"You guys seem awfully certain of yourselves," Avery remarked when Mystique landed the helicopter near the harbor and led him right into New York's underground via an unlocked canal entrance. "Magneto never mentioned that one of you had mental powers back then. What's your plan here? Are you going to erase my memory before you allow me to leave? Or do I have to sign a confidentiality agreement in blood before we get there?"
"That won't be necessary. By the time you go home, you'll be one of us."
His companion elegantly slipped down through the narrow concrete tube, into a disused drainpipe. She pretended not to mind the soft splash with which her bare feet landed on the floor in some liquid thankfully covered by the dark, but Avery didn't miss how she was shuddering once more.
Her arrogance, almost equal to the one he'd adopted himself in the course of the years to keep his environment at the necessary distance, was almost cute. "What makes you so sure?"
Mystique sighed deeply as if the question bored her. "You're not afraid to face one of the most wanted terrorists of our time. You're not afraid of me either, or of flying with me into a territory you're completely unfamiliar with. If you really don't agree with Magneto's proposal, you could leave here without a problem; we all know that. You don't give shit about any of that. But when I mentioned the name Scott Summers earlier, you were trembling."
When that woman was smiling, she looked quite pretty, not to mention that Avery was actually starting to dig her keen powers of observation. Which didn't mean she was suddenly his type though. She was definitely a touch too freaky for his taste for that. But her shape and her mind were quite attractive. A shame, actually, that probably only a handful of people on this planet would ever notice that. "We all have different motives for fighting for the Brotherhood. The reason doesn't matter. Victory does."
Avery shoved his hands deep into his pants pockets and followed the woman down the ramshackle hallway, trying not to pay too close attention to the smelly, moldy surroundings. "If that victory doesn't interest me, I'm of little use to you."
"Wait for it." Mystique's growl began to sound resigned. She was probably finally starting to realize that her leader wasn't going to have as easy a time convincing Avery as surely when he usually lulled his puppets.
"Mutant world offers greater challenges even for someone with your abilities than you can handle on your own. Especially when you're apparently already in over your head with a wet rag like that Cyclops guy. What's that business between you two anyway?"
"None of yours," Avery replied harshly.
"It's good to finally see you again. I was hoping you'd have a little time for us this time." Magneto got up immediately when Avery entered the room.
Avery came to stand straight in front of the guy's massive metal desk, completely ignoring the hand held out to him. No need to be overly polite. Mystique had already gotten a little too nosy for his taste on the way here, which further fueled doubts about whether picking up some admittedly important information was really worth the risk of dealing with these people.
"Make it quick. What am I doing here?"
Magneto didn't bat a lid. He used his – soberly seen quite impressive – powers to pull a chair from the sidewall for Avery, with just a quick movement of one finger. "Sit."
Avery rolled his eyes, increasingly impatient and also restless with every second more than he wanted to admit even to himself, but complied with the request. "Fine, I'm sitting. Start talking."
Mystique came to stand next to her leader, still with that expectant grin on her lips, even though it had begun to twitch a little.
Magneto cleared his throat briefly, trying to appease Avery with a disarming smile. "First of all, thank you for being willing this time ..."
"Which part of 'Make it quick' is so hard to understand? You obviously have problems, otherwise, you wouldn't be looking for new people. For that, you're far too competent on your own. I suppose you want me to help you get something done you can't just tear to pieces. So? Convince me." Avery leaned back and crossed his legs.
Magneto nodded curtly, his lips tight. Avery had seen enough in his life to only be willing to deal with other people for long if they were useful for business in any kind of way; hopefully, that guy had realized that now as well.
"As you know, us mutants, we don't exactly enjoy the greatest popularity on this planet, to say the least. I've been trying to improve our situation for decades. I think by now, there is no doubt that we are the next stage of human evolution. Humans fear us and want to suppress us because they feel that we are far superior to them and that their time is up. We cannot accept that any longer. Which means we are at war, even though most people don't want to admit that yet."
Avery could all but watch his patience scale count downwards in his head. Philosophy of armchair politicians regularly made him switch channels on the evening program already. "You've given me that sermon before, and I've already told you that anyone else's problems aren't mine. And no normal human can give me trouble. So why don't you save us both the time? Why do you think I could suddenly be interested in any of this?"
