Misfit- Chapter 11
Disclaimer- Hee hee, I like taking things that aren't mine. It gives me a weird and perverted sense of power.
Digital Muse: You're on a power trip! I love it when you do that. Because that makes me the most sane person in the room. Digital continues banging her head against the fireplace while reciting the alphabet in Spanish, half way through however she starts to sing the French national anthem before fainting
Yes, I see what you mean. The only bad thing about using other peoples things is you have to put them back and hope to god they didn't notice your play. Anyway if they do I hope they don't sue. Marvel that means you.
Notes- Ok big thanks to the one and only Anything but ordinary3
Mel Muse: Technically that means that there must be at least two other Anything but Ordinarys.
Shut up you shocks her with a cattle prod. And of course to Ncsgirl… got anything to say about that name musey girl?
Mel just lays on the floor with smoke billowing off of her hair.
No? Ok then, I'll continue. Right Ncsgirl, many thanks and to all of the reviewers of Retribution X and this story the same. Another brief thing, as an English woman I need to tell you that no one has ever witnessed a ascension ceremony… so I'm taking a wild guess at what one would be like. Please don't kill me if it ain't anything like this.
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Elizabeth crept back into the mansion with the stealth of a cat. She'd left early that morning- something Kurt had said the night before had played in her mind, haunted her all night. So she had been and sorted it out.
She didn't want to cause a stir with her reappearance, that's why she snuck in. She didn't want the scenes of the night before to be repeated, everyone looking at her like she was a freak. Well she wasn't. What was that old catchphrase her father was always… had always spouted she corrected herself, remembering when she was again. She was post her father, this wasn't the Edwardian era anymore… This was the reign of Elizabeth the third.
I am not a number, I am a man. That's what he'd always said. From some show he'd watched as a younger man.
Now half way up the stairs she punched the air in victory. No one had yet spotted her no one was giving a funny look…
"Your Highness…" a voice called from the bottom of the stairs. Lizzie could feel a hundred different pairs of eyes shift in her direction. She let out an exasperated sigh before turning to face the person who had caught her.
Storm stood at the base of the stairs, looking up at her unsure of how to address her. It was a regular problem people had. They didn't know how to talk to her or what to call her when they found out, it was always the same.
"Yes Storm." She said tiredly.
The weather goddess looked up at her and smiled gently "There are some people waiting in the Professors office for you."
Elizabeth dismissed it and continued walking. "Tell them I'm busy and to address any questions they have to the palace…" Damn reporters, she hadn't expected them to find her so soon.
"They said to tell you it was an audience… they said that might change your mind."
Still Lizzie kept walking.
Storm tried again. "They said it had something to do with your ascension."
Only now did Lizzie pause. That was blunt, to the point of them. But that's how hard they were these men that created monarchs, they had to be. They were ruthless.
They were that blunt with her father when it was his turn. His father had just departed the mortal coil after a stroke, he had been in the corridor outside, his wife stroking his hair in comfort he was holding the infant Elizabeth in a strong embrace asking her to never leave him the way his father had. Then a shadow had fallen over them. The royal wordsmiths and spin doctors wanted to gloss over the wording of the announcement of his succession.
Now they wanted her to do the same… They hadn't even recovered her father's body.
All she could do was silently descend and follow the teacher. This was too much for her to comprehend as she walked silently, this moment was too huge. She wanted to be up in her bedroom, she wanted to be home in the palace where she was born- any of the palaces for that matter, she wanted to be back in Le Bar Bat before all this began she wouldn't even have minded the madmen out for her body she would have fought them off. She just didn't want to have to walk into that office and take the responsibility left to her by her father. But as she neared the door she straightened her back and lifted her head like she'd been taught, Her ancestor, the first Elizabeth had said at this moment that God had provided, Lizzie felt like god had condemned her to an early death. 'This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes'- that was the exact wording, if she remembered correctly, but it had been in Latin so not those exact words.
She been ready for this moment all her life, she just expected it to be later on- after she'd had the opportunity to live as Elizabeth Windsor for a while. Not live her whole life past adolescence as Queen.
She repeated her name over and over in her head… Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie… she was Lizzie.
'Darling you can't be Queen Lizzie of England and the commonwealth.' Her fathers voice laughed in her head. Git. She called her father all the names under the sun in her head for his statement and for the fact that he had had the Gaul to leave her in this position. He'd asked her not to leave him, but she realised now she had never begged him to do the same for her, she'd taken it for granted that he'd be there forever… and now he wasn't.
