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Knights Of Time
Author: Jenskott
Summary: Shortly after of the battle on the Alkali Lake, the X-Men discover the true war is merely beginning.
Notes: I'm deeply sorry for the excessive lateness. At the beginning I intended downloading the first chapter whole, but when its size became excessive, I decided split the first chapter in three parts. It will be continued soon.
Continuity: X2.
Disclaimer: X-Men belong to Marvel, and their movie versions belong to Twentieth Century Fox. And writing nonsense disclaimers to disown stuff that all know aren't yours is boring.
Dedications: To Minisinoo for being the best X-Men movie writer I've read ever, and one of the best Scott/Jean writers: and to Mara Greengrass and Lisea for inspiring me to try fanfics based on the movie.
Feedback: To jorgisimox@hotmail.com. I can't stress enough how badly I need advice and supports. English isn't my primary language, so excuse my mistakes.
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Chapter One. Part A: When Proteus Strikes-
The handle turned until sounded the click of the lock opening.
With a determined motion he pushed open the metallic door, and slipped briskly into the room.
Nonetheless Scott Summers stayed in the threshold, hesitating before walking other step. Mentally he was thinking about the best possible approaching, and failing in reaching a decision. He was doubtful of the possibility of broaching the issue of his conflicting feelings without turning this into a sort of argument.
Unable of thinking straight, he closed the door behind of him, and dawdled over the entrance of the lab.
The dazzling white of the stark room and the penetrating stink of the antiseptic and the ammonia were always joining efforts to create an aloof and impersonal atmosphere, deeply disgusting to him. For some unknown reason the lab rooms always had frightened him, disturbed with the mere sight of them and their representative elements. Those tall cabinets, the tables crowded with an array of medical instrumental -microscopes, bakers, vials, test tubes and the like-, and the smell of the blood and chemicals. He wasn't sure of why he was so reluctant of those places, but shudders coursed along his spine every time he went into one. Perhaps it was related to his missed infancy, since then used to flash in his head fleeting sketches of images, blurred pieces of a jigsaw slipped among his fingers when he tried grasp them.
However the mansion lab was unlike of any other lab room he had seen. It was the only of its kind defeated that deeply rooted fear with its especial warmth. It was familiar and welcoming, and its atmosphere smelt to tranquillity and loveliness. He loved spend plenty of his spare time down there.
And the cause of those positive, unique feelings was standing in front of him, busy with a microscope and several samples of different tissues. She fidgeted with it, utterly oblivious to the outside world, intensely focused in her chore. She did always that, whenever she got carried away with an investigation or an interesting sample. One of her most endearing qualities in his biased and partial opinion.
Of course he knew she was aware of his coming. Didn't matter what she had her back turned to him, and was engrossed in analyze something. She could be deeply asleep in the opposite side of the mansion, and still remain perfectly aware of his presence. They were connected in ways few people could understand. Invisible strands linked their minds together and fused their brains. A tiny probe and they could tell where was each other, what was his or her mood, and guessing his or hers thoughts.
That intense and extreme intimacy allowed to Scott know when she was ignoring him. And she did it when her investigation was too important or she was too afraid of facing him.
The way she had flinched when he entered, along with her reclusive behavior since the returning to the mansion, suggested strongly the last option.
He shook his head in dismay and paced towards her, approaching but keeping his distance. The right measure between closeness and space to turn around was important to that conversation, confrontation, or whatever it degenerated into.
"Hi, Jean" He uttered softly.
"Hi, Scott."
A pause followed.
"Are you fine?"
"I'm. Are you?"
And other difficult, stiff silence came after. Scott massaged his face in despair. She hadn't turned even to talk with him.
"Why are you avoiding me, Jean?" He snapped, thoroughly fed up of beating around the bush.
"Avoiding you? I'm not avoiding you, Scott. I can't guess how you came up with that idea" Jean answered from the opposite corner of the lab where she had edged away hurriedly.
And he threw up his arms. "God, Jean we have to speak about it sooner or later. We can't dodge this eternally. And since when have I become the open and forward half in this relationship? Brood is my work, no yours."
Her body strained slightly with a quiver, and he believed have listened muffled guffaws.
Scott exhaled a sigh, wishing having forestalled that awkward situation and elaborated a plan to dodge it. That uneasy and tense silence was a rehash of every conversation they had maintained the last days. He loathed what their romance had become when they had returned to the mansion, and missed the open frankness and implicit trust they cherished and treasured. She had been avoiding him constantly, and when he succeeded in talking her, the conversations were always dull and trivial. They chatted about any theme, not matter how anodyne, with frequent pauses and stiff silences.
If this kept on, they might drift apart.
And it was an awful, paralyzing fear, which choked him and chilled to the bone. Following on the urge of that dread, he had mustered courage to quit of avoiding her -because he held his own quote of avoidance- and corner her. He was sick of walking around of so many thorny issues and unspoken fears, like eggshells he had to step on. One of them was a guilty, selfish resentment he held and hid, but was killing him. He shouldn't feel so resentful and bitter, but he felt she left him behind, forcing him to live while she sacrificed to die alone and helpless. And he didn't seem be able of banish that feeling.