"Because you need to slow down, whatever you are up to. Some things have changed in the last few years. And you're currently trying to rain on the parade of one of the key players in this whole process. Someone, you're no match for."
Magneto turned the laptop on his desk so Avery could see the monitor. "This is Charles Xavier, a man you should at least recognize from the news. That is if you haven't run into him during the trips you've probably made to Westchester in the last few weeks anyway. He's a mutant with extremely strong telepathic powers. In addition to his school, which serves as little more than a cover for his other schemes, he has created a mutant special unit called the 'X-Men' a long time ago. At this point, just some self-declared peacekeepers. He and his people keep on believing in smooth coexistence between mutants and humans." Magneto snorted in honest contempt. "Charles is a notorious idealist who turns a blind eye to the truth."
Finally a few useful details. His eyes narrowing, Avery leaned forward a little. He had always had a healthy respect for mental abilities. He looked more closely at Xavier's photo, because he had indeed not encountered this guy yet, then quickly clicked through the accompanying file saved on the laptop, which contained several photos of this Mutant High Institution and its students and teachers.
The mansion was indeed even larger and more complicated in design than he had perceived during his brief tours, he found with a scowl. He'd better make sure he could take this data home with him somehow, even if that meant pretending for a few more minutes that he cared what the old man over there was rambling on about. "And the truth is …?"
"The truth is ..." Magneto tapped his fingers, a sadness hard to overlook in his bright eyes. "The truth is that humans will never change. They have always haunted and fought anything different from them. Therefore, we are left with only two options, fight or perish. I prefer the former. The X-Men are lately getting in the way of that more often than I would like. Which means, I assume we have something in common."
He leaned over the desk and reached around the laptop. "It's come to my attention that you know these two people."
A quick touch of the touchpad later, the monitor showed a somewhat blurred picture of a still quite young man in an ill-fitting suit, wearing conspicuous sunglasses with ruby-red lenses. It looked like some kind of public appearance, presumably before some big names of economy and politics who were as bored with the lecture as Avery had been since Mystique showed up at his door earlier. The other photo was newer and obviously came from a newspaper report as well though the image quality was lacking severely. It showed a pretty young woman with waist-length black hair standing in the middle of a thunderstorm; at her feet, there was another, a lifeless mutant with greenish skin and horrible burns.
Avery clenched his fists involuntarily, gasping before he could control himself. Yes, it had been a long day.
"I take that as a yes," Magneto commented. "For some reason, Scott Summers and his recent sidekick are obviously important enough to you to return to a city you're connecting nothing but bad memories with. Whatever your issue with this man is, you'll find that getting to him won't be that easy. For me, however, it is, occasionally. Charles and I go way back. I know him and his people very well. By the way, the mutants who are actively fighting on his team alongside Summers right now or will be joining it soon and whom you'll therefore have to get past, are these people. Storm, Jean Grey, Wolverine, Rogue, Iceman ... And Flashwind, of course."
Avery forced himself to relax his features and not watch Magneto swipe through the respective files of these mentioned people in the database too curiously. If all went well, Avery would be able to look at those at his leisure later that night. That was still early enough to drive himself insane.
He rested his hands on the arms of the chair, leaning back again. "So these are your enemies?"
Magneto raised his shoulders briefly, dropped them again. That didn't seem like a too pleasant subject. "I prefer to call them deluded. Even though they are following Charles, they are still our brothers and sisters. And I haven't completely given up on Charles himself either. One day, all these people will realize I'm right and join me."
Avery focused on his best poker face to avoid letting on how petty and silly this internal fighting sounded to him. The world was about to burn, it had been for years. If someone had the motivation to want to change something, you needed unity; even as someone who had never been interested in any kind of heroism, he knew that.
"A good old family feud, then. You guys ever tried going to therapy together? Or are you rather fantasizing about me reducing that school to rubble for you?"
While there was a suspicious twitch around Magneto's left eye, Mystique braced one hand on her hip with a grin and tilted her head. Jesus, no wonder people in these accommodations were so desperate that they had to turn to mutants like Avery, who mentally had been clinically dead for more than 10 years. These people seemed like they had no fucking idea themselves what they actually wanted.
"None of that. At the moment, I'm busy with work regarding a great victory over humanity, for which I'll need one of these mutants for a while. Flashwind, to be exact. As you can imagine, the girl isn't too thrilled about serving my cause. One of my people is currently in custody, and as much as I hate to admit it: Three of us are no match for the X-Men without risking major casualties."
