Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction based on products and properties of Marvel Comics. No material profit is expected or intended.

Ashes of Chaos: Break of Dawn
by Jaya Mitai and Persephone Chapter 14

Rahne dumped the light load into the washer, pausing to fish out the bras and put them in a zippered netting bag to keep them from getting tangled around the light khakis. Moira had gone back to sleep after her shower, she must have been exhausted, and Rahne was glad -- and just maybe her conversation with Stryfe had gotten through. He hadn't said much this morning, only asked her what was in the oatmeal that made it taste the way it did.

He hadn't had cane sugar, in his future?

Shaking her head, she reached up for the detergent. What could his future have been like, if he hadn't had cane sugar? What had he eaten, and would he tell her? Perhaps some more traditional meals would set him at ease? He'd been positively wary of the oatmeal, as if he expected it to leap out of the bowl and attach itself to his face like some sort of parasite...

No, that was ridiculous. Oatmeal-shaped parasites.

She poured exactly a cup in -- they still hadn't called for supplies, she'd better do it this afternoon -- and was screwing the cap on when the scent of the unscented detergent caught her attention. It smelled like detergent, yes, but...

Curiously, she started the washer and carried the detergent with her, downstairs, to the second set of washing appliances, and got out the stepping-stool. She reached overhead, opening the wooden cabinet, and pulled out an identical bottle. They were both the same in labels, down to the flavor and sequence in which the ingredients were labeled. But...

The smell was faintly different. She shifted further into wolf-form, sniffing again at the nauseatingly sweet smell of them, and... no, it wasn't her imagination. The formula was different, and that might very well be the problem, since she was still using an older bottle upstairs, and the one downstairs had been recently changed...

She capped them both, remembering which was which, and headed immediately to Stryfe's room, where she could hear Moira talking. They'd both be thrilled, she was sure, and at least they could finally make Stryfe more comfortable...

"... A want to see ye laugh because something made ye happy." Rahne stopped at the doorway, hesitating, as Moira went on in a very... gentle voice. "A want to see ye doing normal things, like shopping at the grocery store and falling in love with soome fair lady an' living in a nice house that ye bought fuir pocketchange and fixed up yuirself..."

Rahne smiled in the shadow of the doorway. So Moira had finally gotten Stryfe to open up, had she? Though she couldn't quite picture some of those... Still, she knew better than to disturb her when she was making progress, and started to back away, silently, still shifted into wolf-form enough to have sideburns and slightly pointed ears to walk that softly. It could wait until Moira left the room, at any rate... and she should probably get all his sheets today and do the wash, get rid of it as soon as possible.

She paused outside Moira's lab, then backtracked for the detergent. They might want to find out which particular ingredient Stryfe was allergic to, just for knowing's sake.... It was only because she was in a slightly transitional form that she heard Stryfe's bitter voice.

"Somehow, I don't think Apocalypse is the reason I can barely move, woman."

She hesitated again. Moira could handle herself with a rude Stryfe just fine, she was sure, but perhaps it would keep both of them from snapping again if she was in there? Moira would watch her mouth, that was certain... and this didn't count as therapy. She was more than halfway down the hall before she heard Stryfe raise his voice.

"If you're trying to help, you're doing a poor job!"

She shook her head, angrily. Onto the same argument! He knew better, he was trying to anger her on purpose! What end did that serve? Much as she wanted to walk in, she hesitated again. Moira might be able to head this off on her own, and furthermore, if she had learned of the conversation yesterday, Moira might be angry for her interference.

And she lingered in the doorway, just listening.

"Ye -- och, A wouldnae hae pegged ye for an idiot! If I wanted to harm ye, do ye nae think I'd hae managed it by now! Not that ye wouldnae deserve it," she growled. "But 'tis my place to be healing ye. 'First do no harm,' I swore, and I do the best I can to carry it out as a doctor!" She sounded angry, now, and Rahne winced, made up her mind to walk in, started -

"'First do no harm,'" he said mockingly, though the words caught hoarsely in his throat. "Magneto. Proteus, for that matter. Can you say you didn't harm them? Your oath is shattered; you're worse than the healer-torturers Apocalypse employed; at least they acknowledged what they really did!"

