Unexpected Companions
by Persephone
Chapter 10/10

Strange snippets, slices of life. Family moments. Madelyne had arrived much later than Nate Grey, but to Cable's surprise, though hardly delighted with the situation since her death, she seemed to reconcile herself to it. Jean's dragging her off to visit the Grey household surprised their parents somewhat but seemed to help.

Nathan and Stryfe managed to cooperate to set up a new identity for her. This didn't bother her; her first had been made up too. She insisted on testing to recover her pilot's license for real, though.

Some very strange snippets.

**********

"I can cook," Stryfe -- Christopher -- announced in tones of protest.

Nathan looked at him. "The problem, Stryfe, is that no one in their right mind would dare eat anything you'd cooked."

"I'd say I eat my own cooking, but that would just be asking for it...."

**********

"Act your age, you two!" Jean reprimanded.

"Which age?" Nathan inquired brightly. "I'm chronologically seven."

"That," Illyana intervened helpfully, "is in some cultures the hypothetical Age of Reason." A pause. "I don't think either one of them is there yet."

"They could TRY." Madelyne, for once, was in entire agreement with Jean. This wasn't a unique event, but was relatively rare. This was probably fortunate, as it tended to scare Nathan and Christopher.

Cable shrugged and looked appealingly from one mother-figure to the other. "So can I have a cookie?" There was general snickering.

They didn't even look at each other. "Not until after dinner."

Even Stryfe broke up laughing.

**********

Madelyne also attended X-Force's karaoke party. It was corny, if strangely entertaining. "The Day the Music Died," however, was probably an unfortunate choice of music. Except for that, however, the evening was a success.

Strange to see everyone get along that well. Not that it was idyllic, but none of Nathan's relatives were trying to kill him (or vice versa) or each other, and for them, that was close.

**********

Stryfe tapped at the door to Xavier's study, was acknowledged, and went in. "Excuse me. I was looking for a book and was told it had last been seen in your company."

Charles laughed softly and lifted one from his desk. "This?"

"Are you still using it?"

"Not at the moment." Charles steepled his fingers, then gestured at another chair. "I had been hoping for a chance to speak with you, however."

Such a thing wasn't particularly hard to come by, or shouldn't have been. Stryfe understood that the unspoken portion of the sentence was without my students being alarmed or making things uncomfortable. Most of the X-Men were reasonably accustomed to Stryfe, but still got just a bit nervous when he talked to their mentor.

Xavier's control of what he communicated, by mind or word or motion, was good enough that Stryfe wasn't entirely sure whether his continued presence bothered the professor or not. He did assume that if he were considered seriously untrustworthy he would have been invited to leave by this point.

"About something in particular?"

"Yes." Charles looked first thoughtful, then wry. "Lila Cheney has scheduled another concert in Central Park."

"I gather you plan to speak at this one as well?"

Charles inclined his head. "Yes." A smile twitched at his lips. "I trust this one will be at least slightly less eventful?"

Stryfe had heard that coming since the name left the other man's lips. "For my part, you are correct." He paused and looked at the bookshelves over Xavier's shoulder. Slowly, and somewhat uncomfortably, he added, "Perhaps I should mention that in the course of assuring that I would have the opportunity to do so myself, I found it necessary to interfere with one or two other plots to kill you."

"Somehow I am not overly surprised at their existence." Charles paused. "I suppose I am pleased that --" He broke off, consideringly.

"Trying to find a tactful way to point out that I failed?" Stryfe smiled faintly, himself. "I had in fact noticed that you were carrying on a conversation with no indications of being dead. I can't say I regret that particular failure."

"I'm glad to hear that." More amusement colored the tone; Charles then stopped to wait for Stryfe to come to his point.

Stryfe, for his part, suspected that the other telepath had already divined it, but that didn't eliminate reason to speak it. "I have, as you surmised, no intention of carrying out the main thrust of my mission that day. I could however prevent other attempts again. I know where to look."

"I would appreciate that very much," Xavier returned gravely. Presumably what he had been leading up to all along. Stryfe was about to stand and reach for the book when Charles spoke again. "Please refrain from killing them."

Stryfe sighed. "You are so impractical."

"Christopher...."

"Very well. Barring necessity, I'll leave them alive and even relatively unmaimed."