Avery's mood soured continuously. He had never been any good at dealing with competition. The fact that Magneto and he apparently had the same target unexpectedly complicated things considerably. "And that someone whose face I don't like happens to be in your way more than usual right now is my problem exactly … how? I don't need any help dealing with Summers if the guy is stupid enough to ever piss me off again."
No showing too soon that he wasn't completely averse to entering at least a loose partnership by now. Even if it was just to make life a little easier for himself ... and to make sure, from up close, that the Brotherhood wouldn't get in the way of his own plans.
"No?" His conversation partner couldn't be provoked so easily either. He tossed Avery a thin folder, neatly bound in black leather. "Easier to read than on the monitor. As I said, even you would have trouble challenging Summers on your own straight on. Especially if you don't want it to go public that you are a mutant yourself, after successfully keeping that a secret for so many years."
Avery did the old man the favor of at least skimming the sheets with the X-Men's data already before an extensive study later.
He had to admit to himself that this group was indeed not made up of amateurs. Telekinesis, telepathy, double weather control, unlimited self-healing ...
And then the skin-reactionary powers. A young girl, not even really of age, equipped with arguably one of the most powerful gifts ever, but unable to control this mutation.
For a moment Avery paused, remembering the time when he himself had not known how to control what he had been given, back when he had had to see the bodies of his parents. Not an easy life. In any case, the woman would make an interesting enemy, should he ever actually meet her on a battlefield for some reason. No matter how little he cared for other people, usually, he tried not to drag anyone into his business. In this case, his suspicions were growing by the minute though that he'd be given no choice.
"Impressive."
"Unfortunately," Magneto agreed. "But controllable if we unite our forces. Why work toward the same thing alone at great expense when we can accomplish it together far more easily?"
Avery shut the folder demonstratively. "I don't think that we want the same thing."
"Not exactly, but our goals aren't necessarily mutually exclusive either." Someone like Magneto wasn't that quick to take no for an answer; Avery already knew the game, too.
Yet something crucial had changed since their last encounter. It had something to do with that knowing, repulsively sympathetic expression on Magneto's wrinkled face.
Apparently, with his hasty return to New York and his impatience, which was so uncharacteristic for him anyway, Avery had acted too conspicuous to try to keep certain things under wraps any longer. "You don't even know mine."
"You want to take revenge for what Summers did to you, that's not hard to guess. With me, you'll get a chance to try that without risking too much damage yourself." At least this time there was none of that hypocritical shame from earlier about Magneto apparently not being afraid to attack his brothers and sisters when it suited him.
"You don't even ask for the exact motivation when you use a man to target someone who's supposed to be just deluded?" Avery wanted to know at least how much Magneto really suspected.
"That's not for me to know." At least once in this conversation, Magneto spoke a true word. "I don't condone attacking Charles' people unprovoked, but what went down between Cyclops and you clearly has a longer history than this recent conflict and is therefore out of my area of responsibility. Babysitting is more Charles' specialty anyway. I don't meddle in my people's private affairs. Especially not in such hatred as yours. Something like that doesn't come out of nowhere; that much is for sure. I should know." Magneto smiled faintly. "I hate humanity as much as you hate this man."
"What has humanity done to you personally that is so terrible?" It wasn't the most clever diversion, but it would hopefully be enough to drop that other painful subject. Showmen like Magneto could always be baited by feigning enthusiasm for their causes.
His counterpart promptly shook his head, looking dismissive. "You and I don't know each other that well by a long shot. But that can change – if you help me against Charles. Wouldn't you like to annoy the man a little who took Summers off the street and made him the hero he is now? Or the girlfriend of your nemesis?"
Mystique was all but holding her breath; Avery could see it out of the corner of his eye. Her leader had played all his cards.
Now Avery had to make a decision.
He thoughtfully skimmed the files in front of him once more. Finally, he gave himself a push and looked up. It was a small risk, a calculable one. Without a little support, he might have spent months setting up the arrangements for his plans. Once those were carried out, it would be easy to get rid of the Brotherhood again.
"And you can guarantee that I remain undetected as a mutant, right?"
Magneto visibly relaxed. "Of course. Hiding is something we're used to here."
"Then you have a new employee."
