Scott stirred to the bugle call with stiff limbs and creaking tendons.
Movement was hard, but better than thinking, and he wished he could squelch
his thoughts as easily as his body could just lie there--motionless without
impetus to be otherwise.
"Geddup! Kids in the front line especially shouldn't lay about like that!"
"Shut up, Duncan," Scott growled. But got up. And tried to think about Unicorn Lovers, if his brain was so set on thinking about something.
"Scott, I'm sorry."
"Huh?" Scott paused mid-step and the next rank nearly knocked him over. He scuffled forward quickly and tried to regain his stride. "Oh, don't worry about it, Rogue. Um . . . " He scratched convulsively at an itchy spot on the inside of his elbow. "It's all right. Yeah. In fact . . . uh . . . I don't mind so much now."
There was a sense of all the other seers leaning forward. Ah hah, so they are all in on it. Scott bit his lip and a bit of his resolve wavered. He'd better not have become some sort of communial project in the last week or so, or he was going to be mad. Maybe even break something.
"Mind what? You mean--what I . . . "
"Yeah, sure. It's fine. All great. No problems here, nope."
"Rogue, maybe you should give him a little more time," Jean whispered, although quite within Scott's earshot, intentional or not.
"You sure, Scott?" Rogue said out loud.
"It's great. I'm all a . . . " he realized he was more than verging on sarcasm. "It's all right. I was just a little surprised last night." He swallowed, "It's kinda a scary . . . scary prospect. Seeing again. Crazy. Um, just tell me before you do it, because there's something . . . I need to, you know, say first to . . . to all of you."
"And not now."
"Not now," he agreed.
"Deep dark secret?" Kurt asked.
"Sure. Something like that."
"Ah."
They walked in silence, which Scott wasn't too eager to break. He was a little bit asocial at the best of times and he couldn't shake off a certain resentment that everyone was so dang eager to convert him back to the light of joy and happiness, when they weren't all sweetness and fluff themselves. One does have to be standing in the well-lit world of perfect emotional stability and satisfaction to pull some dank and troubled person out of the dark--and even if Rogue had a certain core of nice, good-hearted sense to her, she did still like to throw people into bunks and had that touch obsession (not that he didn't have a sight obsession, but that wasn't the issue). Jean might have been friendly and even, dare he say it, perky, in another world, but she was so bitter and manipulative from something or another that he could only have a filmed sense of the beauty that she might have been. Kurt was just . . . well, he was weird and that was the end of it.
Scott did appreciate their concern and interest in him, but he didn't like the edge of desperation in that concern and he didn't like it to turn into a sort of "turn Scott into a happy guy" fest--especially when those initiating it weren't necessarily too much healthier than him emotionally. Granted, they might have been a little, but again, he didn't want to be helped or needed, he just wanted to give them what they wanted as long as it didn't include his soul and hope that they'd just talk to him like a person, not like a blind welling of pity . . .
"Front line, disengage from the main body immediately and follow me."
Both Jean and Rogue had already taken his arms and he needed not put any more thought into it. Of course, he did, a sort of grumbling thought that fell back to the whole "I'd rather not be helpless" thing, but, as always, there wasn't anything he could actually do about it.
For Scott, he was almost in a good mood. The night before had been rather cathartic and, although the thoughts associated with it were not particularly easy or pleasant, his emotions had been released to some extent. It'd been a while since he'd shrieked like that--perhaps there was some value to behaving like a banshee every once in a while. And, as he'd been feeling particularly rotten then, worse than usual, his mood, if not his mind, had swung into a more "cheerful" sort of state. Which finally started to affect his thoughts, if a bit sluggishly.
Wonder what the front line's being broken off for. Perhaps they're letting us go home. Or to a special forces mutant camp where we can act as advisors to the Mutant and not be in combat at all.
The Mutant doesn't like competition.
"Crap!" Scott jerked his arms half away from his female escort before he gained control over the sudden surge of fear and adrenaline and forcibly told himself to calm down. His mood rapidly descended from its brief high into not so much despondency as a middling, scared nothing.
You're being paranoid. It could really be anything.
The air began to smell particularly leafy again, but they continued for a while longer, Jean and Rogue making their best attempts to help Scott over the more tricky obstacles and, this time, he didn't even hint at pulling away. He was too occupied with trying not to panic.
They finally stopped and although Scott heard the footsteps of whoever had been guarding them peter into the undergrowth, they hadn't been left out alone in the woods. There was another mutant there--a mottled copper--and although it wasn't moving, there was something not quite seething about it-- but a violence nonetheless.
It could really be anything.
Yeah right.
"Ah--the Mutant," Jean said at it with a casual pseudo-respect that bordered on flippancy.
"I'm sorry," he said--and it was a he, and young, "This is the Emperor's orders."