She whirled abruptly, glaring at him with furious and narrowed eyes. Scott blinked fearfully. Inwardly he was praying she hadn't heard him, since if that was the case, he was dead.
Jean stomped towards him, coughed twice and punched his stomach. Hard. His abdominal muscles tightened, but she caught his shoulders to impede him bend in his midsection. She looked straight on his pupils, never hindered by the red sheet masking them. Both sets of eyes connected, and Scott flinched. He was cowed for that grim and unforgiving stare, green eyes smoldering with jade fire.
"Now listen me well, Mister." She grated, absolutely furious. He could feel her nails grazing his skin through the leather. "If I hear EVER again a foolishness resembling that, I'll kick your butt from here to the West Coast! Understood?"
He nodded.
"Fine" Jean snarled approvingly. "Did you think ever I don't want you die? Did you stop to think I'd sacrifice my life to save yours at any given moment? Did you stop to think I'd rather die before letting you do it?"
She never stopped to think she had been repressing actively her telepathy, and therefore she had read his mind without trying. Perhaps she wanted subconsciously remaining oblivious.
"Did you stop to think I'd rather die myself before than living without you? Did you stop to think I don't want you lose your life to save mine?" He retaliated, raising his voice. It was colored with the pain of the memory.
Having reached a stalemate, both of them shut up and looked down, contemplating the tiles. Their uneven and ragged breaths revealed their furious agitation.
"Don't do me that again ever." He whispered.
"Can you promise me you wouldn't risk or sacrifice your life for my sake or in my behalf?" She retaliated.
"I can't promise you that."
"Ditto. Neither I can."
Both hugged suddenly, stricken for a sudden panic and overwhelming need of being held for each other. Scott felt his heart lighter and warmer, now melt a part of the icy tendrils clutching it. He pecked her temple.
"Now we have talked over and straightened that mess" He stated "Why don't you tell me what is eating you? So we can analyze it and get rid together of it."
She shifted uneasily. Scott released her, stepping back to look over her better. She seemed as fidgety and fretful as earlier. The way she bit her lower lip and twiddled her thumbs talked louder than words about her mood and frame of mind.
Not wanting pressing her, he backed down, releasing fully his hold.
His gesture of comprehension and gentleness though helped her to reach a resolution. Jean turned to recollect several sheaves of papers, and with growing nervousness, she offered them openly.
Scott grasped warily the wads of papers, and leafed through the first chart, labeled 'Human'. They were diverse analysis of DNA chains Jean had studied and examined in detail. He observed the inscriptions and footnotes, the drawings and schemes where she had dissected every one of the forty-six chromosomes and classified the genes according her own observations and other geneticists'. He could see the helixes winding up in spiral, and the four essential proteins placed between each pair of fibers. The genes responsible of every the facets of the organism were right there to see and compare.
He observed easily even with the differences in color hair or eyes, height and size, or any other physical circumstance the fluctuations were despicable. Likewise were marked down persons of different races or countries, although he barely managed finding differences except in one tiny corner.
"There're more differences in the DNA between two siblings than between Ororo and me, for example. The race variances hardly are a notch." She stated casually, guessing his thoughts. He nodded. When all was said and done, all were humans. Scott placed the chart over the table, and went through the next.
'Mutant' was neatly printed on it. It was a comparative study of the DNA of several mutants, classified according to the type or kind. Psychics like the Professor and Danny, energy manipulators as Magneto or Saint-John, elemental manipulators like Ororo and Bobby, energy converters as his brother and himself, energy absorbers as Rogue, with an obvious physical mutation like Hank and Warren, shape-shifters like Rhane -and Jean would love get her hands on Mystique-, super athletes like Piotr or Pietro... The part most meaningful was she had designed the schemes to display the X-gene fully dissected, and the way it affected wholly to the rest. Obviously Warren needed further mutations than wings to be able fly (hollow bones, super strength, greater pulmonary capability, bigger heart and more leukocytes on the bloodstream to carry oxygen, enhanced sight and the like) and Bobby couldn't suffer of hypothermia. Still they were clearly the same as the normal humans. The person in its core was that really mattered.
He discarded likewise that folder and opened the last file. As Scott did it, he didn't miss the wild drifting of her eyes or the anxiousness tingeing her features. His eyes switched back to the sheaf, a scheme of Jean's DNA written down. He observed carefully the design and the sketch of the gene to blame for the capability of reading minds and moving things without touching them. Scott turned the first leaves.
And he was in a loss.
He returned to the former pages and rechecked back again those. The drawings had nothing to do.
"What is this?" He stammered, puzzled. And why was giving him frightened tremors?
"Before and after of Alkali Lake" She voiced noncommittally. He gasped.
Her DNA charts were utterly, unmistakably, downright different. It was fully altered and dramatically changed. Moreover, he had been able of find in the former drawings a leading pattern always. Decipher, understand and relate distinct patterns, ideas and elements seemingly irreconcilable in the same picture had been always his great skill, and one of his best assets. And he knew with pride that his mutation had nothing to do with it.