Rahne instantly darted back, unable to keep her gasp contained, and prayed in the sudden silence they hadn't heard her. What he'd just said... she wouldn't be surprised if Moira hit him. How could he be so cruel?? You didn't have to be a telepath to know that throwing her own son in her face would hurt her -- how could he have said that to her?!

"If ye have pain, don't hesitate to press the grey button," she heard Moira say, and before she could safely scuttle away, Moira had already covered half the distance to the door. Knowing she was going to get caught either way, Rahne shifted into a nearly human form and tried not to look too guilty as Moira came around the door.

Moira's eyes were not shining with unwept tears, but Rahne could smell the guilt and pain rolling off the woman. Anger, too, and it only sharpened at seeing her. "Ye ken better than to listen in when I'm talking to patients, Rahne," she snapped, already moving to go around her, and Rahne hid her hurt and flinch as quickly as she could. Moira didn't mean it, she thought to herself firmly. She was just upset that I heard what that . .. that monster had said to her.

Moira did pause, not apologizing but putting her hand on Rahne's shoulder, giving it a little squeeze before she headed down the hall, her carriage conflicting with her scent. Och, Moira...

Rahne stayed there, until after Moira had retreated to a lab, caught between going to the woman and hugging her and going into the room she was just outside of and strangling the patient that had dared to hurt her so terribly. Had she been speaking to a wall, yesterday? Was he really no better, just a bitter man, out to do whatever damage he could, even bedbound?

But his scent was just as anxious, and hurt, and scared, more frightened than he had been for several days. What on earth was the man thinking? She wanted to go in there and shake him until he told them what was frightening him so, make him understand that Moira only wanted to help him! She turned in frustration, unsure what to do, and caught sight of the detergent, sitting on the washing machines. And she headed to the lab.

* * * * * * *

Precise, measured steps carried Moira briskly through the corridors to her work laboratory. She was aware of Rahne, still almost huddled against the outside of Stryfe's doorway, but only in the back of her mind. She turned the corner, so close her sleeve brushed the edge of the wall and the corner of her lab coat slapped against it. Reaching the door, she pivoted slightly and held out her hands before her.

Very deliberately, Moira uncurled each of her fingers from her fists, and massaged the cramps from each before rubbing at the red indentations where her nails had dug into the flesh of her palm. The skin was unbroken on her left hand; on her right, two of the crescents had slits in one layer at the inner curve, the deepest part. No blood.

She turned the handle and pulled the door open. It fell shut behind her as she crossed to a cabinet and, for safety's sake, applied a thin polymer bandage that sealed off the wound.

Magneto. Proteus for that matter. The words echoed in her mind.

What about Magneto? What about Proteus?

The door opened again as she smoothed the bandage and reached for the box of latex gloves.

"Mum, I dinna mean --"

She could not deal with this right now. "Ye went listening at doors and ye dinna like what ye heard."

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Rahne lower her head slightly. She'd hurt the girl, she knew it, but....

Rahne sighed softly. "I dinna plan to eavesdrop, and I'm sorry. Is there anything I can do to help now?"

"Ye can get out of my way. I hae work to do." Her voice was brusque, the words too harsh. The lump in her dry throat threatened to choke off words entirely.

What about Proteus?

"Mum, I ken he upset ye, but --"

"Then ye ken I donnae care to discuss it!" she snapped, brushing past the girl to reach the other side of the laboratory and picking up a clean, narrow, spatula to transfer a few flecks of what she hoped was finally a purified compound into an NMR tube. She had a whole series of separated substances to test, isolated samples arrayed neatly in a line under the hood.

Rahne watched for a moment in silence, then set down a bottle of detergent she was carrying for some reason, and began at the other end of the row. As the younger woman carefully finished a third preparation, Moira glanced to the side and whirled on her.