"Wonderful! Thank you." They shook hands briefly across the desk.
"Mystique, Sabretooth, and I will be happy to show you how to use your powers most effectively. I'm sure we'll make a good team."
"Just so we're clear, I need my freedom," Avery immediately curbed this bubbly enthusiasm. "So don't expect me to move into this cesspool."
"That's entirely your decision," Magneto gave back patronizingly. "Mystique will give you a communicator in a minute, so we can stay in touch anytime. Any other requests?"
Avery pointed to the folder that had done its part to change his mind about working with the Brotherhood. "Do you still work with smoke signals and fax machines in this dump, or does this come as an e-mail attachment?"
'Hold ... Stay right in this spot. Don't drift.'
'I can't ...'
'You can. You've done it more than once. Use the darkness behind your eyes. Squeeze them shut. Harder. Do you see the lights?'
'Yes ...'
'Focus on them. Track them with your gaze. Your mind is like a map you can follow. The light shows you the way. Don't lose sight of it. You feel that? You're already feeling much calmer. Don't forget this light. It can save your life and the lives of others. Let's go back. Drop your defenses, just a little. What do you see?'
'My mother. Old friends. The Alps.' A pained expression darkened Katja's face that she could almost feel, her mind distracted from the mental conversation with her teacher when homesickness tried to wash over her like a tsunami.
Sadness, endless yearning. Her mother's loving soul, so often being overprotective. The enthusiastic gesticulating of her late father as he explained new dance steps to Katja. He and she had looked so much alike ... Melancholy songs at his grave, heavy rain that had made the funeral an even more depressing event.
The peaceful silence at the cemetery that had sometimes made the tears easier. When she turned around, she could see the rest of her beloved home in the mountains right in front of her, the crystal clear sky above the peaks on foehn days. She could make out every jag of the glaciers, every grove of trees.
Exuberant celebrations at the turn of summer. Dancing to folk music. Katja's room in her mother's house. Posters of her favorite actors on the walls. A circle of friends who, thanks to Katja's last partner being unfaithful and then her mutation happening, had unfortunately left before Katja could really have become a part of it. Hateful e-mails from the same people after Katja's powers had become public. Similar scathing side-glances at college. Rejection, scorn ...
Anger ...
'Careful.' Jean's admonishing voice made its way through those vivid images in her memory even before a loud rumble outside in the sky revealed that Katja had let herself go too far. 'The light, Flashwind.'
'I see it.' Katja took a deep breath and repeated the exercise Jean had already taught her at the very beginning, which was helping her more and more often to contain the effect of her powers, to focus exclusively on that faint glow of positive thoughts inside her.
'Your control is getting better.' An encouraging squeeze around her hand made her blush. 'You need to stop being afraid of your feelings. You can't keep ignoring those images. You must learn to turn them on and off independently instead. Otherwise, you'll be all the more defenseless when they assault you in weak moments. Allow them in for a few minutes, again and again, even the bad ones, and then consciously occupy yourself with other things. This is not always easy. Suppression can be comfortable, I know that from experience. But you can't afford that luxury anymore. That's pretty unfair, I know.'
'Others have harder fates to deal with. I'll keep it in mind.' It wasn't going to be pleasant to let her past into her life on a regular basis after running for so long, but Katja didn't have a choice. She didn't want to have to completely turn her emotions off all her life.
'Will you show me a little more? Don't be afraid. I'll bring you back if it gets too bad.'
Katja hesitated for a moment. It was very personal things from her life that she sometimes revealed to Jean in such sessions. Things she was often ashamed of, things that made her uncomfortable. But those also were part of her and had to remain alive if Katja didn't want to endanger people with her powers because some silly song on the radio or a particularly distinctive smell unexpectedly stimulated her subconsciousness.
And Jean would never have revealed anything to anyone about what she was mentally seeing and hearing here in Scott's and Katja's apartment. In that regard, Katja trusted her completely.
