Unexpected Companions
by Persephone
Chapter 7/10

The next shift landed them all in the hospital.

That would have been funnier if it had only been by injuring them. In the case of serious injury, finding a hospital that could treat them would have been nigh-unbelievable good fortune. Granted, Nathan was perfectly competent in first aid and assumed Stryfe was, and something Stryfe had mentioned hinted that Illyana had some interesting talents in that area, especially in Limbo. Illyana had made deprecating noises and, when she decided Nathan wasn't taking her seriously enough, had stopped dead in front of him and explained very, very intensely that while she'd always do her best, her medical abilities with magic were nothing to count on too heavily. Still, injury would almost have been preferable to what struck them instead, especially if it came with help.

This was not a hospital for injuries. It was a hospital for sickness, and the stench of it struck Cable's nose and mind at the same time. Hygiene was the best, presumably, that could be managed; there was a sharpness in the air that spoke of antiseptics and everything in sight was sparkling clean where it could be. Still, the smell wasn't pleasant. He could identify too many components of it.

The despair was worse. Everyone here expected not only death but imminent disaster on a larger scale than the individual, and those who still scurried back and forth with purpose knew they were fighting a losing battle, and did it anyway. Cable took a bleak moment to wonder how this was different from any other time or place in the shifts, perhaps even from most of the course of history.

He shook it off. Their purpose was to ease suffering, and they counted it worthwhile. But it was still a dreary place, and he knew the reason; he'd caught the name of the disease they fought.

This place was devoted to Legacy. Perhaps it hadn't always been, but at some point, presumably in its original universe, it had opened itself to such victims -- and who could blame more for flocking there, or other patients for fleeing (or, in the more sedate and official form of fleeing, having themselves transferred) to some other location that wasn't developing a high concentration of mutants who -- contagious or not -- were expecting to lose control of their powers?

Logically enough, that was soon its entire purpose. It was just as logical, if a little strange, that all the doctors, nurses, and other staff were not mutants.

Humbling. Very much humbling, Nathan thought, for anyone who had ever listened to all the cries of rage and fear and resentment and propaganda long enough and hard enough to start thinking perhaps it was true that all non-mutant humans hated all mutants and the sides must align against each other. He knew better -- but even he had wondered sometimes. It was very easy to.

It was also very unhealthy to start believing that everyone automatically "feared and hated" you. At least in combination. Believing any given person or group might be out to kill you was prudence, of course, if you put yourself in the kind of situations Nathan did, but it wasn't quite the same.

His mind was yanked abruptly off this philosophical train of thought as someone came into the narrow stretch of empty hallway in which they had materialized -- he hastily grabbed hold of the shift and shoved -- and was pleasantly surprised when it disappeared and left the building's structure essentially intact.

"Y-y-y-you?!" He didn't recognize the woman, but it appeared that in her own timeline she'd had enough contact with Xavier's lot to recognize Illyana -- and Stryfe. Enough to distinguish him from Stryfe, and focus on the latter, her mind mingling dawning terror with wild thoughts of hopeless vengeance.

This didn't surprise Nathan. It caught Stryfe off guard and bewildered, which puzzled Nathan until he remembered that this Stryfe, or Christopher, hadn't released the virus, and in any event lacked Cable's own peculiar and frequently disturbing awareness of every given shift he wandered into. Then, too, if he wasn't actively scanning... well, it wasn't as if they'd seen any of the patients yet. This wasn't one of the halls they'd had to put beds in. Too narrow.

The woman's eyes fixed on Illyana with still more alarm than Stryfe had been incurring. "You have to get out.... If you aren't sick yet, you have to go."

Cable assumed Stryfe was scanning by this point, but flicked a telepathic summary at him anyway. #Legacy. Your 'pox' -- this place is dedicated to its victims. Every last patient.# He found someone's eyes to look through and projected an image of someone in the last stages -- emaciation, purple blisters and boils, rattling breath, and all. No visible effect on the powers, probably not an active one.

It was at this point that he realized Stryfe had gone pale.

"Illyana," his clone said in a strained voice, "she's right. Get out."

"What?!"

"Illyana, now. Teleport. Please. I'll -- I'll explain later."

A stepping disc -- no, two discs -- appeared, one under Illyana and Stryfe and another under Nathan's own feet, a little ways off.