"That's the wrong solvent. I'll have to redo those." She had enough to do, and far too much to think about, without this. Moira splayed her fingers flat against a counter as they tried to curl up again.

"It's the standard one I used," Rahne protested.

"That's nae right for this. Would ye kindly either think or ask before ye do?" She wasn't being fair, and her heart ached with that knowledge too as her daughter's lips tightened and paled.

"I'm sorry, Mum." She pecked Moira lightly on the cheek. "If ye'll excuse me...."

The door swung again, and as it softly closed Moira turned back, discarded the botched samples and cleaned the tubes automatically.

What about Proteus? What about Kevin?

She kept working.

* * * * * * *

Rahne excused herself in a murmur, giving Moira a quick kiss on the cheek before she slipped out and into the hallway and closed the door gently. Once safely out of sight, she began walking more quickly, shoulders tense, until she was nearly running as she entered her own room and shut her door with force just short of a slam.

"Laird, grant me patience with both of them and if Ye dinna mind I think I'll be needing it verra quickly."

The rapid-fire request for "More patience, right now, please!" made the girl half-smile at herself as she flopped down to a kneeling position beside her bed and put her head down on her clasped hands. She continued, no more softly -- she'd been muttering half under her breath already -- but a bit more calmly.

Still, with the emotion, the Scots accent of her childhood came back more strongly than it had while she was away in America with people who didn't talk like that.

"Och, Father... I love the Lady Moira dearly, Ye ken that. Sometimes that only seems to make this harder, though. Watching her work sae hard, and being able to tell when she's in pain even though she sometimes almost doesnae seem to notice it herself.... She loves her work, I ken, please forgive me for the times I've wondered if she preferred it to me."

She had, once in a while, had even confronted Moira about it. Moira loved her, though, even when they were across the ocean from each other. Rahne had been under a lot of stress at the time, and in X-Factor, and Moira had been very busy with her research....

"'Tis watching her with Stryfe that's sae frustrating -- she's trying sae hard to help him, and he willnae see it! I hate watching him growl and snap and sulk at her when she's giving her time and working on his behalf after what he's done to her.... Sure, he's in pain, I ken, I can scent it well enough, but so is she!"

Rahne drew a long breath. "And Father, I shouldnae lose my temper at her either. She has plenty of reason to be out of temper. Thank You for helping me nae speak sharply today, and please help me to be sweet and patient when I go back."

Someone needed to remain gentle, after all. She was here to help look after Moira, and for that matter she suspected Stryfe had never spent much more time around someone honestly trying to be nice than he had receiving caring scoldings.

Fighting spirit back in its proper role, Rahne whispered a final "Thank You, Amen," and walked back out of her room to help her mother.

* * * * * * *

What about Proteus? What about Kevin? What about the boy you couldn't save?

Moira moved mostly by habit, following the instructions she'd written to herself.

What about Kevin? What about your son, Moira?

It didn't seem long at all -- in fact, it wasn't -- before she heard a tap at the door. She drew a long breath. "Come in."

What about the daughter who lives and loves and needs you now? And whom you love? Her heart softened.

Rahne pushed the door open, appearing much more composed than when she'd left.

Moira set down the glassware she held and peeled off the thin gloves. "Och, Rahne, I'm sorry I spoke as I did. Will ye forgive me?" The words came harder than they should have, but she knew they needed to be said.

Rahne relaxed visibly and held out her arms for a hug as Moira approached. "Donnae worry -- and of course." Moira felt her heart ease, just a little, as Rahne's arms folded around her shoulders. "Is there anything I can help with, though?"

"No in the lab -- if ye could do a load of the wash, though, 'twould be a help." She pulled away as Rahne nodded and picked up the bottle of detergent again, weighing it in one hand.

"I just did one, actually."

Moira cut her off before realizing the girl had intended to say something more. "Aye, well, perhaps another one -- I'm sure ye can find something, but I'll manage on my own in the lab."

