Six Seeds, Part 6 B

By Mice

Epilogue

Sadly, for Persephone, victims rarely get to use their own voice to explain what really happened.

-1-

July 10th, Two Years Later

Annie stared at the toilet in disbelief. "How long hath it been like thith, Tom?" Her lisp was uncomfortable to her own ears, but she needed to exude authority, and she did by staring into the boys eyes directly, letting him know that she could kick his ass at any moment. It was all part of her job as the maintenance "man" of the apartment complex.

"Well, about three days..." Tom, on of the UCLA students in apartment 325 shrugged in his Ambercombie and Fitch hoodie, trying to muster up some charm in spite of the situation that was in front of them. "We thought maybe it would just go away..."

Annie looked at him, bored by the act. He and his roommates, Rich and Steve, had been taunting her for the past three months to go on a date with them. When she turned them down, they asked if she would at least buy some alcohol for them at the liquor store down the street. Sadly, the three boys were the least of her troubles.

The toilet chose that moment to break the silence as a large bubble rose to the surface. "Let me thpend a few momenth with it, Tom."

Tom inched his way out of the room as Annie took out her tool chest. She had the traditional tools in there; pliers, screwdrivers, a hammer, and so on. There was one tool in there that interested Tom. "You have a Gameboy?"

Annie got out the rest of the technological tool. "It'th more of a Gamegirl."

Tom's roommate Rich came in. "Hey, Annie, you have a visitor. Come in the living room."

"What?" She headed out. "Thith better not be like the time when you guys took off your panth and--"

"No, you yelled at us plenty for that. And Tom wasn't able to hold an erection for a month."

"Shut up, Rich! I could, too!"

Annie walked into the living room and saw a filth covered man with a bad haircut on their couch. "Thith ith my vithitor? Not likely. I like people who bathe."

Before she could leave the room, Rich grabbed her arm. "No, he asked for you by name!"

"Tho? A lot of people know my name."

"Just...talk to him. Trust me."

Annie rolled her eyes as she went to the couch. "Hello."

"Annie?" the man asked. His voice did sound familiar.

"Yeth."

"Angina Peckenpaugh?"

Annie felt a bit scared by the man's knowledge of her first name. "How did you know that?"

The man never directly looked at her, but reached out to touch her hand. "I need your help."

-2-

May 17th, Two Years Prior

Her stomach was black and blue and her throat ached. After the long day Annie had had, confronting Emily wasn't the nightcap she was looking for.

"You took me apart and then tried to put me back together...does this look right to you, Annie?" Emily motioned at herself. There were sections of her body where skin should be, but it was only an exposed section of techno-organic flesh. Annie was quite used to the site, but having it animated and moving was quite another experience.

"What..." Annie rasped, "Do you want from me?"

"You should have killed me, Annie. I was at a weak spot. My emotions were ceasing, but with you prodding around my body all week, something came back." Emily smiled. It wasn't the usual polite smile Annie recalled her having, and that frightened her a bit. "I hated you before, Annie. But now, I really hate you." Emily punched Annie in the jaw, causing her teeth to close shut in a quick matter. A bit of her tongue was caught unaware in it and was bitten off. Annie sat bruised with her mouth slowly filling up with blood. She opened her mouth to speak, but felt the blood dribble out from the side of her mouth and thought differently.

Emily cupped her face and made her look up. "All you used to do was read. Hank made you read, and read in hopes that that was all it took for you to learn. Did that work? Do you remember all the text you read?"

Annie nodded reluctantly.

Emily withdrew a small, torn off piece of paper. "How much do you love your boyfriend?"

Annie refused to answer.

"Do you even love him?"

Annie nodded.

"Tell me how much you love him."

Annie began to tear up, afraid to try to talk to her.

Emily slapped her across the face. "Open up your mouth, Angina, and tell me how much you love your boyfriend!"

"A...lot. I love him a lot." The cool air in the room and her breath stung in her mouth as she talked.

"Do you know him well?"

Annie tried to nod again, but Emily made a motion to slap her before she could. "I uthed to think tho." The speech hurt her ears. She hoped it wasn't permanent.

"You saw his note?"

"Yeth."

Emily held up the torn sheet of paper in Annie's line of sight. "Read it for me."