Stryfe shook his head, stepping back. "I have to stay."

Cable blinked at him. That was a surprise; what was he doing?

The pools of light winked out and Illyana folded her arms. "Then explain first."

In apparent desperation, Stryfe grabbed her arm and thrust her towards Cable. "Ask him. He can explain."

"You explain!"

"In my timeline and a lot of others," Cable interjected, deciding this had gone on long enough and that he didn't really need to see Stryfe and Illyana start fighting in a narrow corridor -- even if he wasn't sure what Stryfe was up to, other than getting Illyana away from potential contagion, which he couldn't exactly object to, "Stryfe not only didn't go back from the moon with the X-Men, he released a disease targeting mutants. Very nasty -- like a horrible version of influenza, only with purple lesions and a lot of DNA damage -- loss of control of powers and general disintegration of most systems by the end. Your alternates tend to die in the early stages. I'd suggest you go straight to Limbo and if you have any kind of spells that could work against non-magical diseases, do them."

Illyana looked up at Nathan very hard for a few excessively long seconds, then looked once at Stryfe, nodded to herself, and disappeared into a disc. Good. He looked up again as Stryfe turned towards the now very bewildered doctor, took a deep breath, and began, "I can help. At least I can try -- do you have any sort of laboratory here?"

She nodded, obviously trying not to shrink away from him, and her gaze shot past Stryfe to Cable, who hesitated, then shrugged and nodded as well. It made no sense, but he didn't think this one was likely to cause anything worse. #Stryfe, what are you doing?#

#What does it look like I'm doing?# Stryfe snapped back.

#Going to brew up some more mischief?# Unkind, given the anguish that hinted at lying just beneath Stryfe's words. #Or did you design a cure along with the virus?#

#I didn't design the virus. I modified it. I did design the counteragent. If I can find the supplies....#

Nathan hesitated. He didn't know exactly what supplies would be needed, but he'd be willing to wager a lot that the hospital, clinging to a fragile cohesion with its resources most likely stretched to the utmost and probably a little beyond, did not have them. On the other hand... they probably still existed someplace. #Can you communicate with Illyana if she's in Limbo? And can she scry for specific things? Or I might be able to look.#

Stryfe didn't stop walking, but did turn and stare at Cable over his shoulder for a moment before turning a corner. #That... would help, thank you. Yes, I can get in touch with her from here.#

Cable spent the next few hours being occasionally teleported back and forth for consultations. Apparently the scrying pool required very specific instructions on occasion, and Stryfe was too preoccupied to evaluate every item it presented for consideration by looking through Illyana's eyes. Cable was somewhat curious about the rate at which the work seemed to be progressing -- he was almost certain some of the procedures should have had to sit for significantly longer.

It turned out that Stryfe was rushing them along telekinetically wherever he could. Of course. No wonder the man was distracted.

Once everything seemed to be assembled, Nathan was essentially turned loose in the hospital to do whatever he could find to do -- as long as he didn't interfere with the doctors or nurses, or upset the patients, naturally.

He settled down in a quiet corner of the floor, displacing a large aloe plant slightly, and speculated on whether aloe would do anything for the purple boils while with another part of his mind he debated the wisdom of trying to sleep in this place. Probably not a good idea. Well, maybe if he reinforced his shields enough first.

Come to think of it, he hadn't used Illyana's portable timeline-scrying contraption for a while. He suggested something regarding Limbo, and the obliging milky swirls picked up his senses and spun into the middle of....

**********

A battle. This was not how any of them would have wished their next meeting with Tolliver -- Tyler -- to go, and Stryfe knew it even with Cable and Domino both deliberately not speaking to him.

Actually, if Tolliver had been merely who they all had thought him for so long, none of them would have particularly cared -- well, Stryfe wouldn't; he got the impression that Cable and Domino would both have wanted his head on a plate, and other body parts on separate dishes. Or perhaps disintegrated, as an acceptable alternative.

The revelation that he had been Tyler was what made it difficult. For Stryfe this new information largely made it embarrassing -- he hadn't realized in all those years of dealing with him as Tolliver? For Nathan it was far more emotional. A bit surprising in its intensity, given he'd brought himself to shoot the boy before. Stryfe told himself he did not feel guilty about what he'd done to Tyler -- it had been a war, after all -- but he hadn't been comfortable with his efforts at revenge on Nathan for some time, particularly ever since he'd learned of his template's role in saving him from Apocalypse in at least that one way.