But here and now his analytical mind made sense of nothing. There wasn't anything remotely human-based ever on the chromosomes he was staring, except possibly their numbers. He was unable of figuring out the diagrams. He wasn't a geneticist, not even a doctor, but he could tell that was impossible.
"I-I don't know what has happened. My genetic structure has transformed altogether in something isn't human. I can't imagine what has happened, what I have changed into, what am I now."
She was twisting shakily a lock of her dark auburn hair, staring mortified at her shoes. Then she embraced to herself, shuddering. She wouldn't glance at him.
Then it dawned on Scott.
The psychic nature of her power implied she valued more the mind than the body, more the soul than the mind. She lived half time in an immaterial world, a realm forged by will, wish and wit where the physical laws were irrelevant. Sometimes she felt her body was a shell to her true self, ballast she hadn't been very sure of what make with since the puberty. But she was also a doctor. And to her skeptical, scientific mind there were several incontrovertible dogmas, beyond any reasonable doubt: the living beings were determined by the genetic makeup, and the individual by its DNA chains; each animal and vegetal species possessed one specific; there aren't two DNA chains equal, except in twin individuals.
Therefore, if her genetic make-up was distinct, it meant she wasn't Jean Grey. And if her chromosomes were unorganized according to the Homo Sapiens subspecies, Superior variety, she wasn't longer human. She didn't know, didn't understand, didn't conceive what and who she was. And the hesitation and insecurity were killing her with the fear.
He walked firmly towards her and caught her arms. They seemed so thin now, he thought.
"For the God's sake, Jean, you can't really think... believe... doubt of your own identity. Weren't you who told the whole time that the mind of the persons is what really matters? For example, imagine someone got you cloned. The person could be downright different, albeit the genes matched. She wouldn't be you. Never mind what has happened to you, you keep being Jean. My beautiful Jean." He amended.
"You are hurting me" She mused weakly. He stared down, realizing what his hands were clutching hard, and shaking her slightly. He withdrew, chagrined. "I'm sorry."
She nodded, accepting his apology, and closed again the distance between them he had widened. "Honey, I don't know what happened down there. I don't remember." She hesitated, each word clogging her throat and freezing her tongue. However, those sentences had opened the floodgates of the dam, and words now rushed to flow out of her mouth. "I was there, standing upright, holding my shield. I was wrestling against the mass of water when a fire burst into my skull and suddenly I was strong enough to contain it. I put the flight was out of danger and then I my forces faltered. The tide of liquid dropped about my head, smashing my fragile body, and I... I... I don't know. I think I fainted instantly or something. Then one voice woke up me, and I was in the plane and in your arms. I don't remember..."
Something clicked suddenly in her mind; a thought crawling slowly from the thick mist of midnight shadows shrouded her recollection of that moment, aching in her skull whenever she tried to dwell on it too much. She wanted grasping it, but it was fleeting and slippery as damp soap.
"There was a light. Yes. One glowing dot, shimmering with a golden radiance, brightest than a star. A string was attached to it, but had been cut, and pulsated with light and warmth. It felt blissfully delicious because I couldn't feel, sense, or think. I didn't sense my body; in fact I'd forgotten I owned one. I don't know where I was or how was that place, whether a sort of room or an endless black sea without air where I was floating or drifting. I could only gaze at that spark of orange-amber light, because it was the only stuff existing. Then I realized it was you, and tried reaching you. I wanted, craved, yearned."
"I'm unsure what I did, but I remember what it was like swimming cross-current through a morass of viscous and thick tar. I remember... a stream. Of course, a river dragged me towards the opposite direction, and an invisible barrier, as a curtain or sheen, parted me from you. When I grew desperate, it became toughest than adamantium, but when I steeled my determination, I ripped a tear on it."
"And I suddenly had a body! I might feel my head, my trunk, my limbs! And amazingly the number of everything was correct! I felt the thin air weighing against my front side, and the hard floor where I was lying, and it meant I could sense. I could see and hear and taste and smell and touch! It was... was..." She shut up. The memories were fading away again, letting just a passing impression, and she frowned, despite of the utter conviction and certainty she prided one second ago.
"It's too odd. I suppose my mind made up some bizarre imagery when I was underwater. Perhaps the brutal blow, and the oxygen privation... it'd explain the darkness, the sea and having located you mentally, but it doesn't resolve why I survived to being crushed, drowned or frozen. Neither it answers why I changed. Because SOMETHING had to happen. Damn it, this story is so nonsensical!"
Scott studied her thoughtfully. She was now calmer, more rational. Jean was more relaxed and focused when she rationalized and reflected about her troubles, instead merely resorting to freak out. Just like him in reality. Nevertheless there was something... dreadful in her second last sentence. Misgivings crept into him, and fear bubbled into his chest. Fear of facing something. But what? He recalled his feelings within the jet and spilled them out.