Annie let her tears fall as she stumbled through the text. "'Lorna Dane. I raped Lorna Dane. Lorna begged me to thop, but I ignored her. Lorna wanted Alex and they were together, but Lorna didn't tell me that. I found out on my own and I took advantage of the thituation."

"Isn't there more?"

Annie shook her head as she made her way to the second part. "Jubilee. I raped her. I completely took advantage of her when I wath drunk. I didn't care if Jubilee liked it or not, I jutht fucked her."

"And?"

Annie didn't want to look at it. She saw her name and that was enough. She shook her head, and braced herself for the hit.

To her surprise, Emily took the paper and brought it to her eyes. "Don't worry, I don't think I can stand to hear you butcher another syllable. And this is my favorite part." Emily grinned at her before going on. "Annie."

"He didn't rape me," she said pointedly, worrying about what Bobby had to say about her, and still not wanting to believe the confessional. If he claimed to have raped her, than Bobby didn't rape Lorna or Jubilee. That meant he was still a good man, albeit a bit messed up.

"It doesn't say he did." She gave a dramatic pause before moving on. "According to this, he thinks that you're abusive and shallow. That you use him because you need someone there to always hold your hand. 'She never wanted me, she only wanted my best friend,'" Emily read out loud. "'The only night I made her come was when we were horribly drunk.'"

Annie nodded at that. She had hoped Bobby didn't notice and she had lied to him about his performance.

"This is my favorite line, and I'm surprised Robert is this poetic, 'Recently, her cunt has tasted like raw sewage.'"

Annie winced. Bobby wasn't the type to be so crude. In fact, he only told dirty jokes when drunk.

"'Sometimes, I picture that it's Jubilee underneath me and not her.'"

"You're lying," Annie said to her, thankful for the lack of s's.

Emily showed her the paper. "What do you think?"

Annie knew that Emily could probably duplicate his handwriting, if all her motor functions were working correctly. Annie looked at the way Emily was holding the paper -- thumb and fingers working in a primitive fashion, and decided that wasn't the case.

"I think I thould have killed you when I had the chanth." With that, Annie ran at Emily.

-3-

July 10th, Two Years Later

Bobby sketched the patio for the second time that month. The last rehab clinic he was in, he sketched the patio forty-seven times. This sketch would be the fourteenth in his series. Three a month. He had one more to go to mark his fifth month anniversary.

"Fuck me, Bobby Drake, is that you?"

Bobby turned around and found a woman clad in black and maroon with obviously dyed black hair pinned up with white lily. Her eyelids were encircled with black make up which also encrusted her eyelashes. They eyes themselves were bloodshot. She was a patient here, though one he hadn't seen before. She did look horribly familiar, though.

"Drake, you don't remember me?" Her Long Island accent came through a little stronger this time, and he tried to think back.

"Did we go to school together or...?"

"Yeah!" She tapped him on the shoulder. "Maybe this will help your fucked up memory." She turned around so all he could see was the back of her head. She then raised her hand and spoke, "Mrs. Moultan, Bobby's picking his nose and wiping them in my hair!"

Bobby's eyes went wide. "Darlene Danuck!"

She turned around and grinned. "You remembered! But shut it about that Darlene shit, okay? People call me Dahlia now."

"I would have graduated right next to you in high school..." Bobby smiled at the thought of never being with the X-Men. The more time he was here, the more it was possible to believe it never happened.

"Yeah, instead I had to sit next to Howard Fankle. I hated you for that."

"You thought of me on graduation? I'm touched." Bobby had always wondered who missed him.

"I was kind of glad though - last I saw of you was in freshman year and you had that weird mullet thing happening with a Vanilla Ice jacket."

"Vanilla Ice was cool."

"Only to white boys like you from Long Island." Dahlia motioned to a seat in front of him. "Have time for an old friend?"

"I have nothing but time."

-4-

May 17th, Two Years Prior

Bobby opened up his Altoid tin as he went back to the pool. Hank had left to go back to bed, leaving him alone. He touched the water in the pool, remembering watching Jubilee go in and out. He swallowed two pills to help it go away.

He had been drinking all day, feeling sorry for himself. He had written many things that day, and some of the stranger ones were letters that begun to their respective women with, "I can only tell you this when drunk. I am a bit in love with you." He usually got out one or two out when he was drunk -- he had three shoe boxes full of them. Later in the night, he wrote more and the truth on the paper startled him.