Most likely, however, they could all agree that it would have been preferable had Tyler not somehow leagued himself with a denizen of Limbo -- Illyana suspected Belasco, but whoever it was, he or she had the sense to stay out of the direct action, either that or the inability to get into it -- with plans to reenact and this time complete the sacrifice atop the Empire State Building.

With Stryfe as a secondary victim and the undermining of Illyana's authority a minor side effect, of course.

Yes, this was definitely off the list of ideal or even semi-satisfactory meetings.

On what could, with an effort of the imagination, be called the bright side, he and Nathan were both dodging around on the roof, powers sapped by some mechanism he'd been completely unable to identify, instead of helpless in the grip of rebel demons, which was where Tyler thought they were supposed to be. Nathan was frantically pleading with his son to stop this and think, and at the very least to watch out for his supposed allies, since they were notoriously unreliable....

They had fought their way to something like even terms and then stalled, perhaps due to determination on the part of Tyler and the demons, perhaps due to fatigue on their own, and then almost surely out of weariness were losing again when Illyana arrived and the world suddenly went silver-sharp and then dank. No one slowed an iota, but Tyler's allies began to be systematically dispatched and carried off by Illyana's servants, and before long there were only the four humans still present, with Illyana nearest Tyler.

Stryfe watched Illyana's expression as she stared into Tyler's wild eyes, saw her heft the Soulsword in her hand as if thinking -- and knew what she planned half an instant before she drew her lips thin and swung the blade.

Cable lunged forward with the movement, and that slight expectation was the only thing that gave Stryfe enough of an edge to tackle him. Cable twisted underneath him, trying to get free, and arched his back to look despairingly up as the Soulsword swept in a wide slash through Tyler's chest and the boy went down, Illyana following him with an armored knee on his unmarked sternum and altering her grip on the hilt in preparation to stab.

"How dare you -- unh! Get off me, Stryfe, that's -- she's --" Cable lurched sideways and almost got free. Stryfe felt his powers starting to return and used what small amount he had available to shove his "brother" back to the ground, or what was currently passing for ground.

"If I have to sit on you until she's finished," Stryfe growled, "I will."

"She's killing him! Let. Me. UP!!!!"

Stryfe managed in the course of the writhings to plant a knee firmly in Nathan's back, buying himself a few seconds to look up to where Illyana, with an expression of great concentration, held the Soulsword's blade stirring slightly within Tyler's brow. "You'll -- ugh -- thank me for this in a few minutes. I think." Cable spat curses at him and kicked upwards as best he could. "Of course you won't," Stryfe muttered. "What was I thinking? This is you."

He started when a hand touched his shoulder, and again when he realized it belonged to an extremely chastened looking Tyler. Illyana, sword and armor gone and with an expression of deep exhaustion on her face, peered at him from a little farther off than Tyler and nodded, and Stryfe carefully eased himself off Cable and went over to the young sorceress while Tyler knelt by Nathan.

"Father, I --" Never say you're sorry, right? "I understand now. I'm -- I mean --"

"I know. Oh, Bright Lady, it's you again, now --"

**********

Nathan dragged his mind out of the other timeline as a telltale stinging in his eyes threatened to draw him into his alternate's tears. So that timeline had healed Tyler, as well....

Exhausted himself by the vicarious struggle, he slipped without really noticing into a deep sleep there in the corner. When he woke several hours later and started trying to alleviate sundry cramps and aches from the odd position, he knew he had had some very weird dreams, but couldn't remember them at all.

A soft, nervous laugh from a few feet away brought him fully to his feet, surreptitiously still working his right shoulder. A rather exhausted-looking boy -- fourteen, maybe, but the blue patch stuck to his shoulder marked him, according to the identification system resorted to here, as a nurse responsible for one of the halls -- looked slightly embarrassed to have made the sound. "Sorry, sir. It just looked like an odd place to fall asleep."