"When I was in the Blackbird I was downright scared and helpless." See the great love of your life on the brink of dying and being absolutely useless and impotent to impede it does that. "Then the water enveloped you, and I felt... I felt... that our connection, our psilink, was brutally severed. You had vanished in the other side. I wasn't feeling you at all, only fear, pain, loneliness and darkness. Your mind no longer existed. Then you turned up again, and I was overjoyed. And frightened of it being a dream. Because" His words strangled in his throat, a knot blocking the windpipe. Splinters of icy fear stabbed his belly when he rethought what was about of saying, "I felt you dying in my head. I heard your last scream bursting, before you faded. You were... gone away. Deceased."
A pregnant silence followed to his words. However could be heard the shattering noise of something cracking.
"It isn't possible" Jean rebuked, annoyed and evasive. Breathing was suddenly very hard. "I'm alive. Don't you see? Because if the link broke like that, I should be de-a-d"
Her voice suddenly died away, reduced to a whispering. And she was reminded of the thing that she had been conveniently forgetting all along, the thing she had felt when the waters rushed around of her. The lake clutched her in its grip, and she blacked out instantly, losing any awareness of her body and the physical world, hacked off the sensations her senses should recollect and the minds her brain should perceive. That time when her body went numb and her mind blinked off, -maybe a split-second, maybe millions of years- the only single thing she had felt was the exact same stuff she had felt when Annie died.
The same awful and unstoppable sensation of her life flickering off slowly, snuffed out as a candlelight with a blow. Except this time wasn't second-hand knowledge, and she was feeling it right in her mind, directly, instead the suffering of other person poured in her. And she had reached the same limbo, the frontier dividing the life and the afterlife she visited with Annie, but this time she felt to Scott calling when she was descending to wherever. And it was enough to pull her out.
She was startled was out of her reverie and stared fixedly at Scott. Her fiancé was gawking at her with an amazed and perplexed look and a gaping mouth. The link ought to have leaked out, and he knew. Oh God, he knew.
"I felt you from there. I DID hear you calling me. You were so scared and alone, you sounded so desperate and needing I had to go with you. You called and it granted me the will to return. It allowed me return." She perished for her friends and lived again for her lover. It ringed too corny, too sappy and stereotyped to be honestly believed out of a cheap trash novel. But there she was.
Jean stared down at her fisted and writhing hands. "I AM dead. I died there and then, for the God's sake. Why am I alive? How can be alive? What am I? A ghost, a mirage, a zombie? A shade denies vanishing? What am I?" She stammered, boring her eyes on her tiny fingers, expecting see them turning transparent or translucent. "Perhaps I'm dead still, buried under two thousand feet of water, and this is all a dream. Perhaps I'm a dream, an illusion, a lie."
"NO!" Scott shouted, no willing listen another word of it. He didn't understand when she got like this, self-indulging in a bout of insecurity or self-insulting depreciation.
She could seem fragile, with her slender body, her exquisitely chiseled features, her thin hands. But he knew it was merely a facade of beauty, a deceit to hide what she was. Beneath she owned a will of steel, a courage, a determination and a tenacity indomitable and unstoppable. A temper quick and blazing he and his friends had learnt to fear, an inner fire drew him as a moth, an intelligence and compassion didn't know of boundaries, and a passion could create or destroy worlds. He had never met with a woman like her. Cast, forged and chiseled in a mold was broken afterwards. She was a true force of the nature by her own right. And he never felt intimidated for it, but he fell head over hells in love.
But sometimes she behaved like a fretful, defenseless woman, and he didn't understand why. That lacking of self-confidence and insecurity in herself, that desperate necessity of being reassured and loved didn't clash with her bold and temperamental Jean. She was a smart, pretty and strong-willed woman, but when came down to herself, Jean was incapable of liking to herself. She suffered inferiority complex.
Of course that was the pot calling to the kettle black.
He wrapped her with his arms and pulled her in himself. He let she was soothed with his warmth and his closeness, and within his mind did a ball with his feelings and shot it towards her.
"Listen me, Jean, and listen me well. You are Jean Grey. You are the woman who I love. And I know you are alive and well. I felt you dying and now I feel you living. Whatever has happened to you, you are my Jean. You are clever but no arrogant, gorgeous but no vain, hot-headed but reasonable, merciful but no fool, and neither take shit from anybody nor give it to others. You listen me and make me listen, say me when I'm wrong and let me correct you, kick my butt when it needs be kicked and trust in me to keep grounded yours. You can see my secrets and no laugh or walk away, and you let me watch yours at the same time. You believe and trust in me even when nobody, including me, does. I love you and shall always do. Not matter what. Understood?"
She smirked, a red blush dotting her fair skin, and squeezed her body against him. Fully thanked and delighted. He achieved always burst her bubble of self-pity and making her feel worthy of something. It was mutual, since he needed be reassured and loved constantly, but he gave her always stability when she felt sad, confused or lost. He was her rock, her footing, her anchor, her stability. She would be lost without him.