**********

"Christopher! There you are." Illyana grinned and waved as Stryfe made his way to her through the crowd. "I saved you a spot," she announced as he reached her. Leaning against the wall she was perched atop, but definitely a spot.

"So you did." He took his place, arms folded as he leaned back against the bricks. "Having fun up there?"

"Well, if you take into account the fact that nothing's happened yet, yes, I'm having a ball." She patted Stryfe's shoulder with a foot.

"Nothing had better happen," Nathan growled, emerging from the crowd himself to lean on the wall beside Stryfe and favor his clone with a glare.

"Well, the speech and concert should happen," Stryfe murmured without looking at him. "I am covering security, after all."

"I'm sure Bishop is thrilled."

"He's being quite admirably paranoid. It's rather entertaining."

"And you?"

"What do you think?" Stryfe asked smoothly.

"Fox to guard the henhouse, wolf to guard the flock..." Nathan grumbled.

Stryfe turned to eye him inquisitively at that point. "That was curiously rhythmic. Have you taken up composing poetry when you're in a bad mood, or are you quoting something?"

"No." Cable folded his arms and leaned back on the wall, glowering straight ahead.

"Too bad. I was going to ask about the next line."

A huff. "Xavier put you up to this, didn't he?"

"Looking out for plots to kill him? Yes."

"Classic." Nathan snorted faintly, sounding more amused than genuinely annoyed now. "How many did you find?"

"Three, one of whom apparently arrived early and had the misfortune to encounter you. Either that or there's someone else with a decidedly familiar psi-imprint."

"It was me." A third would have been decidedly alarming. A fourth, really, but Nate Grey was reasonably distinctive. "What did you do to them?"

"Just put them to sleep."

Nathan looked skeptical. "That's not like you."

Stryfe rolled his eyes. "And wiped the relevant memories, and planted suggestions not to do anything inconvenient."

"That's... more like you, if perhaps a little hypocritical."

"Why? It would have been a perfectly reasonable reaction if anyone could have managed to do it to me." He looked faintly disgusted. "It was entirely too easy. The only set who bothered with shielding made an absolutely pathetic attempt -- Charles could have found and stopped them all himself this time if he'd bothered."

"If anyone did shield adequately, either of us would be more likely to pick up on the other signs. He's been a soldier, but some types of surreptitious just aren't his forte."

"Isn't that what Bishop is for?"

"You want to leave it all to him?"

"Of course not. If I haven't checked, it doesn't count. Besides, he wasn't a criminal -- and he's not a telepath."

"By that logic, shouldn't the rebel-since-age-two be the better choice?"

"You started that late? But, Nathan, I knew you'd run your own check. Don't tell me you didn't find my pair."

"Yes. Are you gloating?"

"Not particularly. There was plenty of time."

"How generous."

Illyana leaned down. "Just out of curiosity, which one of you is making everyone not notice this conversation?"

The two men glanced at each other, then up. "Both, apparently," Stryfe said wryly. "By the way, did you climb up there or teleport?"

"Started to climb and was then spontaneously assisted by a passing... cheerleader, guessing from the way he picked me up."

"Of course. Where'd he go?"

Illyana shrugged. "Away."

"How enlightening."

"That way." She gestured generally off to the side and ahead. "Too bad, too; he was cute."

"If you see him, watch for his reaction to Xavier," Stryfe suggested. "I'm sure there will be someone who starts yelling...."

Ahead of them, Xavier wheeled toward the microphone.

"There's always someone who starts yelling," Cable pointed out impatiently. "I used to challenge -- or outright heckle -- Askani religious services. After Slym and Redd... were gone." He snorted at the peculiar look he received from Stryfe. "I met Blaquesmith that way; maybe I should have kept my mouth shut. But if that's the worst we have to worry about today, we're doing fai-- What the flonq is that?"

The urgency brought him and Stryfe both upright from leaning on the wall, and Illyana to a crouch on top of it.

Stryfe began, "I don't see anythi--"

Nathan had been just a little bit early. He was still far, far too late to do any good.

That was a flash of light, a silver-white iridescent ribbon, a curtain of whitewater, a million-faceted crystal wall, a gash in reality that ripped across the park.

A bright red spray decorated it in spots for a moment, and people fell away screaming, or pieces of them simply fell and the rest was gone.

