AN: This is, in my opinion, kind of an odd chapter. I saw two indy movies this weekend and I've been reading Dangerous Angels, The Weetzie Bat Books. My perspective's been shifting around a lot, and I feel odd. So the chapter's odd. It's also fairly violent, so be warned. Today's soundtrack piece is a gorgeous, rip your heart out beautiful song that appeared in an episode of Buffy the vampire slayer and was cowritten by Joss Whedon and Angie Hart. Angie Hart performed it, and is also the singer for the band Splendid. I just hope they release it on CD, because it really is that beautiful. Anyway, thanks for reading and reviewing, I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving, and here goes nothing.
High tide, inside,
The air is dew,
And where were you?
Wild eyed, I died,
And where were you?
…
I fell into the moon,
And it covered you in blue.
I fell into the moon,
Can I make it right?
Can I spend the night
Alone?
-Angie Hart, "Blue"
The pods touched down in the desert sand just before sunset. Rogue had slept in the pod on the way over, since she'd been up all night waiting for the others to return. It was odd and not entirely comfortable, but she was ready to murder anyone who got in her way, and that was partly out of the pent up fury she'd accumulated in the car sitting next to Magneto for a couple hours.
They made their final approach on foot, moving west towards the squat black buildings behind which the setting sun burned. Hard black, gritty white, and liquid red in a liquid sky.
"How much metal is in there?" Colossus asked Magneto. Rogue glanced at his face and saw the faintest smile behind his helmet.
"Mines and mines full," Magneto replied. "Titanium and adamantium to make them feel safe and sound and unafraid. When will they realize that somewhere, there is always a wolf big enough to blow their houses in?"
Rogue rolled her eyes and trudged on. And they'd all thought Pietro had a big ego.
"Wait here," Magneto said. The others stopped as he kept going. It wasn't long before they spotted him and started firing shot after shot at him. Each bullet splatted against the spherical shield he'd put around himself, the lead spreading as though the army was just firing paintballs. Rogue held her breath as Magneto's invisible shield was completely covered in dull dark gray. Eventually, the army stopped firing bullets and began a hasty switch to grenade launchers.
The layer of gray around Magneto exploded forward like fine leaden tentacles, which then split into splinters. Everyone who had fired a shot fell as a splinter of their own bullets worked its way into their skull through the eye, deep into the brainpan and down, severing critical parts of the brainstem and ensuring that those soldiers would never get up again.
The soldiers with the grenade launchers found that their ammunition stopped immediately upon leaving the weapon, made a ninety degree turn and then pressed hot metal against their foreheads, searing their skin just before their heads were obliterated. The remaining few ran, but made it only a few paces away before their dog tags flew into the air of their own volition. Tongues protruded, legs kicked uselessly in midair, and fingernails dug into neck-flesh, but for nothing, as these remaining few found themselves hanged, six feet off the ground, by their own identification. Magneto dropped them and raised his right hand, sweeping it from left to right as though brushing away dust. The metal-rich face of the building ripped away.
The other mutants stood shocked as Magneto turned back to them, his background a ravaged black building, acrid smoke and a sky from which the liquid red was draining onto the pale sand of the earth, staining the desert bloody.
"Whenever you're ready, children," Magneto said.
The other three walked forward into the destruction at his command.
He had three children he was never going to see again. He had a wife named Anna who was making curry for dinner, because she'd gotten a new cookbook that she wanted to try, and he had meant to get a pizza on the way home because his three children who he would never see again wouldn't like curry because it was spicy and different and not peanut butter and jelly or macaroni and cheese. He hated the white haired boy and the black-and-red-haired girl and the sallow faced boy with yellow eyes and the red haired man and he hated Sabertooth. But he'd always hated Sabertooth, the others he hated brand-new, he was only just learning how to hate them. He was starting to get the hang of it, starting to gather specifics to despise, but then the lights had all flashed red and the sirens had howled and the face of the building had been torn aside. He'd tried to pull his gun, but it jammed, and then it seemed to become very heavy and pinned his hand to the ground. He knelt there and a girl walked up to him, and she'd touched his face and there was black for a second.