And now she required desperately remembering who she was, getting refugee in strong arms and to be soothed by them, know who she was and feel alive. Cling to him with despair, pleading him a shelter, and giving her ache and fear and desperation so he healed them with loving hands and gentile kisses and tender strokes.
A yearning deeply ingrained in her boiled into her chest. Her temperature turned hotter, and her cheeks flushed with heat, shame and desire. He groaned while embracing her, and she felt molten magma simmering in her loins, pleading for releasing. It stunned her and feared sometimes, knowing how badly she wanted him, how immense power he held about her.
Of course that was the pot calling to the kettle black again. He had it just so bad for her. And thinking she had such power about a man gave her shudders. She was awfully afraid of hurting him. Of shattering him as a piece of fragile glass.
Perhaps because of it they were even, just like he pointed. They told and shared their words, feelings and thoughts, and kicked the each other's butt when one of them was suffering of a guilt trip, or a self-derogatory phase.
She squashed inwardly those deliberations, pushing them far away her mind now. She didn't want to think. She wished nothing but merging lips with him, and kneading his broad shoulder plates with avid hands. Victim of a sudden rush of lust, her nails scratched the back, intending leaving red gashes marking his hide through the glossy kevlar.
"Take me" She rasped huskily in his ear, her tongue's tip flickering along the earlobe. "Make me feel alive. Make me feel real."
He nodded, and led her chivalrously towards a stretcher, all the way raining butterfly kisses on her face. He lied her on the bed and paused simply to gaze her, observing her sprawled body from his upright posture. The light was behind of him, and it darkened his shape and outlined it with a bright nimbus. Jean smiled beatifically, knowing he wasn't peering at her as a dominant male but an artist recording in his eyes a wonderful, breath-taking painting.
Jean opened her legs and fluttering salaciously her eyelashes, bucked her waist upwards, beckoning him, taunting him, with wanton seduction. Now he would wrap her in his shelter for everywhere, over her, under her, around her, inside her, until the storm finished. Then she, confident and fulfilled, would be able facing her troubles on her own.
Scott inclined over her and kissed her, reclining his body on touch with hers all along. His hands disappeared swiftly under the pullover.
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As the pair sought shelter in each other's arms, the dusk had befallen about the Earth. The night had shrouded the country with a blanket of thick shadows, as an inky cloak unfolded over the dome of the sky. The mansion, the state and the woodlands were submerged in a still, silent rest. Nothing disrupted the peaceful slumber the property of Xavier was frozen with, not even the stray student too active to sleep quietly, or the scurrying of the nocturnal animals among the large trees in the wood.
The extensive wood surrounded the School existed long before Charles Xavier dreamt the peaceful coexistence between the varieties of humankind and established his educational institution. And it remained to grant to the mansion an air of idyllic and picturesque shelter to the children, who otherwise would see the blunt, stern reality of the place: a looming mansion where they studied their lessons. No more, no less.
The wood was old and thick, with tall pines and firs with peaks speared the sky, and centenary oaks and elms of broad trunk and gnarled branches. Thorny brambles, holly trees, shrubs and impressive ferns sprouted among the roots and the massive rocks, carpeted with thick layers of emerald moss and lichens of lively colors. Vines and mistletoe coiled around the trees, completing the picture. The place had an atmosphere of fairy tale many students loved.
Outside of the walls the wood spread his cover of greenery along several hundreds of feet, but there was a cleared patch of land of five feet of width surrounded the estate as a ring. That stripe of ground had been cleared off underbrush to impede some intruder sneaked into the mansion from the other part of the jungle. Cameras were set along the walls, hidden in the trees, always watching over the hostile outside world. Precautions had been respected and valued always, but since the invasion, paranoia was high in the school.
One of the cameras whirled slowly from to side to other, sweeping the perimeter, when a dim shadow threw a pebble from the trees. The projectile rushed across the air, bounced on a branch, and hit the side of the device with a metallic cling. The machine didn't break down, but its motion halted.
A dark, human-like figure darted out of the foliage and sprinted towards the walls, exploiting the opening in the monitor system. It sprang up, clung to the bricks, and climbed laboriously as far as the top of the fence. It crouched there for a split second, and leapt towards the nearest pine. Four slender limbs embraced tightly the broad trunk in the instant of the impact, and didn't slip their grip when the body lurched. The slam had been strong. It whimpered faintly and let its body slid down.
The intruder straightened, and as sighed and rubbed its sore muscles, it led its attention towards the camera just disabled. Its hand drifted at the back and pulled out a long staff. The figure poked carefully the shining device with the blunt edge, setting it again in motion.
It' pointless keep the breach on the security perimeter permanently The person mused, pleased.
It shut the eyes in focusing, checking its mental shields and its camouflage, and started a quick run towards the big house. Its course never altered or slowed down, and its feet sidestepped sinuously among the shrubs and leapt over fallen trunks and big boulders. Never, not one single time, it tripped with a root, slipped over a stone, or was whipped with a branch. On the contrary, the skeletal branches obstructing its way, resembling arms willing snaring it, moved away its way at their own volition when it was about of striding by. The person never stopped to see the branches lashing violently with a rustle of fallen leaves.