A second later, there was air whistling and it was decidedly unfriendly, decidedly . . . deadly, even.
Scott acted on impulse at first. He shoved to the right, knocking Jean to one side and pulling Rogue down to the other with his momentum . . . he figured Kurt could take care of himself, if anyone could. There was no thought involved--just an old, mostly un-used instinct which had flared in him during Kelly's speech. There wasn't anything to be thought about it.
Scott acted on impulse at first. He shoved to the right, knocking Jean to one side and pulling Rogue down to the other with his momentum . . . he figured Kurt could take care of himself, if anyone could. Again, this was on impulse--no thought involved--just an old, mostly un-used instinct which had flared in him during Kelly's speech and withered when he'd refused Rogue, called him a coward. He didn't think anything of it.
His second action, which jolted a mere instant after the first and did require a thought, albeit a quick one, was to open his eyes.
The binding cloth exploded off his face and he could see, extended and further extended in a single milli-stretch of time, things like badly hewn javelins flying at trunk level--what would have been trunk level for the others, but they were down, and they were only trunk level for him--his slanted and still too upright body didn't have a chance. He focused on these javelins in his peripheral vision as much as he kept focus on anything-he didn't want to see what was directly in front of him.
He had heard one last whish of air from the vicinity of the Mutant, and the beginning of a contorted scream at the same edge of time that the forward sharp of the javelins sliced leisurely into him. Scott's gaze only had a single, uncontrollable effect. The Mutant was dead.
So was Scott.
Time resumed.
Scott had closed his eyes again by the time the javelins pinned him to a tree. The Mutant had cut off his scream.
Time resumed.
Scott had closed his eyes again by the time the javelins pinned him to a tree. The ferrets, the seer . . . hadn't even had time to scream.
Things hadn't started to hurt yet.
He heard, in a disconnected, cold fashion, Jean and Rogue scuffle up from the dirt . . . smelt Kurt' sulfur as he returned from wherever. It was not terribly interesting at this point. Scott half wondered why they bothered to do anything at that particular moment. Surely it could wait another moment or two. Or three. When he didn't feel so dull. There was something he'd have to say if they approached him now and he couldn't think of anything. Nothing at all.
"Scott!" See, someone was bound to say that. How did you respond to that anyway? Did you scream back "Rogue!" or was it "Jean!" it was getting a bit hard to tell and he didn't feel like yelling . . .
He almost felt a touch on his hands, but it was far away.
"Ugh." He finally managed.
"Maybe he'll be all right," said a doubtful Kurt male voice.
"I . . . Scott?"
"All right," he muttered fuzzily and tried to smile, but the muscles in his face were deciding not to work.
Then things started to hurt.
He fought it back for a bit, his jaws clamped together to contain the wail that was clawing up and down his throat, but seated in pinpricks--no, needles or . . . or swords--scattered through his abdomen and ribs that threw wide swatches of pain back and forth and . . . back and forth . . . and . . .
His breath hissed out through his teeth in tiny "hffs" until he couldn't bear it any longer and a gasp sent his mouth wide and in the next breath he was screaming.
"Get him down! Oh, oh . . . you idiots! . . . get him down."
"No--his blood will all rush out that way!"
"He's going to . . . he's going!"
The voices were meaningless and he wanted them to shut up and there were hands on his arms and shoulders and face and they meant nothing either and things throbbed in his ears and deeper and against his veins and the pain was slowly seeping out of him and he didn't really think that was a good sign, because what replaced it was darker and colder than the tundra.
He was able to stop screaming. He just cried instead. His muscles were twisting and bending over each other, but he couldn't curl up because of the sharp sticks in the way.
"What are we going to do?"
"What can we do?"
"You can . . . go," he rasped out and his face numbed. "Be. . . fore they . . . find you."
Silence.
Then there was something hissed and whispered and it was trembling and incoherent as the wind stinging his forehead. Something like a constricted impatience rose in him--he did really want them to go away--out of his little circle of responsibility that covered these few trees and would last as long as he did. Easier alone, he could relax a little then. Die quietly.
Fingers brushed his face and brushed it again and they were colder than he was from years of unuse. They sent tremors through him--and they were not romantic tremors and they were not hormonal tremors--they were tremors of a terror more deep and instinctual--that ancient terror that had tried to tell him the last night--and those tremors were backed up with a terrible disjointed pull that dredged into him and out of him and would she just stop it because this is really not the time to get her touch!
"Ah . . . ah . . . ah . . ." His voice sounded small and distant and ascending like a whine and the tremors were getting worse.
"Jean . . . " Rogue was a pinprick, wrong angle . . . getting larger and the grey was back and there was no dark or red or flaccid nothing grey, but . . .
"Do it!"
WHAT? Kill ME?
"This . . . " She inhaled and the grey flickered and she kissed him firm on the mouth a second before he knew exactly what she was doing.
