryfe, who hadn't stirred. "You should both be asleep."
"I woke up, can't get back to sleep now."
"Did you try?"
"Not really."
"That might explain it," she pointed out dryly. She shifted a bit, armor making a faint musical sound against itself. Nathan caught himself thinking she'd make an excellent cricket. Either he was really sleep deprived, or he was losing it.
"I don't want to go back to sleep," he admitted. "The dreams...."
Illyana looked at him for a long moment. "Is it better or worse when you're too tired to wake up and get away from them?" Then she turned her head again and stared into the distance. She didn't seem to expect an answer.
"I'm curious." Nathan picked up the scryer and sank into it, wondering briefly whether his fascination was really curiosity, or escapism, or a bizarre form of self-flagellation, watching a timeline he'd ruined.
**********