At last, after of leaving a long print of its trail on the leaves, twigs and mud where it had trodden on, the prowler reached the edge of the wood. It paused few seconds to catch her breath, and perused attentively the place with piercing blue eyes.
A shy moonbeam brushed the tree and traveled along the trunk, glimmering over the rough bark with glittering silver. The soft and glistening moonlight stroked the shape of the intruder, outlining it. It was a tall woman, perhaps in her early twenties, with a lean, gorgeous body clad with glossy leather of an ebony hue of black. Her hair was short, braided in a ponytail fell freely on her shoulder plates, and her eyes twinkled with suspicious wetness when she stood still and stiffened, watching the house.
A strange, unwelcome homesickness stirred in her stomach, and she blinked away some tears. She nearly had forgotten how beautiful was the place, how charming was the building of Victorian style.
She forced to herself past of the numbing gloominess she had frozen with, and squashed inwardly the rebel feelings of sorrow and grief were overwhelming her. She swelled her lungs, and focused. Focusing, calm and self-control. Those words flashed in her head as a mantra, dispelling any emotionalism. Rule over your emotions or they will get you killed, she repeated to herself. Her father had fed her with it from the crib, and she had learned well. Or no so well, since her temper had been about of killing her with alarmingly regular frequency. She shouldn't be so hotheaded, but knowing her family, it was like saying to the wind no to blow.
Using her self-demeaning reflections to banish images of smoldering and blackened ruins, she strode along the rim of the wide lawn, walking around of the mansion.
She wandered along the edge with the stealth of a fox, taking painstaking care to avoid getting spotted for someone, ducking and slithering beneath the bushes as a snake. She knew perfectly well where she was leading. An air vent, near of there, on the rear side of the mansion. Once she reached it, only had to creep into and crawl until arriving to the hallway next to the Cerebro Room. Following on a sudden impulse, her mind reached out at other mind, tightly shielded but so akin to hers it was impossible of missing. He had to be inside for now...
She widened her eyes in disbelief, and shook with barely restrained anger. "I can't believe this" She seethed aloud.
Forgetting her former intentions and her careful sneak into the proverbial fortress, she stormed at the mansion, headed towards the backdoor kitchen. Its glass pan was lit up.
She snarled a profanity, and clenching her fists, headed to the house.
She shoved noisily the door with an angry kick, and leered at the figure inside. He was rummaging through the cupboard, with his back hunched and turned on the door. The idiot wasn't even watching the way out.
The girl stomped angrily at him, reared her arm and smacked his nape with a brutal backhand. He yelped, and pivoted on his foot to face her. The glaring, looming face dissolved instantly in a contrite, remorseful expression when he noticed of the girl of flowing red hair and blazing cerulean eyes glaring him back. Her kevlar coat was open, showing a crimson red outfit with the same pattern of triangular banner was emblazoned on his suit.
At least he gets the decency of feeling guilty She fumed. "What the fuck do you think you are doing here, brother? Risking the mission, imperiling to ourselves, endangering our presence..."
The same boy had been witnessing the Alkali Lake events stared pointedly at the coffee maker, busied with its bubbling percolating, and at the mug he was carrying on his hand. She ogled to him.
"Are you nuts?" She whispered. "You are jeopardizing the whole mission for one dumb cup of coffee?"
She was feeling a sudden necessity of remembering to throttle relatives isn't a good thing.
"No only ONE" He remarked with downcast eyes and sullen voice. "Besides, I've not sipped good coffee in years. YEARS, Ray."
"So what?" She exclaimed, being careful of keeping a low conversational level. "God, Nate, sometimes I can't believe you're the older. And technically you haven't been BORN yet, so haven't passed years."
"Oh, sure, bring THAT up." He retorted, thoroughly ticked off, albeit he knew wasn't in position to argue.
"Oh, shut up already. You were supposed to hack the database while I used to Cerebro. That was the job, do you remember?"
"I don't know if the kid does, girl, but be sure I'll remember after being done with you."
The sudden words started to both siblings and they rocked on their heels to face theirs source. Their eyes widened when they spotted the furry man of burly and stout physique standing on the doorway, with a snarl twisting his roughed face. To both sides of him a blonde teen and a young brunette girl with a slash of white hair were crouching in fighting stances.
A millisecond before he leapt, the boy and the girl had time to marvel in their aspects: Logan alive and well, and Bobby and Marie younger than themselves. However, when the muscular frame of Wolverine lunged at them with a somersault, deadly claws unsheathed and prepared, both jumped sideways, dodging him.
The feral mutant landed on the floor with a resounding thump, his arms doing a slashing motion downward. Floorboards were cracked open, and splinters of wood showered on him, grazing his face.
The two psychics realized in dismal that was too late to prevent to Logan and the kids of sending a mental alarm message to the Professor, or to scramble the signal. Furious with the ruin of the plan Rachel sent an angry 'This is your fault!' at her brother, and both braced themselves to bear and reply the attack.