A tear trickled from her eye as they rounded the last corner before Professor X's study, but she wiped it away with little thought of it. A Queen was beyond such shows of emotion. Then why were her hands shaking?
Storm didn't even hesitate before the door, just quickly turned the knob and let them both in.
The occupants stood. 3 men in suits, a couple of women in skirts. She'd seen them before… aides that had flown in a hurry to reach her… one man was the British ambassador. A man of small stature and very little official power… but now the most powerful man in the room. The ambassador's name was Smithe if she remembered correctly from her fathers work.
"My Highness." He gushed and bowed at the same time, the others in the room did the same. Including for the first time the collected X men that had obviously come for the freak show of the ascension. She didn't blame them, it would be the first and possibly the last time they witnessed something of this 'Importance'. But she did expect a bit better from Kurt and the Professor who was sitting behind the desk expectantly… almost as if waiting for the start of some great performance by Shakespearian actors. She wanted to tell him that that came at the coronation not the ascension. This was little more than a reading telling everyone collected that she was Queen apparent. Apparent until the day at the abbey when she was crowned then she'd be Queen coronet.
She knew instinctively what to do having seen her father's ceremony. She took a seat opposite the ambassador who she took it would be acting as emercee for this morning's performance of the ascension. She collected herself and sat upright as if made from marble, staring into the pupils of Mr Smithe, who looked overcome with the gravitas of the act he was performing.
He walked towards her and knelt at her feet, un-scrolling a piece of parchment and reading from it.
"Elizabeth, daughter of Edward Windsor do you promise to uphold the Line of England's succession?"
"I do." She stated with no though.
"Elizabeth, daughter of Edward Windsor do you promise to uphold the Church of England and Scotland and all that it stands for?"
Again she answered automatically "I do."
Ambassador Smithe looked up at her now, "And Elizabeth, Daughter of Edward Windsor do you promise to uphold the Law of England and her realms, to protect all that is ours from attack and do so with your dying breath?"
Elizabeth paused now, the depth of the words hitting her at full force. "I do." She said in a soft voice.
The ambassador held out the parchment for her indicating a line on the bottom for her. Then he handed her a quill. Elizabeth had never written with one before, she'd always used pen- but this was official, it was ceremony. She leaned against the professors desk as she signed in black ink, all eyes watching her. She blotted it with a piece of tissue on hand. She had signed her life away.
She sat upright again and all the air began rushing out of her body, she was deflated and felt like crying again, but she couldn't. She had to be strong for the sake of her country, self-sacrifice she heard ringing in her head like a bell.
The ambassador stood in his brand new pressed suit and held the contract she had made with her country aloft.
"On this Day, of this month, of this Holy year I have been vested with the task and holy duty to proclaim that Edward James Phillip Windsor the IX of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland has been succeeded to the throne. Long like his daughter Elizabeth Victoria Mary Windsor, from here forth know as Queen Elizabeth III by the Grace of God, Queen of this Realm and of Her other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith. May god protect and keep her always…" He paused looking at the parchment… "God save the Queen."
"God save the Queen." Was barked by all those in the room that were English then quickly was followed by those of differing nationalities.
Elizabeth just sat with weak eyes scanning the face of all the mutants. The Professor looked proud and patriotic, Logan looked at her with distain, Kurt with sadness- the others were unreadable. They just stood observing. And Elizabeth, as she would now always be, couldn't take that. That was the way people looked when in audiences with her father… she hadn't liked it then and she certainly didn't like it now.
"Stop it." She urged aloud.
"Stop what your Majesty?" one woman asked confused. She looked familiar to Elizabeth, probably one of the ambassador's teenage daughters.
"This." She agitatedly cried, "Stop looking at me as though I've just sprouted horns from the top of my head, but you're too polite to say anything." She screamed at Storm and Scott.
She turned quickly to the Professor "And you… Smiling like this is some great moment in history, it isn't it's a girl being condemned."
"And You," She turned in a flurry of tears that were finally falling and pain that she couldn't hold back any longer "You think your so much better than me. You think that I'm just some stuffed shirt, that doesn't know or give a damn. But I'll always give a damn."
She then turned to Kurt who still looked at her with sad eyes "And you my friend," She softly spoke "Stop trying to convince yourself that this is completely wrong. Because it isn't. I was BORN to do this. This is my one purpose. I was meant for nothing more, nothing less."