Somewhere in all the confessionals, he had begun to remember some things about his Aunt Hollis.

A few weeks after he had caught his aunt and father together, he woke up to find Hollis standing over him. He had been asleep and to see her there suddenly had frightened him. When he attempted to scream, she clamped her hand down over his mouth. She whispered hateful things to him as he slowly felt something go around his neck. Hollis slowly tightened with what he later found out was her belt. He remembered feeling her hatred in a way he couldn't anymore. He remembered her laugh as she exclaimed that he was turning blue.

And that's when he heard the belt go snap. It broke in two. He remembered his aunt looking horrified at the belt and exclaiming how cold it was.

That was the first time Bobby had frozen anything.

Bobby looked at the pool once more, not happy with the memory. He weighed his options of going back in the mansion and up to his room to be alone. Or to go into Annie's room and have another bad fuck.

Or he could go for a swim.

-5-

July 10th, Two Years Later

"I'm not lying your wet spot."

"It's totally you're turn."

"You always say it's my turn!"

"And I'm always right." Jubilee grinned at her lover as she shifted her space in bed. "Besides, I have to lay down on my wet spot."

Marissa groaned. "Yeah, but I always gush out rivers. You're more...contained."

"That's a little frank."

"Oh, you're talking to me about bluntness? When I met you, you told me that I wasn't to fall in love with you under any circumstances, as hard as it may be."

"And you haven't, and I'm proud of you, Marissa."

She rolled her eyes. "Like it's so hard, Billie. Every time you come over, I always have to vacuum three times because of all the crumbs you leave behind. You're too annoying to love."

"Oh, you know it's worth it! You're sleeping with the captain of the gymnastics team at UCLA! I know things! You think that Scott Meyers is going around with a grin on his face all day because he got a good grade in his chem lab?"

Marissa shook her head. "I find it hard to believe that there was ever a time when you weren't fucking everything that moved."

Jubilee laughed. "Yeah, it's called "the time before I was born"." Just then, her cell phone rang. She grabbed it and answered it. "What?" Jubilee nodded and "uh huh'd" into the phone a few times before saying "good-bye". She then got up and started to put back on her clothes.

"Billie?"

"I've got to go, Marissa. My roommate is having some sort of crisis."

"Will I see you again soon, Billie?"

Jubilee shrugged. "We'll see."

-6-

May 17th, Two Years Prior

Jubilee stared at the ceiling as Harpo rolled over. That was something she had never expected herself to do. She couldn't imagine girls younger than herself doing that and more. She couldn't imagine girls who had started out having sex at around fourteen doing that. Not only was her front sore, now, but so was her backside.

She slowly slipped off the bed, put on some clothes, and stumbled out the door. Someone was always up in the mansion, she figured. Someone has to know if this ever gets better.

Not even two steps down the hall, she saw Annie struggling down it, dragging something behind her. "Annie?"

Jubilee didn't expect her answer her. She especially didn't think she was going to answer with, "Tho, he raped you."

The lisp caught her a bit off guard, but she felt best not to mention it. "No. We both took advantage of a situation. I can think for myself."

Her eyes never left Jubilee's. "He raped Lorna Dane."

Jubilee felt her stomach fall. "What?" She wanted to dismiss it, but the more she thought back to her conversation with Bobby earlier, the more it made sense. "Shit. So that's what he was going on about." Jubilee turned her eyes away and looked at what Annie was dragging. It was a large, slightly bloody, mass of machinery. "What's that?"

Annie held up some of it with what looked like human hair. "My thethith."

-7-

July 10th, Two Years Later

Hank McCoy sat in his lab, looking at his e-mail expectantly. Since she had left, they had written a lot. To his sadness, it was all chaste exchanges from her end. For his part, he tried to pepper his with plenty of innuendo. She in turn would respond and call him a tease. He told her it was one of his finer traits, or so Trish Tilby had told him. His ex-girlfriend Trish Tilby, the stressed.

She never responded to that.

He had encouraged her to call him, but she was against the very idea. He didn't press it too hard. She had asked him for a picture and he had refused. The last time she saw him, he was furry and blue, but had still looked somewhat like a man. Now, he was a giant cat that women stayed away from in droves...unless to pet him chastely.