Nathan sidestepped swiftly the gusts of solid vapor of ice Bobby was unleashing, but the whistling sound of the coffee maker paralyzed him momentarily. Time enough to Bobby hurled onwards both of his hands and shot a bluish stream of frozen humidity. The thick and hissing water steam touched his skin, and it hardened instantly, trapping him inside a layer of blue frostbite. The thin crust of ice was chilling his very nerves and slowing down his thoughts. He grinned inwardly.
It isn't half bad, boy He sent mockingly But it isn't precisely a coffin of thick ice where I'm encased in
The ice covering the area over his left eye glowed with a blinding, golden flash. The ice statue quivered, and the cover of solidified and appallingly cold ice imprisoning him burst in thousand shards. The shockwave shot far away the bits, but his telekinesis picked up the splinters and spikes, and launched them towards the icemaker. Bobby flinched under the rain of jagged ice pellets, and covered his face with both hands to no be hurt.
Nathan spotted movement flashing from the corner of his eye, and with thought speed raised an invisible shield of energy. Rogue lunged at him ignorant of the danger, and crashed in the hard and crystalline surface. He held her at bay, imagining the complications if she absorbed his power or his memories. The later would ravel his mission so badly he couldn't or don't want think about it, and the former might easily blow up the mansion.
Meanwhile Logan was busy trying taking down to the girl, but neither of his strikes had connected so far. She evaded each swipe, stab and feint with the nimbleness and easiness of someone very got used to fight. But while Logan slashed empty air with such speed his arms faded in a blur of movement, he began to suspect of something else. The dexterity she dodged his attacks with, and her swiftness spinning and zigzagging, almost acting beforehand, had only two possible explanations: one, she had battled with him, knew his style and technique and foretold his attacks; and two, she was a telepath and DID know exactly what he was planning right when he thought it. Minding the first idea was no possible, the only option left was...
Let's say I have a special awareness about space and movement, and left it in that, okay? She snickered in his head. He almost stumbled backwards with the sudden, unexpected surprise.
Anyway her mental voice -how she had trespassed so effortlessly his own barriers he was unable of figuring out- supported the telepathy. He redoubled the vigor of the attack, throwing an uppercut to her jaw. She tilted slightly her neck and placed her open palm protecting her stomach simultaneously. The sham blow he had intended missed for a wide berth and the real jab to the belly had been expertly blocked.
The attack unbalanced him, and she exploited the opening landing her foot on his soft midsection. He bent in hurt and it allowed her to recoil and take a breath. Wolverine rubbed his belly gritting his teeth in pain, feeling his healing factor kicking in gear already and erasing the bruise.
She had read his faint perfectly, although it had been sheer, thoughtless impulse. It had to be right: the girl had an odd spatial perception. But the only person he had known with that mutation was Scott...
And besides, the girl had known exactly where kick and how leaving him winded: on the belly, where there were no bones and all was smooth and very vulnerable. The implications of it were staggering, but he was too occupied in resuming the fight and focused in looking for an opening to dwell on them.
The intruder had gained a leverage but she had driven to herself in a trap. She was stuck in a corner of the kitchen, with no place to twist around, recoil or run away. If he cornered her -literally- he would end up bringing down her resistance, not matter how good she was.
With the exhilaration of having the victory within his reach, and the caution of giving nothing for granted, he folded his knees and launched onwards his mass, stretching both arms to perform a double circular slash downwards.
The redhead narrowed sharply her eyes. Her arm sneaked with lightning speed behind her back, and gripping something, it bolted onwards with a blur of motion.
A clattering, piercing sound. Metal clashed against metal.
And Wolverine stared gaping at the apparently innocent girl, who was parrying his six razor claws with a long staff of metal, with one vicious-looking, curvy blade at one edge.
He thrust with force, forcing his claws against it. The face of the girl twisted, a visible display of the effort she was enduring to counteract his no inconsiderable strength. She was holding him back, repelling him. His claws, capable of sawing titanium like a knife cuts butter, were unable of splicing her weapon in pieces. But it was downright impossible. Nothing was harder than the adamantium. That rod shouldn't remain whole. Unless it was made also of...
"Between other things" The girl panted heavily, guessing his thoughts more than reading them. At the same time she spoke her blue eyes filled steadily with an unnatural white-golden glow, and her metallic club was enveloped for tendrils of red fire. "It's called psimitar, invented and forged for a mutant genius, and serves to train and hone psychic powers. It channels my psionic power. Just like this!"
Flames erupted out of her eyes, and something invisible and intangible slammed on him, launching his mass with wild force to the opposite side of the kitchen. Cupboards and furniture of oak and mahogany were reduced to debris and splinters of cracked wood.
Logan lay sprawled in the middle of the wreckage, and with painful slowness he scrambled out in a sitting position. One appliance slid down and dropped to the floor with the movement, shattering on the tiles. His head was throbbing with dizziness. God, it had been a hell of hit.
