Chapter 11: And then there was silence

Fate's POV
Westchester

Did I mention that I hate being a seer already? Yes, I did but I say it again. I frickin' hate it! If you think you know what despair is, think again. There's nothing worse in the world to know that the end is inevitably drawing nigh and there's absolutely nothing you can do to change it.

He carries along from a distant place. He's on his way and he'll bring decay. Neverending decay. It may sound melodramatic but it's also the truth. Exactly how that will happen is hidden amongst the mists of time but it will take place. And soon.

I know it. Charles knows it. Jean knows it. Hell, we all know it. But what can we do about it? Nothing I can see and from what I can tell, neither does anyone else. We all do our best to ignore that though and continue to prepare ourselves like it is just another battle. Like it ever could be. Not with that kind of adversary. We've won some minor victories but in the long run they're for naught. The only plus is that Rogue and the Wolverine are back here even though they scarcely made it. I have no idea of how Apocalypse did it but that doesn't matter. He managed to make Storm one of his aides and a formidable one at that. Before Sabretooth, Storm and Toad attacked them I never had realized just how powerful a weather-godess can be.

That's one of the few victories we've had. That the couple could escape such an onslaught. We won't be that lucky again, that's one thing I'm sure of. We're doomed to face the night and the light's almost out of sight. We've reached the point of no return and all that's left to do is to fight until the end, no matter how bitter the end will be.

The one thing that has, so far, saved us is that Apocalypse doesn't know about this secret hideout. None but Charles did until recently.

So we wait and we prepare ourselves. And we wait some more. Hoping against all hope that the wind and the rain won't betray us again. And that the sacrifice made wasn't made in vain.

Logan POV

It's getting out of hand, it really is. No, it already has. Scott's dead. Ororo is working against us. The mansion's destroyed. We're hiding like pests dreading the pesticides. What more could possibly go wrong? I don't know but I'm leaning more and more towards Fate's opinion, that everything will go to hell. I don't believe in predictions but from what I know of her predictions and what has really happened I don't really have much choice in the matter.

Something bad's gonna happen and soon. I only hope and pray that Marie and our baby will get out of it all intact and I will do everything I can to make sure of that.

Two weeks later

Damn! I know it was due but I still wasn't prepared for it all. Marie's in labour now and I feel so helpless! I can't do anything to help her through this and it's tearing me apart. Even without my enhanced senses I can hear how much agony she's in and I can smell all the blood. I'm going mad about this and it doesn't help that she can't have any anastethics either – because we fuckin' don't have any!

I can only say "Thank you thank you thank you" as loud as I can in my mind to show how much I love that Jean's around right now. Without her Marie would not make it, I'm sure of it. I'll thank Bobby later for putting up that iceshield between the delivery-table and me - God knows how much I would interfere if it wasn't there.

Time runs as slow as a slug caught in superglue while I'm waiting for everything to be over. I'm rather glad that there's no watch available so I could see how time's mocking me. Eventually though Jean comes out and by the look on her face I can tell that everything went well. She reassures me of that just seconds later.

"Congratulations Logan. You're now the proud father of a healthy boy."

Tears start falling and for once I don't even try to hide them. From the corner of my eye I can see Fate standing, looking both happy and concerned, which quite frankly makes me feeling creeped out. Why is she concerned?

About a day later she comes to me and Marie and lays it all out. She tries to be tactful at first but it only annoys us to no end, and let's face it. News from a seer isn't likely to be good are they? Anyway, we ask her to be just blunt about it. She's still kinda reluctant about it but it comes out eventually.

"You know I'm happy for the two of you, that you have your baby. However, I need to warn you that the child might be a danger"

She doesn't manage to finish the sentence until the temper gets the best of me and the claws are released.

"Danger!? How could a newborn baby be a danger?"
"Calm down, Logan. I don't know, okay? All I know is that the glimpses from the future I've seen says that Apocalypse wants a baby. I didn't know what baby but your son bears a striking resemblance to the one I saw."
"Scott Jr is no danger and that's final!"