He hit the "send and receive" button on his e-mail program once more and he found it there. To his sadness, though, it was very brief:

"Hank,

...what do you do with alternate timeline X-Men?

Annie"

-8-

May 17th, Two Years Prior

Hank finished cleaning his dishes before deciding to take a walk outside. He had much planned for tomorrow, as he had talked to the Professor about Annie and they had agreed that she had done enough work to graduate. They thought it was a nice touch for it to be on Annie's birthday. He had planned much of the days festivities, all the while planning to hang in the background so she and Bobby could spend time together.

Hank felt that it was important that his role in Annie's life diminish. He was even thinking of taking up residence in an alternate lab in New York. Have his own version of Walden Pond, but with a lab.

He also felt that it was important to ask her to change her mind one last time.

Hank had spent all of the previous night trying to compose a letter to sway her thinking. He knew she wouldn't go with him, but he had to try one last time.

Hank stopped by the pool as he noticed the ripples were acting a bit crazy. He stood at the edge and felt a freezing splash of water on his feet. "Bobby?" Hearing no response, Hank looked around the immediate surroundings. He was about to shake it off until he looked in the pool and saw his friend sunk at the bottom.

Hank took off his robe and dived in. The cold water hit him hard as he saw the source of it; Bobby had enveloped himself in a thin sheet of ice.

Hank grabbed his ice covered friend and went up to the surface where the ice had begun to break up. Bobby was completely blue, and not in the way he usually was. It was a blue due to a lack of breathing.

-9-

Annie banged on the door to Xavier's study. She knew he was still up, she could see the light. That didn't stop Jubilee from trying to dissuade her.

"This will all go over better in the morning."

"I don't want to wait until morning, Jubilee, I want it over with now!"

"We could go see Scott--"

Annie shook her head. "The Profether." Annie swore in her head. She hoped she wouldn't have to avoid the letter "s" for the rest of her life.

The door opened and Annie and Jubilee went in. Xavier looked at her with a bit of shock. "Annie?"

Usually when Annie talked to Xavier, her part was comprised of mostly "Yes, sir" and "No, sir". Not tonight. She threw Emily's body on his desk, stared at him and said, "I've finithed my thethith. My project wath a failure. But I've finithed my thethith. Now, I want to graduate, right now--"

"We can do this tomorrow--"

"No!" Annie shouted. "I want your word that I've graduated here tonight. And I want to leave here tonight."

Xavier let out a breath. "Ann, you can't leave because of one bad experience. You have to--"

Annie began to cry again. "I don't want to be here anymore, thir!"

Xavier allowed himself a small glimpse into her mind. His mouth deepened into a frown. "All right."

Jubilee stepped up. "You can't let her go alone, Professor."

Annie and the Professor almost spoke in unison. "Jubilee--"

"Seriously. Let me tag along with her so she doesn't get into anymore trouble." Jubilee looked at the Professor, silently pleading. She mouthed, "I can't stay here and I can't go back."

"Annie?" Xavier turned to her. "Would you mind Jubilee's company?"

In any other situation, this would call for a quip. All three knew it. All three ignored the calling for it.

-10-

July 10th, Two Years Later

Jubilee stomped up the steps to her apartment. She unlocked the door and yelled, "This better be good, Annie. I mean, this better be a REAL emergency!" Jubilee looked in the living room and didn't see anybody. She walked over to Annie's room. "Did you hear me, Peckenpaugh? I said--"

Annie poked her head through her bathroom. "Be quiet! You'll wake him up!" She motioned for Jubilee to come in.

"Him? We have a him? Wait, you have a him? I thought you were a nun now, that--" Jubilee stopped as she saw a man in Annie's bathtub, fully clothed. "Mary Tyler Moore, who is that?"

Annie reached into her overalls and withdrew a patch and handed it to Jubilee. "Look familiar?"

Jubilee nodded. "It's the X-Men symbol. That doesn't mean--"

"He altho hath it tattooed in a plathe I don't want to talk about." Annie rolled her eyes. "I think we have an alternate timeline X-Man."

"Fuck!" Jubilee exclaimed. "You see? LA gets all the weirdoes."

To Be Concluded.