Fully formed, the fault froze in place and for a moment was still visible yet absolutely clear.

The people on the other side were wrong. Some of them were bleeding too. The stage was in the wrong place; one corner was missing. Three young people were tuning up their various musical instruments and seemed alarmed at what had happened to their audience.

Xavier was nowhere in sight.

The streak that had spread through the air and ground became a blur, painful to look at, and began slowly to move.

Nathan stared at it in horror and whispered, "What have I done?"

**********

Cable jerked his head upright and squeezed his eyes shut, hands clenched on the scryer hard enough that by all rights they should have broken the thin metal, or failing that, been cut by it. Bright Lady... the nightmares had been better.

"Nathan."

It was bad enough to know what he'd done to his own world. It was the worst of a long string of failures to haunt him. He watched his alternate share in the guilt for something that happened without a cause native to that timeline, and wanted to die, but couldn't help blaming his alternate as well, against all logic.

"Nathan?"

He couldn't look into the scryer again. He would give it back to Illyana -- no, he would break it! His hands tightened for a moment. No. He had no right -- to more destruction. He would give it back. Why didn't they hate him for this?

"Nathan!"

The hiss of his name finally got his attention, and he dropped the scrying device as if it had suddenly burned him. "Stryfe." He shuddered. "Why don't you hate me?"

There was a short and rather puzzled silence ending in a cautiously flippant, "Who says I don't?"

That served as a sharp prod back into a comparatively normal state of mind, and Cable took a deep breath. "Not what I meant."

"What did you mean?" Stryfe gestured at the scryer. "What did you see just now, Nathan?"

Stop that. I don't need to be reminded of my own name. Unfortunately. "When the shifts came to your timeline." Why deny it?

"I should have guessed."

"Why?"

"I was with your alternate at the time. I assume you caught that part. I saw how he reacted."

"He didn't do anything."

"I'm aware of that. He seemed to be convinced that the whole thing was somehow his fault anyway. I found it quite curious."

"I'm sure you enjoyed it."

"That is not what I said, Nathan."

And Stryfe was not one to gloat subtly. He would usually come right out and be blatant about it. Overkill or nothing, that was the Chaos-Bringer....

"Besides," Stryfe added blandly, "it wasn't a particularly enjoyable situation."

Nathan thought about throwing the scryer at him. "No," he said instead, tightly, "I imagine not."

Stryfe leaned back against the headboard after casting a suspicious eye over it. "We were divided up in fairly short order. It would have been more effective to stay together as much as possible, of course, but as the X-Men were relatively spread out at the concert, and hence started off at something of a disadvantage. Also, of course, no one quite seemed to know what was going on -- your alternate seemed to have a remarkable feel for the general properties of each new world we were thrown into, but he wasn't especially forthcoming otherwise."

"Why are you telling me this?" Nathan glared across the gap between beds.

His clone shrugged languidly. "You're awake."

"You probably know as much about them as I do, now," Nathan growled, quietly as he reminded himself that there was presumably someone trying to sleep in the room. "I thought Illyana could find people."

"The one from the timeline we're in can locate individuals and fragments from her timeline or similar ones because they're marked by the mixing of Earth and Limbo, if I followed the dinner conversation correctly. By the time we realized the need and she found a way to mark those she wanted to find again, it was too late for most of those we would have been interested in retrieving."

"Like who?"

"Teammates and relatives. Who else?" Stryfe shook his head. "Who were the Twelve, Nathan?"

He jerked upright and stared across the dark again. "What?"

"Who were the Twelve? You mentioned then when we were talking to... ah... En Sabah Nur." Nathan thought he saw the other man shudder slightly, but it was difficult to tell in the shadows. "I can think of almost that many mythical or mystical significances to the number, and Sanctity mentioned something about it that seems, in retrospect, to have had to do with the Sentinels, but none seem patently relevant."

"Scott and Jean." Nathan smiled grimly to see Stryfe start. "Xavier, Magneto, Polaris, Bishop, the Living Monolith, Storm, Mikhail Rasputin, Iceman, Sunfire." The smile twisted. "And me."

"Aside from being involved in the battle -- and apparently infecting their alternates with some sort of guilt-complex about it -- what's their significance now? Do they even still have one? Is that why Nathan knew things he should have had no way of knowing about the timelines? I've seen you do the same thing." Stryfe obviously suspected his last two answers would be "yes," or he would never have asked....