His "WAIT!" vanished into the grey with everything else. And there was finally silence.
"Geddup! Kids in the front line especially shouldn't lay about like that!"
"Shut up, Duncan," Scott growled. But got up. And tried to think about Unicorn Lovers, if his brain was so set on thinking about something.
"Scott, I'm sorry."
"Huh?" Scott paused mid-step and the next rank nearly knocked him over. He scuffled forward quickly and tried to regain his stride. "Oh, don't worry about it, Rogue. Um . . . " He scratched convulsively at an itchy spot on the inside of his elbow. "It's all right. Yeah. In fact . . . uh . . . I don't mind so much now."
There was a sense of all the other seers leaning forward. Ah hah, so they are all in on it. Scott bit his lip and a bit of his resolve wavered. He'd better not have become some sort of communial project in the last week or so, or he was going to be mad. Maybe even break something.
"Mind what? You mean--what I . . . "
"Yeah, sure. It's fine. All great. No problems here, nope."
"Rogue, maybe you should give him a little more time," Jean whispered, although quite within Scott's earshot, intentional or not.
"You sure, Scott?" Rogue said out loud.
"It's great. I'm all a . . . " he realized he was more than verging on sarcasm. "It's all right. I was just a little surprised last night." He swallowed, "It's kinda a scary . . . scary prospect. Seeing again. Crazy. Um, just tell me before you do it, because there's something . . . I need to, you know, say first to . . . to all of you."
"And not now."
"Not now," he agreed.
"Deep dark secret?" Kurt asked.
"Sure. Something like that."
"Ah."
They walked in silence, which Scott wasn't too eager to break. He was a little bit asocial at the best of times and he couldn't shake off a certain resentment that everyone was so dang eager to convert him back to the light of joy and happiness, when they weren't all sweetness and fluff themselves. One does have to be standing in the well-lit world of perfect emotional stability and satisfaction to pull some dank and troubled person out of the dark--and even if Rogue had a certain core of nice, good-hearted sense to her, she did still like to throw people into bunks and had that touch obsession (not that he didn't have a sight obsession, but that wasn't the issue). Jean might have been friendly and even, dare he say it, perky, in another world, but she was so bitter and manipulative from something or another that he could only have a filmed sense of the beauty that she might have been. Kurt was just . . . well, he was weird and that was the end of it.
Scott did appreciate their concern and interest in him, but he didn't like the edge of desperation in that concern and he didn't like it to turn into a sort of "turn Scott into a happy guy" fest--especially when those initiating it weren't necessarily too much healthier than him emotionally. Granted, they might have been a little, but again, he didn't want to be helped or needed, he just wanted to give them what they wanted as long as it didn't include his soul and hope that they'd just talk to him like a person, not like a blind welling of pity . . .
"Front line, disengage from the main body immediately and follow me."
Both Jean and Rogue had already taken his arms and he needed not put any more thought into it. Of course, he did, a sort of grumbling thought that fell back to the whole "I'd rather not be helpless" thing, but, as always, there wasn't anything he could actually do about it.
For Scott, he was almost in a good mood. The night before had been rather cathartic and, although the thoughts associated with it were not particularly easy or pleasant, his emotions had been released to some extent. It'd been a while since he'd shrieked like that--perhaps there was some value to behaving like a banshee every once in a while. And, as he'd been feeling particularly rotten then, worse than usual, his mood, if not his mind, had swung into a more "cheerful" sort of state. Which finally started to affect his thoughts, if a bit sluggishly.
Wonder what the front line's being broken off for. Perhaps they're letting us go home. Or to a special forces mutant camp where we can act as advisors to the Mutant and not be in combat at all.
The Mutant doesn't like competition.
"Crap!" Scott jerked his arms half away from his female escort before he gained control over the sudden surge of fear and adrenaline and forcibly told himself to calm down. His mood rapidly descended from its brief high into not so much despondency as a middling, scared nothing.
You're being paranoid. It could really be anything.
The air began to smell particularly leafy again, but they continued for a while longer, Jean and Rogue making their best attempts to help Scott over the more tricky obstacles and, this time, he didn't even hint at pulling away. He was too occupied with trying not to panic.
They finally stopped and although Scott heard the footsteps of whoever had been guarding them peter into the undergrowth, they hadn't been left out alone in the woods. There was another mutant there--a mottled copper--and although it wasn't moving, there was something not quite seething about it-- but a violence nonetheless.
It could really be anything.
Yeah right.
"Ah--the Mutant," Jean said at it with a casual pseudo-respect that bordered on flippancy.
"I'm sorry," he said--and it was a he, and young, "This is the Emperor's orders."
A second later, there was air whistling and it was decidedly unfriendly, decidedly . . . deadly, even.