I hadn't even realized I had given the little tyke a name until I said it but it's fitting. Fate lets her shoulder slump in defeat and walks away.

Did I overreact? Only time will tell.

Xavier POV

Fate's come to me and she's clearly troubled. I should really say more than usual.

"Charles? I really don't know what to make of this and well, I was hoping you could give me your thoughts on it."
"Of course. What is it?" I ask and she proceeds in detailing what she thinks of her vision and Logan and Marie's child.

If I only could dismiss it as her being edgy and afraid but I can't. I know her all too well for that and the more clearer her visions are the more likely they are to come to pass. This one is most likely true since she could recognize the child. I know Apocalypse, or at least as much as anyone can hope to know the ancient warlord There's only one thing he could possibly want from the child. To use him or exploit what's in the child's DNA. The combination of Logan's and Rogue's powers would make for a very deadly warrior and I dread to think what kind of experiments the poor kid would have to suffer through if Apocalypse can lay his hands on him. Logan may think he had it rough when he was experimented on, and his nightmares and memories certainly validates that, but Department X is gentle compared to Apocalypse.

I try to comfort Fate by saying that we will protect the child but in vain. I didn't really think it would work but I had to try. She doesn't react in any way I would have thought though. She loses her temper and just yells

"Protect? Protect? You must be out of your mind! This child will carry ruin here! The newborn's death would be a blessing to us all!"

I'm thoroughly baffled at that. How could the child possibly be our saviour if he died? And since when did Fate become so uncaring about whether a infant lives or dies? I ask her and she laughs before answering

"Oh, Charles. You're so naive. The child is exactly what Apocalypse wants and what he has schemed so long to get. A child with awesome powers that would be the foundation of his reign. Without the child his plan would be useless."

I was so preoccupied with Fate and he behaviour that I didn't notice Logan and Rogue making their appearance until I heard a familiar snikt behind me and a scream of rage from Logan.

"You bastard! Killing an infant instead of fighting for ourselves! And you just said to me that you weren't sure why the child was so important!"
"I wasn't then. I am now after Charles brought up what the child very well could inherit from his parents. The vision is now clear. I can clearly see the end now."

The silence following that statement is how silence must have been prior to the big bang. Then the bang comes together with a lot of confusion and commotion with Fate being unable to make herself heard. When she finally can her voice is thin and scared but so full of certainty.

"This place will fall, leaving just three survivors. The child, Logan and Rogue. Apocalypse will seize the child and use it to his advantage. When Logan and Rogue later on tries to rescue their child Rogue will be taken prisoner and held hostage so Logan won't try anything stupid yet again. The child will be used as source-material for cloned warriors, guards and assassins for the preservation of Apocalypse's reign."

This is the most detailed prophecy of hers I've ever heard and I am sure of its validity just because of that.

I still can't bring myself to even suggest that the child should be killed to avoid that dreadful future. I don't have to use neither eyes nor telepathy to know that the parents faces are devoid of colour and life right now.

What to do?

Jean POV

I can't believe it! I can't believe that everything we've always worked so hard to gain is slipping out of our hands. Fast. I may be selfish but I can't help but wonder… was Scott's sacrifice in vain? I hope not! No man that noble and good should die for nothing. He was a better person than I could ever hope to be. And now he's dead, before I could tell him everything I wanted to.

Damn. I better stop brooding over could-have-beens or I'll have no chance of bending fate to our advantage.

I'm rather pessimistic about accomplishing that though. We're outpowered, our team's been irreversibly damaged and our foe is far more patient than us.

I'm not sure but I hope my "transformation" can be used to our advantage somehow, that it's something Apocalypse didn't think of or possibly could have forseen.