She did feel better for having apologized, but hurried her daughter out nonetheless. And as soon as Rahne had left, Moira locked the door.

* * * * * * *

Rahne leaned against the door, rather frustrated. Well, she would go do another load. She would wash some sheets in the old detergent, the variety that she didn't suspect of causing Stryfe's symptoms. It was a bit tempting to let him suffer a little while longer, but she really shouldn't. She tried the door, gently, and discovered that the sound she'd heard had indeed been the lock. Moira didn't come open it, either.

Fine. She would wash and change the sheets, which could hardly do any harm even if it should happen to do no good, and then she would try again to tell Moira her hypothesis. Somehow, she hadn't quite managed to get the words out so far, and she just wasn't going to shout through the door.

* * * * * * *

The spectrum was telling her absolutely nothing.

It wasn't for lack of trying. There was nothing at all wrong with the hydrogen NMR spectrum itself; it was in fact the first really good one she'd obtained on this particular compound, a carbohydrate attachment of one of the Legacy component proteins. Nice, sharp, well-defined peaks. A few related ones to round out the information -- carbon NMR, that sort of thing -- and she might be able to get enough of a structure to feed into her modeling software. Too bad she couldn't use the Shi'ar scanner-modeler she'd once had available, but it had been back with the X-Men for some sort of maintenance or upgrade when Bastion went through.

Of course, producing any sort of model would require some sort of intelligent interpretation of the data!

Moira gave up, filing the papers for later analysis as she realized she'd been staring at them for at least twenty minutes with no progress, and forced her attention to flipping open her lab notebook and following the instructions she had written out for herself. She recorded her actions and measurements meticulously, but after another ten minutes she stopped, unnerved, and stared at the test tube in her hand.

She didn't remember what she'd put in it.

This was not good.

She set the test tube down, stared at it and its brethren, and emptied and cleaned them all into the biohazard waste. Running tests on them now would be foolish, as nonexistent as she'd just proved her concentration to be, and she wasn't testing for anything that stored well. It was chilling to think she'd been operating on autopilot, so to speak, in the laboratory.

Her hands were shaking.

Furious with herself for allowing that, Moira carefully closed and put away her laboratory notebook and sat down on a stool, resting her elbows on a clean counter and spreading her fingers until they stopped trembling.

She knew exactly why she couldn't concentrate. She had been trying to lose herself in her work, to avoid thinking about precisely the things that crowded into her mind now.

What about Magneto? What about Proteus?

"Magneto. Proteus for that matter. Can you say you didn't harm them?" Stryfe's words echoed in her thoughts.

It wasn't so much Magneto's fate that pricked her conscience. She had done her best for him -- including an attempt to repair genetic damage from a viral infection which she could only surmise had been contracted during his time in Auschwitz. It allowed his powers to distort the electrical fields within his brain in ways not in accordance with proper functioning, and there was strong evidence this phenomenon was in some way implicated in much of his erratic, violent, and irrational behavior since manifestation.

Left unattended, when next his powers manifested as he grew up again, the damage would very likely have killed him.

His rapid restoration to adulthood might have destabilized the repairs. It might not. She had never had the opportunity to check, after his actions began to suggest the possibility.

If he had grown up again normally -- or with as much semblance of the normal process as was possible, given that he'd been older than she was before Mutant Alpha reduced him to infancy -- her alterations should have allowed his powers to develop without physiological threat to his life or sanity. It had been an experimental procedure of necessity, but the alternative was unacceptable.

She could hardly have predicted the re-aging. It was entirely possible that the process had somehow circumvented everything she'd tried to do. There was no real way to tell for certain unless Magneto let her run tests -- and considering his reaction to discovering she'd performed any manipulations at all, no matter what her motive, Moira was less than optimistic about the possibility of obtaining consent to see if they had worked or not.

Magnus had stormed at her that she'd taken away his free will. If she'd had a chance, she would have retorted that if anything she had tried to give it back to him.

