Epilogue: Demon and Angel

Annie Rosiçky closed her eyes, her mind stretching outwards, as she desperately tried, but inevitably failed, to find any trace of her brother.

Gary, where are you?

Annie knew it was pointless to keep pretending, to keep telling herself that Gary would show up. Two weeks had gone by, with no signs of him. She couldn't think where he was. No, that wasn't quite true. There were only two possibilities, and she liked neither of them. One: Gary might be dead. Annie refused to even consider that. She would not allow herself to believe that her brother was gone. The second, and slightly less awful possibility, was that he was with the enemy, with the Brotherhood.

Why, Gary, why?

Annie knew that Gary had never understood things the way she had. He had never learned why protecting humans was important, why mutants and humans should seek to share the planet, why they should always move for peace. Why was that? Gary and Annie had received the same upbringing; why was it that she could so clearly see what was right, and why could Gary not? Why had he always hated humans? Both of them had suffered dislike and discrimination as mutants, but only Annie had learned to deal with it in the right way. Humans were like children in a way, she decided: ignorant, prejudiced, yet innocent and in need of protection. It seemed so obvious, so clear, that protecting them was the only thing a mutant could do. Why couldn't Gary see it?

Gary, where are you? Why are you with the Brotherhood?

Gary had gone berserk, and run off like a man possessed. Annie had not been able to stop him from killing those soldiers, and even now the guilt assailed her, engulfing her heart, pressing down on her like an anvil. They were dead. Humans had lost their lives because Annie had been unable to stop Gary's rage. Was that right? The humans had been trying to kill them. What should they have done? Was it right to fight back, as Gary had? Would it have been better to have taken their weapons and let them run to safety, as Annie had intended to do? She didn't know. She knew Gary had only attacked the soldiers because they had shot Marina.

Gary, she isn't dead.

Marina had been lucky. If the bullet had landed a few millimetres to either side, her life would have been over. As it was, Annie had only just been in time to save her, to use her healing power to restore the damage to Marina's throat and remove the bullet. By the time that had happened, however, Gary had vanished. Annie didn't know what she should do now. Her first instinct was to remain at the school with the X-Men, but how could she sit idle while her brother might be in danger, or might be using his powers for wrong? Gary simply didn't realise that reacting in anger and seeking vengeance was not the way things should be done. Annie couldn't understand why he was the way he was. She couldn't even begin to decide what she might do.

"Annie?"

She turned. Marina stood in the doorway of their bedroom; Annie could read the unhappiness and the uncertainty in the younger girl's thoughts.

"Hi, Marina."

"Have you – have you found where he is yet?"

Annie shook her head, slowly and sadly, "No. My telepathy only works over a radius of a mile or so. Wherever Gary is, we can be sure he's much further away than that."

"What are we – what are we going to do?"

Annie sighed in resignation, "I don't know."

Marina fell silent, lacking the words to say or the confidence to say them. Eventually she gave up, and moved across the room to look out of the window. A few moments later, Annie stood beside her, and the two of them gazed out over the gardens and trees of the estate, off into the distance, both of their minds focused on only one thing. Somewhere out there Gary was lost, lost in his rage and his fury, lost in a world of confusion and misunderstanding. Annie's brother, Marina's lover. Neither of them knew when, or if, they would see him again. Annie stretched out with her mind once more.

Gary, come back to us…

A/N: Obviously it isn't over yet; if there is sufficient interest I will upload the sequel to this story.