Then he saw the gun float out of his hand and level itself at his own forehead, and fire. The girl yelled at the man who stood behind her, a demon in a red cape with no face, and he gave a cold reply. The girl looked down at his body regretfully, and he did the same, and thought about the three children and the wife named Anna who he would never see again, because he could see through this girl's eyes that he was quite dead. His world faded out very slowly, and only the girl was behind the eyes again.
"Why did you do that?" Rogue shrieked at Magneto. "He would've been in a coma for weeks, he couldn't hurt you!"
"Where are the captives?" Magneto asked coldly.
"Pyro, Quicksilver, Sabertooth and Toad are all in their cells, I've got the codes. Scarlet Witch is in a different room. He didn't know what goes on in there."
"Where is that room?" Magneto asked. Rogue gave him directions.
"Gambit, come with me, Rogue and Colossus, go fetch the others. Meet back here," Magneto ordered, then turned sharply down the hall, cape flowing behind him. Gambit turned and smiled at the other two.
"Take care, mes amies," he said. "'Specially you, cheri." He then jogged down the hall after the boss.
"I hate that guy," Rogue muttered, striding down the hall in different direction. Colossus took out most of the people they encountered with a relatively gentle punch from a giant metal fist. As they approached the cell block, Rogue took one out herself to double check the lock codes.
In her head, she saw a flash of white, a pale hand on the arm of a metal chair, a face invisible behind shell after shell of technology. The Sibyl. Then they hit the cells.
Toad had only been worked over once and was in fine shape. Sabertooth's healing factor had undone all prior damage, and he had apparently not been scheduled for more that day. They could run on their own. Quicksilver had mostly recovered from his previous procedure, but as she punched the code into his cell, he gazed at Rogue with dark circles under his eyes.
"Where's Wanda?" he asked.
"Different room," Rogue replied, getting under his arm and helping him up. He stood with her support for a moment, then stepped away, his legs working on their own.
"Where's Magneto?"
"He and Gambit are getting her."
The last question was asked in a completely different tone:
"Where's Wraith?"
"He's with Wanda."
Pietro nodded and leaned down, picking up a gun that a soldier had dropped. He stood back up, kissed Rogue, and walked down the hall.
"Hey! Magneto was right, about the Sibyl!"
"I'll be right with you," he called back, the gun hanging from his hand as he turned the corner.
Rogue nearly started after him, but a large hand on her shoulder stopped her.
"The Sibyl?" Colossus said, more like a question. Rogue sighed and ran down yet another hallway, Colossus right behind her.
Colossus easily broke down the door to the Sibyl room, and Rogue took out the scientist sitting there running the thing. They looked at the monolith of metal plates, cables, wires and cords, and in the midst of it all, Rogue caught sight of a small hand.
"Jesus. There's someone in there," she said. "Start taking it apart, but be careful, we don't wanna crush her."
"What are you going to do?" Colossus asked as Rogue ran towards the door.
"I'm gonna get Magneto."
Wanda would never watch A Clockwork Orange ever again. She sat strapped to her chair, her eyes taped open, stung with eye drops every few seconds not to relieve pain, but so she wouldn't miss a second of the action.
It was a slideshow, and she was the star. Not the her that she remembered, although she was beginning to think that her memories were not to be trusted. A little girl being dropped at an asylum by a white haired man. She was eight years old. She was frightened and alone, and did not have a shred of non-medical human contact until she was sixteen. Eight years, half her life, isolated, meals under doors, injections, psychoanalysis, straitjackets, medications, pills, discipline and four soft, white walls were her entire world.
And Wanda felt something inside herself as Colonel Wraith narrated each frame. Like a well of gasoline from her throat to her gut, she felt eight years of fury reawaken inside her. The truth has a flavor, a taste that pretty lies lack, especially when that truth is bitter, and she recognized it.
The restraints over her arms warped and twisted and pinned Wraith against the wall. She did not get up, she didn't turn, she just kept staring at the projection screen, where her eight year old self sat alone, huddled in a corner in a straitjacket. A red-gloved hand fell on her shoulder and she glanced at it.