Unfortunately, he was right. "I think... think the Twelve are all going mad at varying rates. And getting control of the shifts at corresponding ones." Cable shuddered involuntarily. "I've met -- met versions of some of them I had to kill."

Stryfe refrained from asking how Cable could tell this. "At least one of the list, in our timeline, wasn't the most sane person I've met in the first place." He glanced towards Illyana, and Nathan realized Stryfe must have meant Mikhail. He bit back a comment about Stryfe's sanity as the man continued thoughtfully. "That... what you describe might explain the version of you who twisted a shift-line into a spiral around me. Not that it would require any unusual circumstances for him to consider killing me, in whatever creative methods, but what he tried to do to Illyana -- I think I know how you fight, Nathan, and that was beneath you."

A flickered image told him what his alternate had tried. He shuddered again. "Did you kill him?" he asked bluntly.

"No."

"Bright Lady, why NOT?!"

Stryfe laughed, ever so softly. "Because this was very early after the shifts started, and initially Illyana and I had our version of you with us, and he beat me to it. Now we can't find him." He frowned and corrected himself. "Actually, between our respective abilities and... links to him, we've managed to locate him occasionally. Or so we think -- we just haven't been able to get to him."

"You're trying?"

"There is a goal to our search other than allowing Illyana to assist as many versions of you as possible. He was... the last one we lost. As I said, we should be able to find him." Stryfe slid down the headboard and back onto his pillow, comfortably. "I sometimes wonder if Illyana wouldn't do better on her own; it's entirely possible that I'm the one he's avoiding."

"I wouldn't be surprised. Or maybe he doesn't want anyone finding him." Nathan stared at the scryer in his lap and carefully picked it up to set aside, where the other pillow had been before he stacked them. "Maybe you don't want to find him."

"I beg your pardon?" Stryfe's voice was suddenly cold.

"Granted, if only because it was fun to hear you say that." Cable felt himself glared at. "I'm serious. There may be good reason not to want to find him."

"I thought at first you meant to suggest I was somehow sabotaging the attempts."

"That wasn't what I meant. Why? Are you?" It certainly wasn't implausible, especially if it had leapt to Stryfe's mind so readily.

"No. Why should we not want to find him?" Offended, but apparently sincere....

Nathan sighed and made the point more clearly. "If he's skilled enough with the shifts to keep a few steps ahead of you, how far gone is he?"

There was silence for a moment, then, far too calmly, "It depends on how he's doing it. If necessary, I'll kill him."

"Only if it's necessary?"

"Yes."

Nathan lay back. "You might not be able to win, you know."

**********

They left Illyana and Tyler's Limbo-esque patch of Earth as graciously as they could manage. It seemed a little absurd to walk away from such a comparatively stable area -- if that applied to anything involving Limbo -- except that none of them really wanted to stay. Probably the same reason Illyana and Stryfe hadn't stuck to Limbo in the first place.

"Are you sure you don't mind?" Illyana was being painstakingly polite to her alternate, who had casually suggested that if they were determined to leave, they might as well teleport directly to somewhere else moderately hospitable instead of looking for a shiftline. Apparently this was very generous -- something about various timelines' Illyanas generally avoiding trespass on one anothers realms. It confused the demons.

"It won't be a problem. Go to Limbo. Find some locus that feels like yours. Pick your destination from there." A pause. "Good journey." Had she picked that up from Tyler? "Find what you seek."

"I'm not looking for anything," Nathan replied under his breath.

Tyler answered him anyway. "Are you certain?"

**********

It was foggy again. It was a light fog, though, barely a haze of mist except where it pooled silver-white in depressions in the ground. Apparently it stuck to the dirt; the ground was mostly covered with a thin layer of chocolate-brown lichen, or something like lichen, but where the coating was disturbed -- or gouged -- it rapidly frosted over.

Frosted wasn't quite right. The mist was curiously warm. The lichen was edible, but Nathan hadn't seen the need to mention it yet.

He stooped and scraped up a piece, brushing off black dirt that turned silver as it fell from the underside and leaving a fast-whitening patch on the ground. He wasn't hungry yet, if anything still a little queasy from the aftertaste of something off Illyana's table, but he was curious.

The lichen was mildly sweet, with a little of the flavor of honey.