Kurt leaned slowly forward calmly and mournfully "That does not mean that it is RIGHT though."
Elizabeth froze again as if she had finally stopped time for herself and no one else. But she just looked him in the eyes for a second before turning on her heel and walking out of the room no longer consumed but still driven by emotion.
"What the hell did you say that for?" The Ambassador snapped, all eyes turning either accusingly or else compassionately towards Kurt.
"Because her father has just died and she needs a little Human compassion… something you seem to lack." He answered. "She has only grieved for a day and you have pronounced her Queen already, can't you leave her in peace to morn her father?"
Ambassador Smithe walked calmly forward "This is tradition you have messed with today. This is the way it has been done for centuries. Victoria was woken in the early hours of the morning to hear that she'd ascended. It never did her much harm."
"Victoria succeeded her grandfather not her father and she was not solely dependant on him for her emotional support… she has no one from your world that she trusts or loves anymore."
The ambassador stood idly as the X men started to collectively leave, all looking ashamed at what they had witnessed. Kurt got up and went to the door "I hope you are proud of what you have done here today, because I doubt Lizzie will look on this day with pride."
Then silently he left. The Ambassador and his aides just stood silently. The ambassadors daughter stepped forward and clutched her fathers hand… she didn't want her father to leave her, like Lizzie's had.
Lizzie fled the confines of the mansion in tears. People turned and looked as she ran past them in floods of tears. Catching a glance of a new queen at her most vulnerable.
She ran out of the doors and out to the garden where she had sat on her first day. It had been so little time, but everything had changed. And she wished it could go back to being simple… but it couldn't and she had to be strong. For herself and for those whom she had a duty to.
She couldn't let herself slip, that could be disastrous.
She reached the tree she'd been under, where the sunlight had caressed a Princesses skin, now the sun was hidden by a cloud and a princess was now a Queen.
And it wasn't fair.
She slipped down to her knees in pain, tears running down her cheeks and onto the ground which she pounded with her closed fists. It did nothing but bruise them, it did nothing to ease the pain.
"It isn't fair! Why are you doing this to me! Haven't I been through enough!" she screamed at the sky, to a god she knew didn't exist. Her cry was filled with a thousand emotions, full of pain and rage that she could not see her way through. Though darkness and nothingness, the emptiness that was inside her, that she knew that she couldn't control.
She screamed into the air, a primal scream, just wanting the world and the pain to stop.
"Lizzie?" Rogues soft voice cut like a knife through her, so kind and caring, just like her mothers.
She didn't respond however, she just lay sobbing on the ground, her chest heaving against the solid soil.
"Your majesty?" she said creeping closer…
"Don't call me that!!" she screamed at her, scaring Rogue into a retreat, but one for only a few steps.
"Fine, I won't." she said terrified. "I just wanna make sure you're all right."
Lizzie looked up anger flaring and bursting in her blue irises. "Do I look all right to you?" she cried.
Rogue didn't answer because it was obvious; she just stood impartially watching her outpouring of grief.
After a few more moments Rogue stepped forward again wishing she could quiet the girl with a touch, but she couldn't without causing the girl real pain. And she didn't need any more pain… she was in too much already.
"I wish I could help you Lizzie."
"Everybody wants to help me… But wanting to isn't helping me at all." She sniffed trying to compose herself. In reality though it didn't work, she just cried less loudly… the sorrow inside her however was deafening.
"I'm sorry." Rogue took a seat next to her rubbing her back in a safe form of sympathy. "I'm sorry for all of this."
"Yeah well, it had to happen didn't it." She said whipping away her latest barrage of tears.
"Why did it have to happen?" Rogue asked.
"Because it had to." Lizzie said, convinced that what she was saying was true. "Because being what I am, it has to lead to heartache, especially my own."
"Excuse me miss, do you have clearance?" A macho voice said behind Rogue, roughly taking her shoulder to draw her full attention.
He was a man with a crew cut, a black suit and tie, black glasses and an earpiece, and he was standing unsmiling, and because she couldn't see his eyes Rogue couldn't tell if he was as concerned as she about the young Queen-to-be, that was if he was concerned at all.
"Clearance?" she asked confused, since when had she needed clearance to speak to her friend. Then she remembered, since she had become queen.
"Well I'm sorry… I… um…" Rogue mumbled trying to search for an explanation.