Pietro paused in his swift walk as Magneto came flying backwards out of the door he was heading for and slammed against the wall. He glanced coldly down at his groaning father, whose helmet slipped from his head as he hit the ground, then stepped over him and walked into the room, and stopped as he saw Wanda. Wanda looked over Pietro's shoulder to look at Magneto, Pietro looked over Wanda's to look at Wraith, who was coughing on the floor. They turned sideways and let each other pass.
Wanda raised her hands and Magneto was powerless. Pietro kicked Wraith so that he was on his back, facing up. Rogue came around the corner and ran down the hallway. She saw Wanda pick up the gun and level it at Magneto.
"What can I do to help?" she had asked Pietro.
"You don't get to help. You're my angel and my hero and you don't get to help. You just stay you, and kiss me when it's over."
Rogue walked past Wanda and into the room, where the slide of an eight year old girl to whom the words Scarlet Witch meant nothing was still projected onto the wall, just in time to see Pietro level the gun at Colonel Wraith. She heard Wraith mutter something and laugh, and then watched as Pietro squeezed the trigger, pulled back the hammer, and repeated the action even after he'd emptied the clip into Wraith's head, the sound of hollow, empty clicks echoing through the room.
Rogue walked up behind him and didn't look down at Wraith, would not and could not. She touched Pietro's shoulder and he let go of the gun and turned and stepped into her arms, shivering. She kissed his forehead and stroked his hair with her hands and held him.
"What did he say to you baby?" she asked him softly. Pietro looked at her with teary eyes.
"'Like ducks to water,'" Pietro answered her. Both looked up sharply as they heard a sharp cry from outside the door.
"Cheri, would you get the fuck out here before this bitch kills us all?" Gambit shouted.
"Go," Pietro said. "Stop her."
"But this is the best chance-" Rogue started. Pietro just shook his head.
"If she kills him she'll never be okay again, she'll just be angry and in pain for the rest of her life. Killing him can't be the central event in her life if she's ever going to move on. Besides, I'm just guessing he's our ride."
Rogue stepped outside and put her hands on Wanda's bare neck, and Wanda fell. Rogue caught her and lifted her gently into Colossus' arms. Rogue felt those red hot wires of crackling power buzzing through her, a heat in her hands just dying to get out. Inside her chest, flowing up to her throat, she felt a gasoline-well of rage for the man on the floor in front of her.
"Gambit, where're the others?"
"I sent 'em out to guard the transports, just in case the grunts tried to ambush us," Gambit replied.
"Magneto?" Rogue asked. He was out cold, no amount of shaking was going to wake him. She knelt down and touched his face, counting to five, then stood. "Gambit, get Magneto to the transports. You and Colossus might wanna trade, he's heavy."
"How are we gonna get home if he's out?" Colossus asked as Gambit accepted the unconscious Scarlet Witch.
"I'll take care of it," Rogue replied. She had all three of their powers warring inside her now, Magneto's, Wanda's and Pietro's. Wanda was fire, Magneto was steel at absolute zero, and Pietro was the wind, which could be sweet and gentle or which could flay you alive, who could empty a gun into a bad man's brain. Rogue took a deep breath, and tried to balance them all, with herself in the center. It was her mind, she was in charge. She was in charge. They walked out, and no one tried to stop them. Pietro stood beside her and squeezed her hand, but had to look away when she looked at him with eyes as blue as his father's and sister's. Colossus put Magneto into a metal shell which Sabertooth found himself obliged to share. Pietro took Wanda and climbed into one, Colossus and Toad shared another, and Gambit and the unconscious girl who they'd found in the Sibyl in the last.
"You sure you don't wanna get cozy with me in here, cheri?" he said to Rogue. He was nearly decapitated as she raised her hand and the sphere sealed around him.
"I'm new at this, and I'd like to be able to see where I'm going," she replied. The others safely clear, she closed all the shells and rose off the ground, then raised her hands. The metal followed her actions like her own shadow, and without the slightest strain, she took herself and them to the air, and began the trip through the night, away from the bloody sand and smoking ruins. She let herself cry as she flew, but whether they were Wanda's tears or her own, she was not sure.