Wasn't manna supposed to be white?

"I'd ask if you hadn't ever grown out of eating dirt as a child, but I assume you know what you're doing."

"I hope you didn't eat dirt as a child, Stryfe. Most of it was toxic. This seems to be the local base of the food chain -- no." He realized suddenly that that wasn't right. "It's eating the mist."

"That makes my day, I assure you. More predatory fog."

"You weren't listening. The fog is the prey. It drops to the ground to reproduce; they're both photosynthetic, but the mist climbs to get most of the light, so the lichen eats it. When other things eat the lichen there's space for the mist to get a spot on the ground for a while and spawn...."

"Fascinating as this is, there's something disturbing about your intuitive grasp of the population dynamics of a completely alien ecosystem."

"It can't be completely alien. We're still on Earth. This whole mess is still on Earth. I hope." Cable paused and tried for a lighter tone. "At least it isn't explosive sand."

"I don't want to know, Nathan." Stryfe frowned at a mist-filled gouge. "What eats the lichen?"

"Me, so far." He shrugged at the look Stryfe gave him. "I can't tell from this."

The plain of matte-brown seemed to go on endlessly. Nathan caught himself brooding again over the shifts and tried for distraction by thinking about the older scenes from his companions' timeline.

Before.

"Stryfe. Question."

"Hm?"

"Who got Sam to sing 'Princes of the Universe,' and HOW?"

Stryfe laughed. "I'm not entirely sure about the first and suspect whoever had the idea for incense." He grimaced. "Which one wouldn't think should mix well with karaoke."

Nathan snorted. "Not really. You sure it wasn't the punch?"

"I doubt it. For one thing, our Nathan was probably paying attention -- for another, neither of us drank much of it after odd things started finding their way in, but that song still set us off discussing a hypothetical world takeover by X-Force for about an hour afterwards."

Cable set down the scryer, carefully, and stared at Stryfe. "Are you joking?"

"Not now. I was at the time, although I admit there were one or two moments I started to wonder about your alternate."

"Sam wouldn't be that bad."

Stryfe gave him a look. "You would say that. I still get a bit nervous about Externals."

Nervous? "Any other one and I'd probably agree with you," Nathan conceded. "I still can't believe you spent an hour in friendly conversation with my alternate."

"We had mostly gotten used to each other." Stryfe sounded slightly annoyed. "And I did say I had suspicions about the incense."

Nathan slowed, sensing a shift about to open. "Bear left...." He was still walking and half-stumbled ungracefully when a scaly creature the same brown as the lichen made a sudden trundling dash on stubby legs practically beneath his feet.

While he recovered his balance, it turned back towards the silver swath that formed its trail to watch the shift rip open, gave an offended honk, and then went on its way. A broad, flattened lower lip scraped up its meal and explained the white band left in the creature's wake.

Now how had IT known?

Cable stared through the clear boundary to see heavier fog and bare ground. The hair on his arms was still standing up. Not for a shift -- he felt more of the Twelve.

And an odd residence that meant one of them was him.

Stryfe and Illyana exchanged a look. Stryfe said thoughtfully, "I think this one is ours."

Nathan dragged his gaze away from the shiftline. "How do you figure?"

"I contacted him telepathically and his initial impulse wasn't to try to kill me. That's unusual in anyone I can immediately recognize as one of you," Stryfe replied drily.

Nathan snorted. "You two have come a long way. There must have been timelines close to yours, though."

"I... can tell. I told you we'd been looking for him." Stryfe shrugged. "This one remembers when we were separated." Stryfe actually sounded as if he were pleased to have located his own timeline's Cable.

"Fair enough. But you also said he'd been trying to avoid you."

"Maybe he'll stay put this time," Illyana interrupted with a tone of finality. "We might want to gather some of the... lichen, if you two don't want to depend on Limbo fare. It doesn't grow through there, that I can see."

"He's not in the shift you can see," Nathan murmured, staring through the transparent boundary at all the worlds in between. "You can't step through into it, either." A sudden laugh bubbled up and escaped his throat. "It's lying, you see." In a more normal tone, he added practically, "Food doesn't always go through shifts well."

"Nothing always goes through shifts well," Stryfe said impatiently. "Illyana will teleport."