Cable looked the boy over critically. Thin, wiry, physique... very sharp nose, rather the dominant feature of his face... dark circles under the eyes... and a general air of bemusement. "Don't apologize. Ah... is there anything I can do to help?" he asked gruffly. He'd just been lying around all this time -- granted, he'd sort of been shuffled aside several hours ago, but surely he could have found something more useful to do than --

"Staying out of the way for the past few hours was probably the best thing, to be honest," the boy told him with another slight laugh and a reassuring tone. "It's been a little hectic; we put most of the newest staff off duty until most of the initial running around was done."

"Hectic. Not the shifts, I hope --?" He hoped it was the Legacy cure working, actually, but it was probably a little too soon for that, wasn't it? Scanning for any hint of the disturbance, however, Nathan realized that while it was too soon for it to have completed its work, the start of it was indeed the reason for things being "hectic." There had been no available preservation facilities for the finished product, so they had effected a massive reorganization in order to speed up delivery.

The boy was saying as much. "The treatment has to be either used or chilled pretty much immediately, so while Stryfe was putting it together -- now that sounds strange -- we rearranged everyone and got ready to distribute it as quick as we could." He shook his head. "Really never occurred to us any version of him might help."

"I know the feeling."

"You would, wouldn't you? Oh -- my name's Will, by the way; we gave up on name tags a while back. Should I call you Cable?"

"That or Nathan."

Will nodded. "Nathan then."

Cable looked at him keenly. "You masterminded that 'rearrangement,' didn't you?"

The boy shrugged. "I wouldn't call it masterminding." He wouldn't, but the memories Cable was seeing all said that was essentially the case. "It was the logical way to do things; I did guide the process a little." The kid's "guiding" skills were enviable, then. The normal result of trying to reorganize that many people and routines in the course of three hours, even if you didn't have to figure out the target system on the fly, was probably total chaos.

"Stry -- er -- Christopher, I should say, is still making the rounds of some of the last few patients to be treated. I understand you're immune -- if you still want to do something, you could visit with some of them if you like. There's this one kid who'll talk your ear off about snakes if you'll listen --"

Cable finally found it in himself to crack a smile as he reached metal fingers into the pouch where his small pet nestled. "Think she'd like to meet one?"

"When she first woke up here, she cried for hours because the guy who found her hadn't brought the nest of pit vipers she'd holed up with. She'll be thrilled."

**********

Nathan was kneeling beside the girl's bed and half leaning on it, the little serpent tangled in his fingers and the child's much smaller ones (It was purring. Strange snake.), when a shadow fell over him and he looked up to see Stryfe coming through the door of what was currently one of very few private rooms in the hospital and had, in the original floorplan, been some sort of closet.

"You," he observed to his clone, "look horrible." He did, too. Walking across the tiny expanse of floor to the bed looked to be taking an enormous amount of concentration, and Cable had experienced the sensation of relying almost purely on determination to prevent all his muscles from quietly allowing him to fold into a collapsed mess on the floor a few too many times to fail to recognize it from the outside. Granted, it was an unexpected enough phenomenon in Stryfe to give him a little trouble, but then, Stryfe tried to hide most of the same signs Nathan himself did, and he wasn't that good an actor.

"Thank you." Cable assumed that had been intended as sarcasm, though the voice didn't carry enough energy to be anything but flat. Stryfe blinked at him and appeared to make a deliberate effort to focus. "Should you be letting that snake close to her?" He stumbled a bit in the course of lowering himself to kneel on the opposite side of the bed from Cable, and hit the floor a little harder than he'd probably intended.

The girl looked at him indignantly and chirped weakly, "That's my power. I'm a snake-charmer."

"She is, too," Cable corroborated with a half-smirk. "You may be glad to know I think I'm going to leave it with her."

"And maybe when I get better I can go find the tree you got it from!" Enormous brown eyes turned on Cable and sparkled at him.

"I don't know if that would be such a good idea...." Then again, she'd be lost in the shifts eventually; at least she'd have something to look for. Who knew, maybe her power could help her find snakes. At least she would have something to look for.

"As long as we're on the subject...." Stryfe interjected, lifting one hand to let it fall carefully on the girl's forehead and bringing the other to her throat, wincing slightly as one finger touched the purplish sore streaking her neck. "You'd best be asleep for this, I think."