Magnus wasn't the one who haunted her with guilt and doubt at night. She regretted the way things had turned out, and the accusations stung -- worse perhaps from Rahne than from Magneto himself -- but she had done the best she could and the best she knew, and as far as she could see there was nothing she would have changed, given the chance. With the noticeable exception of the communications and miscommunications afterward.

And Magnus was still alive.

Moira stopped studying her hands and brought one up to her face, curling the fingers and propping her head against it. Cold, she noted absently. Her hands were cold too often lately; she seemed to be losing the easy resistance to low temperature that she'd grown up with. A circulation problem, or core metabolism...?

She extended her fingers again to rub at her temple, shaking her head at herself. She was, she recognized ruefully, half-deliberately shying away from the topic. The real one. The real reason she was upset, the real reason her hands wouldn't steady, the real reason she'd gone so far beyond her usual outspoken abrasiveness and snapped at Rahne as she had.

Well, aside from the fact that keeping her temper around Stryfe was starting to get to her. Maybe Nathan had been right, at least partially, when he'd said the toll on her would be too much even if Stryfe didn't turn on her.

No.

That was not the case; it was not going to be the case. She knew perfectly well that rehabilitating Stryfe physically or psychologically would be a draining process alone, and that as rewarding as it would be, doing both would require a commitment of more time, and patience, and strength than perhaps anything else she'd ever done except... motherhood.

The problem with being as trained in psychology as she was, Moira thought wearily and with a certain wry amusement, was that there was only so long she could let herself get away with not facing up to things. She could do this. One form of healing without the other would be criminal neglect on her part, perhaps worse than no healing at all, and to do neither was not even an option to be considered. She could do this, and she would.

But she could not continue to cope with Stryfe, much less help him, unless she dealt first with her own pain -- with the still-unhealed wound that had let his words slice deep and lash her soul raw again.

Proteus. Kevin.

She abandoned the excursion into melodrama and covered her eyes, a faint, unvoiced moan creeping into her throat. Kevin. Her son.

Conceived brutally, enough so that she'd had to drag herself to a hospital -- and so that it almost hadn't seemed worth leaving the hospital before she had to return to it to give birth. But while she'd loathed Joe, she'd never loved Kevin any the less for that. Never.

Had she?

Moira stripped off her gloves and unlocked the door, then flicked off the lights on her way out and closed it quietly behind her before walking slowly down the deserted hallway, away from Stryfe, away from her office area, away from all the places she usually worked and indeed away from all the parts of the compound that were still in anything resembling regular use.

Could her anger at Joe have carried over to Kevin? Could she have unconsciously held him to blame for his father's evil, and let that poison her care for him? The questions tore at her. Could....

No.

She'd been over this, at least, before. And she had adored Kevin. She'd poured all her love, all her being, into the child; she'd never resented him, never blamed him, and it had broken her heart to see the pain he'd grown into.

She had blamed Joe for it after Kevin went on his mad rampage. But she had not thought her son tainted before that. And it had been illogical even then.

Moira went through a heavy door and down a flight of stairs, hardly paying attention, and kept walking. The air was colder here; with no one using the section anymore, there was no need to heat it. Different wings and floors had their own thermostats and insulation.

She'd tried. She'd tried so hard, to heal him. And failed. The energies running rampant through his body had been destroying it, some instability she couldn't pinpoint turning them to burn, to eat him alive if he couldn't draw from some other source. She had been able to build the devices to feed him on just the right form, the right mixture of energy, like some horrible fiery parody of breast milk.

Down more stairs. Three more empty hallways, walking with her head down, the sound of her footsteps deepening slightly as she reached the metal flooring.

She had tried decorating the room. Things tended to disintegrate, whether Kevin's doing or that of the energy feed she had never been able to determine. She had gone into the room with him as long as she dared, as long as she could, perhaps long after it was wise, and read to him, held him.... She remembered sitting in the room with Kevin on her lap, feeling the strange tingling of the energies there prickle her skin, watching the pages of A Child's Garden of Verses turn slowly to golden brown, and then fluoresce a scintillating violet, and run down the spectrum to a dull red before warming in her hands and silvering to gray... and then blurring quietly into the air until nothing was left.