Lizzie just looked up, her tears brimming then falling out of her eyes.
"JUST GO AWAY AND LEAVE ME ALONE YOU NUMB NUT! CAN'T YOU SEE I DON'T WANT YOU FOLLOWING ME AROUND! JUST PUSH OFF AND LEAVE ME AND MY FRIENDS ALONE!!!" She exploded into his face, causing the butch bodyguard to recoil and retreat.
The tears still fell but after this outburst Elizabeth looked a lot better, even if she felt anything but.
"Sorry about that." She said quietly as she tried to shrug it off.
Rogue just stood amazed as the guard continued to run until he reached the mansion at the other end of the garden, safely out of the Queens way.
"Remind me never to piss you off." Rogue smiled.
Lizzie's eyes changed for a second to what they had once been. "That was me emotional, that's nowhere near me being pissed off." Then they changed back to the darkness of the present. "I shouldn't have done that though."
"Why not. Your emotional, I think you have every right to be like that." Rogue sat with her back against the bark of the tree, just like Lizzie was now sitting.
"What I don't get is why you were so calm in there, then suddenly this." She asked.
Lizzie sat in a daze for a second before replying in a distant voice "Emotions are a dangerous thing to have… For me to have."
Rogue sat for a second thinking about this cryptic comment. "Why is it dangerous for you to feel?"
"Because sometimes you can loose control." She replied still in a different world. It was like getting blood out of a stone, but still Rogue persevered.
"How would you know that?"
"Because I did that."
"You did what?"
"Lost control." Lizzie breathed, "And when I lost control of my emotions I lost all control. And I don't want that to happen again."
Rogue quieted even more when she realised "When you lost your mother, you lost control then, Didn't you?"
Sadly Lizzie nodded. "It was the one moment in my life when I didn't fell like I had some kind of control and it frightened me, scared me and then all the emotions that came with knowing, just knowing, that she wouldn't be there anymore, and seeing what I saw…"
"What did you see?" Asked Rogue, trying not to pry.
"I saw her. I saw her when she was dead."
The different interpretations of this didn't occur to Rogue because she could only see it in the way she always had. The way that she had experienced it herself.
"I saw my grandma like that, all laid out in the coffin… it must not be as bad as when it's your mom but…"
"She wasn't laid out Rogue." Lizzie said, burying her head into her knees.
Than Rogue realised what Lizzie meant. "I'm sorry. I didn't…"
"Drunk driving, should be punishable by death. My mother died, her driver died but the man in the lorry that hit her because he was going the wrong way up a motorway? He lived, didn't have a scratch on him and got 8 months and his licence revoked. He killed 2 people, and that's all. Life isn't fair."
"You…" Rogue breathed still fixated on the thought of what Lizzie had seen. "How?"
Lizzie paused for a second before sitting up again. "It's great to have powers isn't it? Because you can do everything that other people can't, everything that other people don't expect- everything they tell you not to do."
"I don't underst…"
"I snuck by the police barriers when our limo stopped. Dad recognised the limo and wanted to see if mum was all right. So I stopped time and went to see her… and I did."
She started to cry harder again, but her voice still remained strong.
"She just lay there, her head was covered in blood. Her dress was pink but it had been white, Rogue. And she'd snapped her neck. Her, her neck… oh god" she broke down again at the thought.
With her gloves on Rogue rapped her arm around the princess, to calm her.
"Everything's ok now though…" she said soothingly but as she looked up she realised how wrong everything was. The birds had stopped, the leaves had stopped, the people had stopped. Time itself had stopped.
"Lizzie… what have you…?" she gasped.
"This is what happens. This is what happens when I loose control Rogue. I can't control myself, I can't control time. It scares me."
Rogue just sat amazed by the quietness of time halted.
"It happens by itself when I let it all get to me. It happened after my mothers death. And since then… its always happened. When I get highly emotional, when I'm stressed… the only time it doesn't is when I'm terrified… it just shuts down then."
Rogue still looked astonished but managed to say "After your mothers death?"
"When she died I lost it completely- every constraint I had went out the window, I started and stopped time every few minutes; for myself, for my father and me… for people I barely knew. Those people were debriefed, made aware of my secret and paid off or else sworn to secrecy themselves on pain of death."
"But how did they…?
"Stop me?" completed Lizzie, her eyes shining, she scoffed "Quite simply, they couldn't. so they did what they had to keep my secret. They did it to keep my secret for me."