Scott acted on impulse at first. He shoved to the right, knocking Jean to one side and pulling Rogue down to the other with his momentum . . . he figured Kurt could take care of himself, if anyone could. There was no thought involved--just an old, mostly un-used instinct which had flared in him during Kelly's speech. There wasn't anything to be thought about it.
Scott acted on impulse at first. He shoved to the right, knocking Jean to one side and pulling Rogue down to the other with his momentum . . . he figured Kurt could take care of himself, if anyone could. Again, this was on impulse--no thought involved--just an old, mostly un-used instinct which had flared in him during Kelly's speech and withered when he'd refused Rogue, called him a coward. He didn't think anything of it.
His second action, which jolted a mere instant after the first and did require a thought, albeit a quick one, was to open his eyes.
The binding cloth exploded off his face and he could see, extended and further extended in a single milli-stretch of time, things like badly hewn javelins flying at trunk level--what would have been trunk level for the others, but they were down, and they were only trunk level for him--his slanted and still too upright body didn't have a chance. He focused on these javelins in his peripheral vision as much as he kept focus on anything-he didn't want to see what was directly in front of him.
He had heard one last whish of air from the vicinity of the Mutant, and the beginning of a contorted scream at the same edge of time that the forward sharp of the javelins sliced leisurely into him. Scott's gaze only had a single, uncontrollable effect. The Mutant was dead.
So was Scott.
Time resumed.
Scott had closed his eyes again by the time the javelins pinned him to a tree. The Mutant had cut off his scream.
Time resumed.
Scott had closed his eyes again by the time the javelins pinned him to a tree. The ferrets, the seer . . . hadn't even had time to scream.
Things hadn't started to hurt yet.
He heard, in a disconnected, cold fashion, Jean and Rogue scuffle up from the dirt . . . smelt Kurt' sulfur as he returned from wherever. It was not terribly interesting at this point. Scott half wondered why they bothered to do anything at that particular moment. Surely it could wait another moment or two. Or three. When he didn't feel so dull. There was something he'd have to say if they approached him now and he couldn't think of anything. Nothing at all.
"Scott!" See, someone was bound to say that. How did you respond to that anyway? Did you scream back "Rogue!" or was it "Jean!" it was getting a bit hard to tell and he didn't feel like yelling . . .
He almost felt a touch on his hands, but it was far away.
"Ugh." He finally managed.
"Maybe he'll be all right," said a doubtful Kurt male voice.
"I . . . Scott?"
"All right," he muttered fuzzily and tried to smile, but the muscles in his face were deciding not to work.
Then things started to hurt.
He fought it back for a bit, his jaws clamped together to contain the wail that was clawing up and down his throat, but seated in pinpricks--no, needles or . . . or swords--scattered through his abdomen and ribs that threw wide swatches of pain back and forth and . . . back and forth . . . and . . .
His breath hissed out through his teeth in tiny "hffs" until he couldn't bear it any longer and a gasp sent his mouth wide and in the next breath he was screaming.
"Get him down! Oh, oh . . . you idiots! . . . get him down."
"No--his blood will all rush out that way!"
"He's going to . . . he's going!"
The voices were meaningless and he wanted them to shut up and there were hands on his arms and shoulders and face and they meant nothing either and things throbbed in his ears and deeper and against his veins and the pain was slowly seeping out of him and he didn't really think that was a good sign, because what replaced it was darker and colder than the tundra.
He was able to stop screaming. He just cried instead. His muscles were twisting and bending over each other, but he couldn't curl up because of the sharp sticks in the way.
"What are we going to do?"
"What can we do?"
"You can . . . go," he rasped out and his face numbed. "Be. . . fore they . . . find you."
Silence.
Then there was something hissed and whispered and it was trembling and incoherent as the wind stinging his forehead. Something like a constricted impatience rose in him--he did really want them to go away--out of his little circle of responsibility that covered these few trees and would last as long as he did. Easier alone, he could relax a little then. Die quietly.
Fingers brushed his face and brushed it again and they were colder than he was from years of unuse. They sent tremors through him--and they were not romantic tremors and they were not hormonal tremors--they were tremors of a terror more deep and instinctual--that ancient terror that had tried to tell him the last night--and those tremors were backed up with a terrible disjointed pull that dredged into him and out of him and would she just stop it because this is really not the time to get her touch!
"Ah . . . ah . . . ah . . ." His voice sounded small and distant and ascending like a whine and the tremors were getting worse.
"Jean . . . " Rogue was a pinprick, wrong angle . . . getting larger and the grey was back and there was no dark or red or flaccid nothing grey, but . . .
"Do it!"
WHAT? Kill ME?
"This . . . " She inhaled and the grey flickered and she kissed him firm on the mouth a second before he knew exactly what she was doing.
His "WAIT!" vanished into the grey with everything else. And there was finally silence.