**********

They landed soon, well laden, several feet in front of... another Cable. Not that this was a surprise, as it was after all what they had aimed for. The unexpected part was that Illyana apparently hadn't noticed and Stryfe apparently hadn't mentioned that "their" Cable had company.

Piotr Rasputin was trying to persuade Nathan to quit staring out toward the shiftlines intersecting in the distance and come back to sit by the campfire. He had just cast an anxious glance back over his shoulder to where own brother Mikhail sat brooding when they appeared.

Illyana shrieked and dropped her bundle of lichen to leap at him.

Piotr turned to catch her just in time, flickering to metal in startlement and back to flesh as his sister catapulted into his arms.

Nathan glanced at his alternate, who worryingly enough was still staring past them -- not waiting for them, then, he supposed -- and thought to Stryfe, #You knew.#

#Yes. I thought she might like the surprise.#

**********

Nathan decided to join Illyana and Mikhail at the fire well before Stryfe and Piotr gave up for a time on coaxing his alternate to do so. His decision was somewhat spurred by the cool air, somewhat more by the vaguely uneasy looks he was starting to get, as if the other two were wondering if he'd turn out to be as much trouble.

He got the distinct impression that Mikhail and the other Cable -- actually, he supposed that to everyone else in the camp he was "the other Cable," but he wasn't about to start thinking of himself that way -- had in fact been a great deal of trouble. Very difficult. Practically impossible. And that was with Piotr never uttering a word of more complaint than "I am very relieved to see you again. It has not been entirely easy to care for them."

"Care for them." Stryfe blinked and shook his head. "Have they forgotten how?"

"They are... both in a very strange frame of mind."

"They haven't threatened you, have they?"

"I fear sometimes they will kill each other." Nathan noticed that Piotr hadn't precisely denied any threats to himself.

Stryfe frowned, but didn't challenge. "How did you find them? We had something of a clue regarding Nathan's whereabouts, since we actually were with him when the shifts began, but it still took us until now...."

"I simply ran across them. It hadn't been very long for me -- I think it may have been more time for them, somehow."

"Possible, I think."

"At first I didn't even think to question if they were from my own timeline."

"They seem to be. At least, Nathan remembers the same things I do, as far as we've been able to determine. You and Mikhail... at least accept enough to go on with."

"Accept...?"

"You recognized me, yet weren't alarmed to see me with your sister."

"Should I have been?"

"No -- but we have alternates where it would be...." Stryfe glanced at Nathan, then shook his head sharply. "Never mind." He frowned across the meters separating his own timeline's Cable from the fire. "We're going to lose him again at this rate.... Nathan! Since when do you admit to trusting me at your back?"

The other Cable turned and glared at his clone, then stalked deliberately and grudgingly back towards the fire and around between Stryfe and Nathan, where he could keep an eye on both Stryfe and the shifts. "Not as if you can do worse than I did now," he muttered bleakly.

"Isn't blaming you illogically for things my job? You didn't do it."

"I did." He raised his eyes to his alternate, who met them and felt a sudden icy chill. "You did. You know."

"He knows how they started, or thinks he does," Stryfe began.

"Tell me." Without looking away.

Nathan started the same explanation he'd given before, to Stryfe and Illyana and of all people Nur, with a feeling of cold leaden satisfaction in his throat and heart and stomach. His alternate might not understand yet, but he knew; finally someone gave him the blame he deserved. Beneath the frozen shame, though, lay a slow growing furious burn. It was the other's fault too, beyond all logic; they were one even though they weren't, and how dare he think he had the right to lay blame.

The conversation seemed perfectly reasonable until Stryfe leapt up and moved between them, tense and wary. His voice was light, though, that infuriating mocking tone he cultivated, but with an edge of self-deprecation Nathan had never heard before in place of the arrogance. Or perhaps he hadn't noticed. "Nathan, Nathan! Oath, I'm right here and the two of you look ready to try to kill each other?" More teasing still. "I feel so left out."

He almost seemed to mean it.

Nathan realized he and his alternate were on their feet and had been shouting at each other, voices and throats raw with anger and eyes blinded with rage. Reasonable. It had all seemed perfectly reasonable, but why didn't he remember standing up?

He broke eye contact and turned away, glancing briefly at Stryfe and then across the Rasputin group. Illyana was watching him steadily out of dark blue eyes from where she lay half-curled on her side between her brothers, her head on Mikhail's knee. Mikhail wasn't looking up.