As the child's eyes drooped shut and Stryfe's half-closed as well, Cable frowned across the bed. "Now what are you doing? I thought you mixed up something to cure them; shouldn't you be giving her something?"

"There was only so much I could make at one time, given what was available here," Stryfe sounded abstracted, or maybe half asleep, and wore an expression of deep concentration. "Not enough, by several patients. It will take longer to make the second, and for the first several days they will be vulnerable to reinfection. The rest --" He broke off, sweat beginning to be visible on his face. "I can't talk right now. Look if you must."

"If you let your --" Cable stopped as well, the request for Stryfe to let his shields down dying on his tongue as he realized Stryfe wasn't shielding. At all. The mental noise had to be deafening, but he seemed to be ignoring it... or else his perception was dulled as well.

A little investigation yielded the information that there had, in fact, been a shortfall by twenty-six patients, and when the antivirus had run out, Stryfe had begun stripping the virus out of the rest by molecular-level telekinesis. Well, if Nate Grey had been able to do transmutation, this wasn't really that astonishing.

Cable estimated that even armed with the knowledge of exactly how to go about it, he'd personally have been dead within the first few patients if he had tried this stunt. About the time he started pulling energy away from the techno-organic virus, or even just ignoring it.

He never would have expected Stryfe, even with his greater available power, to go this far. He wasn't shielding because, quite simply, he didn't have the energy to spare. Nathan thought being able to hear everyone in the entire hospital would outweigh whatever psi-energy or advantage of concentration was gained by not shielding, but this was not the time to start an argument.

So. Stryfe was almost completely drained, and spending the last of his energy -- possibly enough to burn him out or kill him, though with his skill level that was unlikely given the controlled rate of expenditure and the lack of any unnatural amplification -- to clear the last remnants of a virus his own alternate had unleashed out of a little girl's body.

Maybe I really SHOULD start calling him Christopher instead. He uncomfortably extended a bubble from his own shields around Stryfe's mind. He didn't like the contact, but this one was obviously rather preferable to the one from his own timeline, and he'd survived having that one stuck in his brain.

Unwilling to risk intruding himself on the delicate process enough to help, for fear of disturbing it, Nathan only watched until a thin trickle of blood started from Stryfe's nose. Other than biting briefly at his upper lip, he didn't seem to notice. Cable caught it before it could drip on the bed, then carefully found the abused capillaries with his own telekinesis and sealed them off. Definitely a symptom of overexertion.

He didn't think he'd ever seen Stryfe overexert his powers before. He'd wondered if he could. It puzzled some people how power that could (supposedly) crush a star could be taxed by something so simple as a virus -- but those people didn't know or didn't consider either the amount of energy tied up in atoms and chemical bonds, or the strain and energy-drain of locating and manipulating on such a small scale and with so mind-bogglingly many targets, without doing more damage than you repaired. It added up.

Stryfe finally halted -- Cable assumed he was through, and was at any rate fairly certain there was no way for him to get started again, so he'd better be -- and slumped exhaustedly over the cot. After a few seconds he shifted enough weight to one elbow that he could remove his hand from the girl's throat and push against the mattress, struggling back upright. Actually standing seemed a little beyond him for the moment, though.

"That --" a very slightly shaky finger indicated the purple blister "will have to heal on its own; I can't do any more. But it... will, now."

"Right." Nathan watched as Stryfe climbed wearily to his feet and started an exaggeratedly steady progress back towards the door. "Was she the last?" She had better have been the last. Unless he could learn how to do that himself....

"Yes."

Carefully leaving the now-friendly serpent curled into the hollow of the girl's collarbone, he started out of the room and caught up just in time for Stryfe to sway slightly and then crumple against his shoulder.

His first impulse was actually to dodge, but by the time it got through the roadblock of disbelief he was already being leaned on. Stryfe, he discovered, was still conscious and trying valiantly to push away and stand on his own. Nathan thought this was a good idea.

He wasn't sure it was a feasible one, however, and in order to end the whole leaning situation -- which neither one of them was particularly thrilled with -- as expediently as possible without actually dropping Stryfe, Nathan managed to push him around and prop him against the wall.

Much better, even if he kept a hand warily hovering near Stryfe's shoulder to make sure he didn't slide down the wall to the floor. Nathan studied the exhausted psi for a long moment before saying slowly, "You really are different, aren't you."