But if my experience yesterday is anything to go by, we won't have such good fortune. Apocalypse is strong-willed and, being the fool that I am, I tried to bend his will to mine yesterday. A complete and utter failure. He almost made me obedient to his will instead! And I can still hear his mocking voice in my head.

"The final curtain will fall, Dr Grey. Hear my voice and the sound of doom. There is no choice. There's no way out, as you'll soon find out."

So many people have failed to his will or machinations already. All the way back to ancient times. How many of our myths really speak of him? I don't know and I'm not so sure I want to know. All that I know is that I don't regret becoming an X-man, even if it now seems like it will soon be the death of me. We're the only chance the planet has after all and I'd be just cannon fodder when all is said and done regardless.

But I refuse to give up! That's just not me! Somehow we're gonna get the head of that madman! Figuratively speaking.

If only I could control the Phoenix part of me…then our chances would surely increase.

Is that all that stands between us and certain doom?

It's the dead of night. A mysterious figure is hiding in the shadows as he or she is moving about in the hideout of the X-men. The figure's hooded and almost looks like a monk. It moves slowly and as soon as a word or movement is noticed elsewhere, it stops completely and melts together with the shadows. The only way to know it's there is to know it beforehand. Otherwise nothing in the world would reveal it.

The figure stops outside the make-do nursery and listens intently. No sound is coming from inside except the small noises you could expect from an infant sleeping soundly. The door's opened slowly and the hooded figure is silently praying that it won't make any sound whatsoever. Whatever deity that received the prayer, it decided that it was one worth heeding. The door stays silent and the masked figure slips into the nursery, standing by Scott Jrs crib – looking at Scott with affection and love.

"I'm sorry I have to do this" the figure says, picking the infant boy up and adjusts the robes to hide both of them. It's not working perfectly though and Scott Jr is clearly uncomfortable being carried around like that and starts to cry. Minutes go while the baby's being rocked to sleep again. After that, the figure hurries up and is almost running in its attempts to avoid drawing attention to itself.

It fails. 10 minutes later it runs straight into Logan, notoriously nocturnal. Not even his animal senses can detect the presence of the nightstalker so he almost fails in his duties as guard. Call it luck or the bond between father and son but at that precise moment Scott wakes up and starts to cry again. Only a deaf person would fail to notice a crying baby where no other sounds can be heard and Logan's anything but deaf. He can use his acute hearing the same way a bat navigates so he's able to take just three steps, with the claws being unsheated at step 2, before he's face to face with the intruder. He growls and roars "Gimme back my son!" before lunging. He knows exactly where his son is so there's no risk of him accidently clawing him. The intruder is more agile and limber than anticipated though so he only manages to rip the cloak. Only slightly but enough for him to be able to see who's inside it.

His entire body goes rigid by surprise and he's only able to say "You!" before the intruder just waves the hand, almost nonchantly, making time to essentially come to a halt as far as Logan's concerned.

A soft "I'm sorry" can be heard before the intruder leaves the grounds, with only a frozen Logan, a stolen car and a missing Scott as the only evidence of it ever being there.

The next morning

Dr Jean Grey is walking from her sleeping-place towards her new charge, as the pedetrician of Scott Jr. She feels proud that Logan and Marie decided to name their firstborn after her late fiancee'. "You're being silly, Jean" she tries to tell herself. Not very successfully though. That's when she stops dead in her tracks. She rubs her eyes, certain that she must have seen wrong. Why's Logan standing so still? Like it was a statue of him and not the real thing. She goes closer, waves her hand in front of his eyes. No reaction. She pinches his arm. Still no reaction but at least it felt like living tissue to her. Always something. This is something she's never ever seen or even heard of before though so she has no idea of where to even begin looking for what's wrong with Logan. She knows her limits. She knows how to figure out what kind of disease is present given a certain set of symptoms. However, this is not a known disease and she's no research scientist. To tell the truth, she feels like she did the first time she misdiagnosed something. Like a complete fool that never should have been allowed into medschool. The feeling passed that time, this time she does what experience has taught her: she calls for help.