Weeping, she had clutched the boy to her until he whimpered she was squeezing too hard. It had not been very long after that when she had stopped taking anything into the room with her. It had been very little longer before she could not enter at all, and when she had sealed the door it had felt as if part of her soul had been ripped away and sealed on the other side as well.

Moira raised her head and stared at the door to which her feet had carried her in her half-blind wandering. At the harsh black letters. Mutant X. She mouthed the words and tasted bitter gall.

She had locked her son in here, and hidden him away. Made a prison that sustained him, from metal that bound him and energy that fed him, that kept him alive -- but was still a prison. But... she had had no choice....

She had tried to help him! She had worked hours, days, sometimes forgetting food and sleep until she was ready to collapse, once until she did collapse. She had done everything she could for him, tried every avenue of research she could think of to find a cause and a remedy. She had done everything she could.

Except ask for help.

Her own treatments, or attempts thereat, hadn't harmed her son; she was almost sure. But had it been her pride, her hubris, her reluctance to tell anyone -- specifically Charles, who might have had some chance at helping -- the trouble and ask for aid, had it been these things that did do harm? Could Kevin have had a chance? It wouldn't even have had to be real control, some sort of device would have sufficed if it had kept her son alive and sane.

And under the Shadow King's influence, when Kevin had been restored to her, she had turned him away. It didn't matter that she "hadn't been herself"; the Shadow King worked by appealing to the worst in you, and the fact remained that she had said the words, and rejected her son. For all intents and purposes, she had told him he would be happier dead.

But I would never have said that, her mind wailed. Not if it had been altogether me. I would never have meant it.

But I still was the one who locked him away. Still the one who wouldn't ask Charles for help. Still the one who, when he began taking and killing hosts, knew what would finally have to be done and was ready to take the responsibility for it, ready to shoot my son....

I was the one who lost him.

She reached out a hand to the cold metal of the door, and touched the letters painted on it. Then she let her hand fall, brushing down the door until her arm crumpled and she leaned her shoulder against it, sagging against the massive door and feeling the painful lump rise in her throat, the hot tears sting her eyes, as she pressed a trembling curled fist to her mouth.

She slid to the floor, huddled against the door to her dead son's room, and a wrenching sob shook her as tears spilled finally from her eyes. Tears for her son, for his pain, for her accursed pride, for his life and for his death.

And Moira mourned.

* * * * * * *

It could have been minutes or hours, for all Moira knew, when she came to herself again and felt the chill of the metal floor against her legs and the thick door against her side. She leaned against it still, tears finally spent, cheek and temple feeling almost feverish against the threads of her hair and the cool smoothness of the metal.

Wearily, but with the exhausted relief that can come of crying for someone until you run out of tears, she rose -- still leaning heavily on the wall -- and began to make her way back upstairs. She had no illusions of being able to work just now; Stryfe was... cared for, for the moment, and her experiments would have to wait. Moira changed, this time, shedding her lab coat and exchanging day clothes for a warm set of pajamas before she washed her face and went to bed.

She never saw Rahne, who had come looking one more time and traced her downstairs while the laundry dried, stop short in the hall and then retreat as Moira stood and returned to the warmer parts of the compound. Rahne had stolen silently back and back, always just out of sight but near enough to track by sound and scent, her own footfalls silently padded, torn all the while between a longing to go to Moira, to comfort her, something -- and the knowledge that the woman needed this time to mourn alone, for a bit, and that somehow she would feel herself an intruder.

Moira never saw Rahne, that is, until after she had lain down in bed, and the girl tapped lightly on the door and slipped in to kiss her mother's cheek before she slept. As the door closed again, Moira found that after all, she did have another tear.

* * * * * * *