"What did the do Lizzie?" Rogue asked, shocked by the new amount of pain in her eyes.
"They drugged me." She replied simply. "They kept me like a zombie for a year and a half. Made me perform like a captive sea lion, do all the things that I did normally but in a daze, a haze, like a cloud had descended on me and I couldn't shake it off. Conscious sedation they called it, more like waking death, I did all these things and I didn't give a damn. I don't remember most of those eighteen months, just flashes. That's one of the reasons telepaths can't read my mind, because of all these repressed memories, they overcome me and the person reading them because of all the pain I couldn't feel."
"They couldn't do that to you. They wouldn't have been allowed." Rogue said, outraged.
Lizzie laughed at her innocence. "Rogue this is the British government you're talking about here, they aren't a chorus of angels. They do what they think is best for their country not what they think is best for it's princess."
Rogue looked her sympathetically in the eyes. "And what about your father? Didn't he object?"
Lizzie broke the eye contact, deep in thought wondering how her father had really felt.
"He didn't. I don't know if it was because I was in pain and he wanted it to stop or if it was so that I wouldn't risk my secret being discovered Rogue, but he agreed… but I don't know if he thought he was right. And now I'll never know." Her tears had almost dried and they no longer fell and finally after what seemed like forever in Lizzie's heart, she was finally in control.
"I'm sorry you'll never know that Elizabeth. But…"
"It's the way of the world Rogue, its been happening since the first Kings and Queens were created. One monarch dies and another is created. I've been prepared for that day, for this day since forever. It was meant to happen, it's destiny. And I thought I was prepared- but I wasn't, was I?"
Rogue shook her head, "You can never be prepared for what has happened to you, even if people have been trying to since forever. You've handled it in the only way you know how, the right way; the right way for you. You've done ok." Rogue assured.
Lizzie smiled at the sentiment. "The right way for me. I have done ok." She said plaintively.
"You've done the best you can." Rogue smiled again as the sound of the world resumed.
It was startling how much noise there was in a normal day once you had experienced a moment without it, but it made the day even more beautiful.
"Elizabeth! Your Majesty!" A boys voice echoed through the newly established call.
Across the grass bounded Fear, his long black hair blowing around him and flopping into his eyes as he approached, his legs moving him as fast as they could.
Finally when he reached them, panting for breath, he smiled brightly.
"Hey Lizzie." He panted before leaning over to get his breath back.
"Hey Fear." She smiled bemusedly with Rogue.
"Um… I just heard what happened in Xavier's office…" he continued to pant. "I wanted to check you were all right."
Lizzie shared a smile with Rogue again. "I'm fine thanks for asking."
Rogue and Lizzie went to stand up, and Fear offered both his hands to the queen, to help her. She blushed as she accepted and was gently pulled to her feet by the taller man. He returned the blush.
"Look I don't suppose when all of this has died down you'd maybe want to break out of the palace one night and go for a drink with a not so commoner."
At this Lizzie's tear tracked face broke into a larger grin.
"I don't know…" she looked to Rogue who was grinning and nodding like an idiot. "Umm… I'll have to see what I can do."
He smiled even broader.
The serenity of the moment however was broken suddenly as a huge black helicopter swept over the mansion and headed down the gardens towards them.
Rogue and Lizzie both took a step forward.
"Why the hell is that here?" Lizzie asked, watching as it swooped ever nearer.
"I thought it might have something to do with you?" Rogue said doing the same.
Both of their voices were now raised over the din of the copter hovering over them.
They stared up watching the rote blades turn.
"Look Lizzie, we may have to cancel the drink for a bit." Fear said from behind.
"Whys that Michael?" she said not taking her eyes away from the sky.
"Because I don't think you'll drink with me after this." He said his tone changing in a second to a more business like one.
There was a blinding pain in the base of Lizzie's neck as Fear jabbed a hypodermic needle into both her and Rogue's necks, and injected them simultaneously.
As both dropped to their knees their vision fading into blackness, struggling instantaneously for breath then blacking out, their breathing slow and deep.
Fear simply grinned watching them, and replacing the syringes in his jeans back pocket. While there he pulled out a small silver earpiece and microphone.
"They're down, you can land." He told the helicopter before leaning down and turning over the unconscious Rogue, carefully avoiding her skin.
"Sorry you had to get involved, but you are now." He grinned evilly.
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