Author's note: Don't let the name fool you. The character of Mary will be NO "Mary-Sue." (Ahh! Back, Mary Sue, back!) She's actually not my own character, but a cross over from the movie trilogy "The Prophecy." I hope to pull in other cross over characters in other books too (just to make this little alternate universe as complicated as possible). Thanks again for reviews!
Chapter Seven:
The night wind was cool as Mary Sloane drove back from town towards the small house she and her grandmother called home. She had the windows of her jeep down and the headlights cut through the dark land as she drove, the only beacons she had to ensure that she was still on the highway. As she reached the top of one hill, she could make out the far off mountains by their dark silhouettes against the clear starry sky.
The world around her was very quiet, very peaceful, and a small smiled touched her face as she drove on. Even without the lights from her car, she could have navigated her way home without a second thought. She had lived in this valley her entire life and knew every hill and turn as if they were apart of herself.
After she pulled onto the bare stretch of ground of her driveway, Mary put the car in park and shut off the engine. She knew her grandmother would be waiting for her, despite the late hour, and she hesitated before going into the house.
Tomorrow was the day her grandmother had arranged to have the people from Xavier's School of the Gifted meet them, and Mary suddenly felt a strange uncertainty about their expected guests. They had told her grandmother that only two of the teachers would be flying out to Arizona, but she had known since the first phone call that there would be three on that flight.
Charles woke up, she heard the vague cognition echoing in her mind and she sighed. She had heard those words nearly eight months ago, and out of everything she had felt that day, that had made the least sense to her...at least, until she learned about Charles Xavier and his school.
But, could he be the same person that her vision had spoken of? She could not say for certain...but her instincts said it was.
If this Charles was the same man, then it was very possible that he was responsible for nearly killing millions (if not billions) of people. The idea of someone that powerful disturbed her a little. One man with the power to touch every mind on earth...and destroy them all with only a thought...what kind of burden to carry, what kind of weapon to possess.
She had done some research online about Xavier's School for the Gifted, but she found very little clear information about their work with mutants. The school itself did not have its own homepage, so all her sources were secondary. She could learn even less about the faculty and Xavier himself.
She supposed that made sense, however, considering the country's general opinions about mutants. It did not always pay to advertise and she was sure they would not be short of applicants considering how many more mutants had been coming forward recently. It was a shame that anti-mutant groups still vastly outnumbered groups that supported mutants.
Mutants, she thought the word with some relief. She had never been able to define herself and her gifts by any concrete terms. The elders did not even have a name for what she could do or what had occurred in her life. The experiences she had as a child were almost beyond explanation, and the few people who had witnessed them were quickly disappearing.
All she could remember herself was that the angels had come to her, given her something to hide because she was special, until the elders were able to send what she had been given back where it belonged.
God, she wished she could remember more than that. Afterwards, the elders and her grandmother refused to speak about what had happened, saying it would bring the terror back to their people, so she could not get any more information from them. Anyone else who had been there had either moved away...or was dead.
Mary sighed again and leaned her head back against the driver's seat, her mind reeling with hundreds of visions and memories. She hoped, if anything, the people from Xavier's School would be able to help her sort out all those thoughts. Maybe if she could somehow remember, just a little bit of what had happened in those few days when she was ten, she could learn how to better manage her 'gifts.'
After another moment, she opened the door to her jeep and stepped out, starting the short trek up to her house. Through the dark, she could see the small light from her grandmother's room and she grinned.
In the face of all her doubts and fears, that one light eased her more than anything else in the world. No matter what happened or where she may go, she knew there was always one person she could always come home to.
Mary took the last few steps to the front door, past two small stretches of desert flowers which her grandmother tended. She was still smiling as she entered the house and called to her grandmother in a cheerful whisper.
"Nana…I'm home."
She shut the door to against the night, and left her troubles for the morning.
***
The lights coming from the small house in the Arizona desert clicked out shortly after Mary's return home and the land became quiet and still.
The cool night wind continued to blow across the hills, and past the small garden at the front steps.
Though no one would ever notice, the small flowering plants closest to where Mary stepped had bloomed, despite the chilly March air, as if some passing force had made them think it was already spring.