The hours pass as she and Xavier together do what they can do to find out what happened to Logan. Logan's usually naturally resistant to telepathy so they have their work cut out for them. The hours pass some more. They're still not much closer to finding anything physically or mentally wrong with Logan. "Not entirely true" Xavier thinks. "I know what's wrong. He's been forced somehow to not move a muscle. I'm just not unable to figure out a way to break that command.". The two telepaths have been so preoccupied with trying to cure Logan that they haven't given much thought to anything else. They know that Scott Jr is gone but in order to find where to, Logan needs to be awake or they need to be able to read his mind more clearly. Jean smiles weakly when she thinks about that…she remembers what Xavier once told her: "If you're gonna read minds I think there are safer places to start than in Logan's".

Suddenly something happens though. Rogue bursts in on them, despite that everyone's been told not to disturb them unless they're being attacked. She quickly assures them that no attack's taken place but that she just had to see how things were going with her own eyes. Before Jean or Xavier's have had time to say that nothing's changed, Logan's stirred a little. No one can answer to why but with Jean and Xavier's help as guides, Logan's able to fight himself out of the darkness where he was.

Once he's out of the groggieness that followed the "coma" he asks "Okay, where is she?"
"Who?" Xavier wonders.
"The woman with the yellow eyes"
"Mystique?"
"No! Unless she's developed some new powers. Like being able to completely hide her scent."
"Well, we'll have to deal with that later. Right now we need to make other plans. We know what Fate said. Apocalypse wants your son to further his own agenda and I think it's safe to say that he now has exactly that. No, Logan. Retract your claws. Save them for a better opponent than some imaginary Apocalypse here. We don't know exactly what he wants with Scott or how he intends to go about it, but we need to find them fast! Both because of your son and to thwart Apocalypse. Jean, I need you to"

That's as long as Xavier got in his sentence before clutching his head in pain, screaming out "Fate! Nooooooooooo!"

Rogue immediately runs forward to him, holding him and trying to comfort him – trying to be there for him as he always was there for her when she needed it. "What's wrong with Fate? Is she dead?" she brings herself to ask when Xavier once again is his usual self.

He just shivers after hearing the question. His voice don't quite hold but he manages to get out one single sentence.

"No, it's worse than that."

The previous night

When Fate left her mind was in an uproar. She felt like she was betraying the trust Charles and the rest of the X-men had put in her. It's not like the feeling is wrong she thought bitterly to herself. When all is said and done this is what it is. She also wondered why she never had told them the truth during all these years. Who she is, what she can really do and what her history is. The feeling of being ashamed? Being afraid of being shunned if it was known? "Too late to do anything about the past" she thinks, "time to make the future a better place" she thinks as she speeds away in speeds almost defying the laws of nature. She knows exactly where she's going and how to get there fast. Just one small detour first…

She doesn't know exactly what she hopes to accomplish though, she only knows that someone has to do something or there's no way of stopping the avalanche. She laughs, remembering what she told Logan once in what feels like eons ago. He had just arrived back from one of his fruitless private missions to find his own past – frustrated as always that it once again was a false lead. The trees in the mansion suffered greatly from his failure which had made Storm threatening to fry him if as much as looked funny at the trees ever again. Fate laughs at that memory too, until she remembers that Storm is lost to them. Tears threaten to start running from her eyes but she refuses to let them – she knows that if they do start running she won't be able to stop crying. She has had too much sorrow recently and during the course of her life to make the tears last a lifetime. She thinks back to what she said to Logan again… "Don't you think it's time to stop the chase? You go around and around in circles, getting nowhere when you have family and friends here that doesn't give a damn about what or who you were in your past? Just stop running! Whatever happened to you is beyond your reach now". She had said far more than that, in anger and disappointment. Anger because she felt he was throwing his life away and disappointment because she had been so sure he had been so much smarter than that. For once though, Logan hadn't bothered to react in anger with being cornered and told off. He had just walked away and maybe he had taken things to heart because his days of disappearing had become much less frequent after that.