Not least because a connection like the one the two of them shared here was always mutual in a certain way, at least in the case of Jean, who did not have her mental powers under control quite as well as Charles yet. Which meant, every now and then, Katja too saw something in her mind that her friend one hundred percent had not wanted to share so openly. Like a blurry section, barely a split second long, of two naked bodies in the dawn's early light, entangled in an intimate embrace, one of them extremely strong and slightly stocky; strong, hairy arms wrapped around Jean's fragile waist, the echo of an animalistic growl at her friend's ear ... But there were also snippets of memory that Katja saw from time to time that couldn't be half as nice, like of the same two mutants in the same bed just moments after that intimate encounter apparently; a glance, this time veiled by compassion and concern, at a bare, broad, quivering back, the flash of deadly claws that had cut deep into the mattress in a dream, just inches from Jean's leg. A far more aggressive, uncontrolled growl this time, followed by a gasping sound of helplessness, of hopelessness, when Jean wrapped her arms tightly around this man who was sometimes guided so much by his instincts, and who did not even seem to frighten her in such moments.
If her friend wasn't afraid to reveal such inadvertently shared glimpses to Katja, images that Scott for example was better off not seeing if it shouldn't cause major trouble between Logan and him right again, Katja didn't want to put up unnecessary walls in return either.
Not around things that were long in the past anyway. Not when such mental journeys back to her youth would hopefully ensure in the long run that she could no longer endanger anyone around her, something that Jean was no doubt trying to do for her own partner with the same persistence.
So Katja let her thoughts wander back to where they had just been, to her home. To her difficult, lonely childhood. The unwillingness to go to school, every day again, where only exclusion and mockery were waiting.
The anger of disappointment, like on the day when Katja had learned that she had not made it into the national gymnast team because the overly ambitious father of a competitor had bought her place. Thinking about it, that, too, had been an afternoon marked by a violent thunderstorm. Some things apparently had been haunting her all her life already.
Again, that first clique that she'd finally had as a young adult then, people so different from the rest of the villagers. Where all the members had always worn torn and exclusively black clothes, had listened to not exactly melodious music that was more screamed than sung, and where everyone had been sure, the world would soon end, demotivated by broken homes and a miserable economic situation. These people had celebrated darkness because they had had nothing else, and Katja had let herself be carried away by that after her father's death more than she'd ever wanted to. That had even turned things that were actually enjoyable, like a first serious relationship, into a disaster.
Katja startled when she saw a silver knife with a medieval-style handle flash in her mind. The day she had learned about her now ex-boyfriend's betrayal and almost suffered a particularly shameful relapse because of this idiot, of all people. A half-blunt blade seeking its way over a pale, thin arm already showing some faded traces of this kind, again and again, the temptation not overwhelming but still great to let it penetrate sensitive skin, just a little, then in another place, crossing the first cut ...
There was no thunder this time, no lightning, but the sudden rain on an afternoon so beautiful so far also revealed that the control over your own soul was not so simple after all. Especially when it came to a time that by now, Katja could only look back at with a stunned shake of her head at her own stupidity.
'It's all right.' Jean stroked the back of her hand comfortingly because Katja's cheeks were already glowing again. 'Many in this house have been at this very point as teenagers, believe me. Let it happen and concentrate. It's over. Look into the light and think about something else. Was that your father I saw earlier? You were already born on a dancefloor, weren't you?'
'Not quite.' Now Katja could at least smile again, and for that alone she would have liked to hug Jean right now, not to mention this easy understanding of something Katja had hidden from her until now.
'He was a choreographer at the State Theater. When Mom got pregnant, he gave up the job so he could be there for us more. Finances were a bit more complicated then, but it was enough for our own house countryside. Mom never cared much for dancing, so he put me to work on that before I could barely even walk. Sometimes, we went to balls in the capital. Nobody knew me at those, and they all still loved him there. They all wanted to dance with him, but he almost only asked me to. On such nights, everything was fine for a while.'
A gentle touch on her cheek made her realize that this time it wasn't only her heart growing heavy that was displaying her sadness out into the open. 'Fuck, I miss him, Jean. Fucking cancer. If Dad was still around, at least Mom wouldn't be so alone right now.'
'We'll make sure she can come to visit you soon, Flashwind. I promise.'
It sounded sincere, and after Jean had given her another gentle mental nudge in the right direction and Katja was able to return to rhythmic samba steps and colorful lights instead of a simple tombstone in front of her inner mind's eye, the sun outside quickly came through again. The lesson wasn't over yet by a long shot.
There was still much to do, but with each of these sessions, more hope began to stir in Katja that she was not as completely helpless in terms of using her powers as she had initially thought.
Now that she was possibly having another enemy out there in addition to the Brotherhood, that was more important than ever.