Piotr was watching him and his alternate with a somehow resigned expression that flickered rather thankfully in Stryfe's direction. He had an air of having just relaxed.

Nathan turned to stare at the fire in disgust with himself as he sat back down. He was suddenly certain that this was just the sort of thing Piotr had been putting up with all along when he could have simply walked away from the two madmen he'd been shepherding. As if he'd needed another one.

Up until thirty seconds ago he would have said he wasn't as far gone as his alternate.

"You should get some sleep," Illyana told him softly. He thought she'd spoken aloud, but no one else appeared to have heard her.

"We need to get out of here," his alternate said suddenly. He sounded perfectly clear-headed for the moment, but anxious. Cable turned, still on the ground, to see the shifts in the distance sweeping towards them. Illyana hissed, and they were in Limbo, and then they were... somewhere else.

Their campfire was completely undisturbed. That was fairly impressive. It was, along with the rest of them, sitting on a broad flat stone in the middle of a rocky stretch of desert. There was a patch of palm trees in the distance, but not an oasis, nor yet a mirage; it was a little round cylindrical piece of another shift, what looked like a tiny tropical island.

There was ocean all around it, cut off sharply where it met the desert. That had to be the shiftline, even though he couldn't see it.

Useless to them for water. It was broad daylight here, brilliant heat pouring down to batter them against the sand-sprinkled stone. Immediately to their west, though, a high cluster of rocky hills rose against the stark blue sky, and he knew there was a spring somewhere in their depths.

Not a bad site, all in all, even if Illyana apparently expected him to go to sleep with the sun in his eyes. He lay down on his left side on the rock and felt the heat seep through the metal, the light pounding through closed eyelids to turn his vision mottled black and red. For some reason it was soothing.

He found himself drifting, not exactly half-asleep but in that strange lethargic space just next to it where the information poured in by the senses pooled in his mind without seeming to require any sort of action. Everyone there was tired. He thought Stryfe's voice sounded a little more shaken than he probably meant for it to.

He knew when the rest of them lay down as well, seeking rest as the sun slipped across the top of the stone. Piotr had gone to get water for them earlier, passing without comment from his sister who could have conjured a lake if they'd wanted, but with some sour bit of nothingness dissolved in it to linger at the back of the throat.

His alternate stayed up; so did Stryfe. They'd been talking ever since, half aloud and half telepathically, but they seemed to forget or not bother or be unable to shield him out of the conversation most of the time. He wasn't even making any effort to eavesdrop. They'd been quarreling half-heartedly about the time of day for a while; it was clear enough here, but in the dim light of the earlier shift there had been fewer indications. His alternate maintained it had been late evening; Stryfe said they had started out in midmorning and couldn't possibly have been walking that long.

It was an utterly pointless argument. Nathan suspected, despite the incongruity of it, that Stryfe was trying to calm his alternate down. Or perhaps they were both taking refuge in some half-semblance of normality by arguing with each other... not that they'd ever admit it if he suggested it. Which he wouldn't, because he'd certainly never admit to such a thing either if it were him. Or, for that matter, if it wasn't.

The conversation finally turned to the shifts themselves, Stryfe caught in the odd position of trying to defend his longtime enemy against self-accusations, occasionally grumbling about why he bothered and about being too much in the habit of contradicting. Nathan wasn't sure if it was exasperation or encouragement that finally brought out the silken comment, "But you were always a revolutionary, Nathan, not an anarchist. If you have torn down one system -- what are you going to put in its place?"

It should have sounded cruel. It did leave his alternate silent. Perhaps it was only his own wearied, strange state of mind that made him hear it as a challenge.

Or perhaps his alternate did too.

"Find what you seek," the other Illyana had said.

He wasn't looking for anything.

But was he sure?

Was that it, some way to repair this shattering? He couldn't even think of a way to start.

That didn't necessarily have to stop him.

Or was it something else, something more selfish, a fragment of companionship or belonging in the chaos....

And had he already found it?

He didn't belong with these people. He wasn't even from their timeline; one of them was Stryfe -- but they didn't offer the faintest suggestion he should go, in word or thought. He shouldn't try to kill his alternate, though. He'd caused them enough trouble.

But maybe he'd walk with them a while longer.

**********