Now though…Fate now feels like it had been one of her most embarrassing moments. She hadn't been angry or upset with Logan after all. She knows that now and it had been a better call to start a blazing row with her mirror image. She's guilty herself of exactly the same things she accused Logan of and to an even greater extent.

It's time to stop that. It's time to stop running and face the music.

Several hours later

The ancient warlord looks in disbelief at the woman standing right in front of him. Not only had she been able to penetrate all the safeguards he had put in place to protect himself and his technology she also by all rights should be dead. Moreover, she's wearing the uniform of the X-men. She's successfully hidden herself in the ranks of the very group he thought he knew everything of. He tries to hide his surprise, feelings and getting caught off-guard are the property of the weak after all, but fails utterly.

"My, my. If the mighty Apocalypse doesn't look surprised. " Fate tells him with more than a hint of mocking in her voice. Apocalypse ignores the mocking and decides to drop the charade and play honest with her for a little while – all in the name of trying to draw information out of her.
"Why shouldn't I be, Nephri? You're supposed to be nothing but dust in the deserts of Egypt by now. You died several millennia ago."
"Nothing is ever what it seems to be, is it? For all your powers and scheming over the years you're still nothing more than that insecure slaveboy from ancient Egypt, trying desperately to get even at the world for what happened to you back then. But you're right. Nephri died back then, I'm not the same woman anymore. The name Nephri doesn't mean anything to me anymore."
"If you say so. Be proud of yourself though. You've managed to solve the puzzle of who's been able to give Xavier some information over what kind of adversary he faces, Nephri. Or should I call you Cassandra?"

If Fate hadn't known how thorough Apocalypse could be she would have been shocked that he knew immediately who she now was known as. She doesn't have any time to answer Apocalypse because he immediately continues with "However, that doesn't answer the primary question. Why are you here? I know it's not to be on my side in the upcoming war."
"You got that right. I'm only here to defeat you, it's that simple. And even if I fail at that you'll fail. The infant you wanted is beyond your reach and the old prophecies will not come true."

To her dismay the warlord just roars with laughter. When the laughter has subsided she can hear him saying "Do you really think so? Granted, I do not know what powers you do possess but the powers of Apocalypse are not to be trifled with. As for the infant, that's just a temporary setback. I don't need him immediately and his whereabouts will be revealed with time. Prophecies always come true, Cassandra. You should know that by now. What you might not know, however, is that they need someone to make them come true. In this instance, that's you. I wouldn't have been able to pinpoint the location of Xavier's little band of freedom-fighters without you."

That's when Fate felt the familiar feeling of telepathic probings into the inner recesses of her mind. Not quite as strong as Xavier himself would have been able to do it but strong enough to make her know that she would be unable to resist it for long. She knew she could hide one thing and one thing only to the unstoppable force, that's the extent of her resistive will against it. She had no choice – Scott Jr had to be protected at all costs.

She could only pray that the X-men would be able to fight back when the attack comes. Not if, when.

"You should have watched your steps, Cassandra. Welcome to the end. Your end, sister of mine."

Fate finds herself in the darkest of places, drifting away. She feels the other world appearing. Not the mythical eternal life but the world where Apocalypse reigns. That thought itself fastforwards Apocalyopse's hold on her and it feels like time keeps on running faster towards disaster.

Her last thought before her will became the property of Apocalypse is "And here I was thinking that Logan was the unwilling traitor. God, was I wrong!"

And then there was silence. Her mind being so wiped clean that it's just like a leaf in an icy world – dying with no chance of recovery. Her only comfort, had it been possible for her to feel that way, is that she was able to send a mental distress signal to Charles. They wouldn't be completely defenseless against the merciless warlord.

But how much good would the advance warning do them? Only time would tell and a really short amount of time at that!