To both sides of him two drawers snapped open suddenly, and knifes and forks flew with murdering intents. He jumped at his feet and his arms slashed two arcs in the air, thus tossing on the floor the kitchen utensils. Then he spared one determined glare to the girl, understanding promptly that it had been one mere distraction. Yet he wasn't scared of her, but for her. His healing factor was fixing the damage almost instantly, his breath was heavier and more ravaged, and blood was slowly sliding down his pupils. His muscles flexed and he restrained him, pleading for control. If this fight wasn't over soon, he...
The girl tossed backwards her ponytail and whipped her weapon with a diagonal arc downward. Her gaze possessed an intensity could powder mountains. Her body crackled, and went up in shimmering flames. Her eyes flashed dulling the ceiling light, and tongues of blazes wound up around the long shaft. She gripped firmly the handle.
"Don't worry, I shan't kill you. My plan simply is we are long gone when you wake up. Sweet dreams" She stated with an ominous voice. Then she bolted onwards, bursting with energy and brandishing her weapon to a circular stab while Logan flexed his elbows to slash upwards. In her fury she was oblivious to anything else, including her brother holding back to his two attackers, and the persons bursting in the room.
The persons.
Her eye noticed a little kid staring her with sorrowful, bulging eyes.
Leech.
Shit.
Her telepathy, her telekinesis, and even that secret part of her saw the cosmic strands binding together matter and energy, blacked out instantly. She was virtually blind, deaf and crippled. Instinctively she willed her body to recoil and retreat, but with it lost the momentum of her lunge, and the chance to make damage.
And Wolverine, who didn't expect that when started to move, speared his claws upwards.
A spray of blood followed.
And he found the entire length of his claws imbedded on her bosom.
Logan stared horrified, paralyzed with the same terror had overwhelmed him when he woke up violently and pierced to the young teen trusted in him. His speechless face ogled to the big, wide, blue eyes blinking and boring her glazed pupils on him. Her mouth gurgled obscenely, and she spewed a blot of blood landed on his shirt. With compulsory and automaton moves, her hands grabbed his flaccid and limp fists, and she slid the claws out of her ribcage. She dropped slowly to the floor afterwards, falling first to her knees and after her full body.
And as long as she lay over the floor with blood oozing out of her gashes, her gawking eyes, blue and crystallized as beads, never gave up to Logan.
"It isn't your blame" She whispered, and her eyelids closed after of fluttering briefly.
"NO!" A cry of primal denial erupted out of the boy's throat.
He had been battling physically to Rogue and Bobby since the Leech's arrival, but then threw to both teenagers to the tiles with strength born out of despair and fear, and advanced towards Wolverine with the impetus of a buffalo. Leech felt his power overloaded and the feedback hitting him hard. He barely could scream and clutch his temples with his hands before passing out.
Knowing his power free, the boy lashed out with a tendril of golden energy, which coiled around of the motionless Logan as a whip, and tossed him around like a rag doll. He spat with furious scorn, a raging expression matched deeply with the sheer tenderness when he stared at his sister. He was leaning over her slumped shape right when a burst of brimstone crackled behind him. He pivoted instantly, reaching out with his mind to unleash a discharge of power of killing-level.
The immaterial hand prevented that, piercing quickly his chest and short-circuiting his nervous system.
With a moan and a last burst of golden energy, he collapsed on the ground, fainted and knocked out. Kurt Wagner released to Kitty Pryde with a rueful and shocked stare at the fallen bodies, and leaned over the girl.
His eyes without pupils and of bright amber color narrowed when he watched the unsteady thumping up and down of her chest.
"She is alive!" He howled, expecting be listened not only for the people inside of the kitchen but also for whom waited out. Rogue crumbled down, feeling her bones turned jelly, exhaling with shaky pants the air she had held in her lungs until then. Bobby checked up her over a second before shuffling towards Kurt full of concern. Ororo, Jean carrying to Leech, and the rest of X-Men and students rushed into the kitchen.
Wolverine was the only immobile and shuddering. Trickles of blood stained his claws and he felt them drying as an eternal evil paint or opprobrious blemish. The spit of blood smeared his shirt and dripped down it, and he felt it weighing a ton and suffocating his lungs.
"God, I didn't want-"
"Shit, this is full of blood!"
"How can she be-"
"Who are they?"
"Did you see that? Logan pinned her with his cla-"
"I didn't mean!"
"Goddess, we have carry them to the infirmary!"
"Hurry up, help me before it be too late!" Jean screamed physically and voiced mentally. Her incensed, impatient shout-command with a hint of plead was listened and attended over the mayhem of screams, curses, recriminations and questions without answer was polluting the erstwhile quiet kitchen.
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Notes: In the Uncanny X-Men 207 issue Wolverine stabbed with his claws to Rachel in the heart and lungs, trying killing her for 'no following the rules'. I thought was past time he was confronted with the consequences of his actions.
Cliffhangers. Yummy. In the next part of the chapter we find out of the Rachel's condition, the X-Men deliberate about the situation about of facing a new challenge, and the battle begins.