Stryfe lifted his gaze as if it had weights attached to it. "You noticed."

"You forced it on my attention." Very dry.

"Wonderful." Stryfe slumped a little lower against the wall and shut his eyes for a second, then started blinking rapidly and tried to push himself back up.

Nathan sighed and repropped him. "You can't walk, can you?"

"Of course I can." The ensuing effort was a little less than convincing, though Stryfe did make it to a fully vertical posture. Cable suspected, nevertheless, that the sidelong glances at the wall were an attempt to keep track of the proper direction of "vertical," which wasn't exactly promising.

"Of course."

Stryfe glowered at him, albeit not with the usual level of venom. "Give me a minute."

"We could just suggest Illyana teleport us out."

"I'd rather," Stryfe replied unwillingly, "not be in Limbo for... a little while longer. It's somewhere I'd prefer to be able to defend myself."

Nathan blinked. "Wouldn't Illyana look after you?" Or was he worried about her reaction to finding out about Legacy?

"Yes." It was almost a hiss. "But it's not a habit I would like to become necessary." Nathan prodded the other's mind lightly. Point of pride, he would guess... and pretty accurately, too. Stryfe apparently lacked the magic-resistance Belasco had identified in Cable himself, but tearing up the occasional demon or horde thereof didn't necessarily require it. Even if several of them DID tend to reassemble themselves.

"Rather have me do it?" he inquired lightly.

"Stab your eyes." Stryfe exerted himself and pushed away from the wall, eyeing it warily as he swayed on his feet for a moment.

"I don't think you've tried that in a while."

"What, standing up or stabbing your eyes?" Nathan was actually mildly impressed that Stryfe had summoned the energy and spirit for a joke. He would have expected him to use it for an attack if he made it that far. Not that an attack would be terribly prudent under the circumstances. Nice thought.

"The latter." He speculated briefly on trying to go elsewhere, but decided Stryfe would probably have to be half carried. It could wait. He couldn't think of anything they were really in a hurry for at the moment. "I... suppose this is probably the kind of thing that made you and my alternate start getting along, isn't it?"

Stryfe laughed, weakly, and leaned on the wall again. "I wouldn't go quite that far...."

"That far?"

"So far as to say we 'got along.'" He gave the wall a rueful glance before continuing. "We got to where we tolerated each other's existence and could fight on the same side, but that's about it."

"For us," Nathan pointed out, "that qualifies."

Another exhausted laugh. "There is that."

"Well, then."

They were both silent for a few minutes. Tolerated each other's existence. Fought on the same side. Nathan turned these ideas over in his mind and decided that... he could deal with that. No expectation that he like the man who'd killed his family, just that when they wound up as part of the same family in a time that had never heard of the war they'd fought, he quit fighting it.

Still hard. A little easier knowing this version had saved lives as well as taken them. A little easier knowing that he'd still kill the Stryfe from his own timeline, or any that resembled it more closely, given the opportunity.

A little easier with the startling realization that this Stryfe would probably want to help.

Still --

Cable looked out from his contemplations and blinked as Stryfe divorced himself again from the corridor wall and began a relatively steady, if plodding, progress. Nathan caught up with less effort than it took to slow down, and paced the other man for several steps. "So was that it? Random acts of heroism on your part finally brought him around?"

"Not really." Stryfe seemed a little uncertain, not so much about his answer as about how much of Cable's question was sarcasm. Not a lot, in reality, but he didn't bother to explain that. There was the tiniest bite to the addition, "Nor was that what changed my mind about him."

Nathan refused to be baited. So he hadn't always been particularly heroic. Funny thought, almost, realizing that even if he'd been something of a maverick -- like Logan, maybe -- Stryfe had probably at least for a while been seen as significantly more cooperative by the X-Men. Oath, Stryfe had BEEN an X-Man. He wondered if his own alternate had kept on avoiding that designation.... "What did then?"

Not completely willing, even despite the scryer, to dip into that particular mind enough to read what Stryfe might be thinking, Cable had almost decided that he wasn't going to get a response when Stryfe spoke up, his voice still tired and now matter of fact and level but a little bit thoughtful as well. "Family," he said softly. "We wanted the same people alive and well."

Well, then.

**********