Not Myself
By Princess Alexandria
Princess_alex24@hotmail.com
Emma did notice it didn't take as long for Christy to lower her shield this time. After creating a strong link to her own body just in case, Emma stepped inside Christy's mind.
"I'll try to keep it open." Christy looked a bit pale. "Are we doing this in order?"
"That's what I've been doing." Emma could see Christy wasn't up for it yet.
"I did torture those men. We captured them and I tortured them." Christy spoke quietly as they moved through her mind to the last place marker Emma had left. Christy was confessing her crime before Emma saw it.
"I told you I wouldn't judge you harshly."
"I usually tried to kill them quickly. It was the only mercy I could afford, and I usually didn't…" Christy's voice caught as she looked away from Emma, but Emma caught the gleam of tears on her cheeks. "There were a few times I didn't grant that mercy…"
"Shh… It's okay." Emma moved closer and could feel the shaking in Christy's frame when she touched her shoulder. "Maybe we could start with a good memory. Just this time we could take it out of order." She could feel Christy's fear surrounding them and had to offer her something to calm her down just a little. Otherwise she'd be stuck in Christy's mind again.
"Okay."
"We'll pick one at random." Emma glanced at the memory she had been planning to see and then her eyes traveled backwards in time from that to a small shining good moment not too far before it. "There. Let's see what that is."
********
They all sat around the campfire. Her men had actually remembered her birthday. Even Christy had forgotten, since it was her last she hadn't dwelled on it, but they found silly hats in the remains of a store and sang very badly for her. These tough grubby looking men had sang with fake high voices and told her to imagine they were beautiful women. It was the least they could give her. Tracey pretended to do a strip tease without actually taking anything off while the men sang.
"Thank you." She wiped the tears from her eyes. It was partly from her laughing at the horrible rendition, and partly because she was so touched.
"And depending on how good your imagination is, you could get lucky tonight." Tom joked and pretended to be putting on lipstick. "This lady loves a woman in command. I'll even wear a dress if you want."
"Hey, you only wear that dress for me." Jake pretended to be upset and everyone laughed. There really wasn't a straighter man than Jake.
"You know I love you big guy, but it's Christy." Tom fluttered fake eyelashes at Jake. "So, do you think you might spank me? I'll take the traditional spanking for you if you do it." Tom's grin was wicked.
"And how many would that be? It might put you out of commission Tom."
"Hey! I'm not that old." Christy acted indignant, but that was a tender subject for everyone. This was as old as it got for them all. "I'm twenty nine."
"I remember you turning twenty nine when I was in school Christy." Tom smirked at her. She didn't remember him in her classes, but his remembering her had saved her life. That boy gave her a tribe.
"Okay, so I'm thirty-one." She glared at her men. "But if anyone tries to spank me… they will become a woman." Her hand moved to the knife on her hip in a fake threat and they stepped back as one with pretend submission.
"We would have got you a present, but then you'd have to carry it and we prefer your gun arm ready to go." Mark smiled. "I was proposing that Tracey sleep with you, but I was outvoted."
"By a very loud Tracey letting us all know she's straight." Jake grinned.
"Hey, even if I did it, I didn't want to hear Christy yell out some mutant's name at the moment of truth ya know." Tracey gave her a teasing grin. "If a girl is gonna go out of her way, it really should be her own name being yelled out."
"Have I been telling too many stories?" Christy's eyebrow rose. She decided to ignore most of what Tracey said.
"No, we love your stories Christy." Mark smiled. "Better than television."
"Unless you had the sex channels, in which case… sad second place."
"I don't know about that." Aaron smirked. "I didn't even read the X-men, but that story she did about Storm and Kitty having sex on the beach was hot."
"Oh… oh… My favorite was Scott and Logan in the garage." Tracey grinned wickedly as some men groaned. They didn't care for the men on men stories.
"Oh, what about Ms. White and Ms. Scarlet in the library with a rope."
"This isn't Clue Tom." Tracey shook her head and Christy just watched her people talk about her stories.
"The Jean and Emma one." He clarified. "It was in a library and Emma was tied down."
"You guys are ridiculous." Christy grinned. She liked that they actually liked the stories she did to entertain them all. She pulled out the deck of cards. "So shall we deal again?"
She set out five pairs of cards face down in front of her before stopping. "Lets see what we have to work with." She smiled at Aaron, who was always looking for a Kitty card ever since she told that first story. She flipped over the first set of cards. "Mystique and Cyclops." Christy grimaced at that possibility and moved to turn the next set over. "Logan and Bobby." The third set made Aaron sit up straighter, "Kitty and Jubilee." The forth made Christy smile, she hoped it won the game. "Jean and Rogue." The last set made her groan out loud. "The Professor and Cannonball."
"You only get to take one out of the running." Mark smirked at her. He knew she hated the Professor or Scott to show up. They just weren't sexy characters.
"Oh God." Christy studied the cards. She couldn't save them all. Either Mystique or Cannonball was at risk. "Dammit, no one should have to have sex with Scott. I'm saving Mystique." She laughed. If she had to do the Professor story she could just make it funny.
She looked up at her team. "High card calls out the second pair." She held out the cards and each person was gentle when they pulled one. They all respected how important these cards were to Christy. Jake got high card. "Okay, take the Logan one out." That was to be expected. Whenever Jake had high card and they had a gay male couple to play with he took them out. Unfortunately for him there were two this time.
"Okay, down to three." Christy spoke with a fake card shark tone. She separated each couple, making sure to remember who went with who and set out three cards face down. "Who picks?"
"Birthday girl gets to pick." Mark smiled at her. Christy took the middle card and turned it over.
"Man, I just can't get a break." She groaned as she stared at the Professor. "Okay, bathroom break and perimeter check, then I'll have something." Maybe Cannonball could go to the Professor's office late at night. Christy started to toss ideas around in her mind while her team took care of business.
********
Emma chuckled as they pulled out of that memory. "And you did that often?"
Christy blushed while she grinned back. "A few times a week."
"I'd love to hear some of those stories." Emma had a hard time imagining Jean tying her up in the library. Maybe not that story. The comment about Scott was a little troubling. He could be sexy when he wanted to be, but she could see how Christy would have come to that conclusion. It took a lot to get him to loosen up and he'd never trusted Emma to do some things even though they were already in his mind. He never let them actually get physical either, because he felt only that would be cheating on Jean. Emma never bothered to tell him that a telepath would definitely see what they were doing as cheating.
They were in front of the memory Christy was nervous about letting her see and Emma could see Christy's nervousness returning. "What are you afraid of? This is the past. It can't hurt you anymore if you don't let it."
"I don't want you to think I'm a monster." Christy eyes were intense as they stared at Emma. "I like you and I care what you think of me. Letting you see these things could hurt me."
"I killed my own sister." Emma just blurted it out. "I shot her dead for attacking my students and it took me a while to get over the fact that it didn't bother me like it should. I felt like I should be hurting for doing that to my own sister, but I felt like I'd done the right thing, no matter what other people said. Some people think only a monster could kill their own family and not feel bad about it. Do you think that?"
Christy just blinked for a moment and Emma could feel the thoughts whirling around in her mind as she processed it. "No, the kids were your family. Your relatives didn't care about you like they should and you were just protecting your own. She was attacking children, no decent person would do that. Hell, even some of the Raiders left the kids alone."
"See, it's the circumstances." Emma spoke more quietly, secretly relieved at the woman's answer. "I can see past what you did because of the circumstances. I'm not going to think you are a monster, because I'm in your mind and I can see you aren't. I've seen you do some seriously hard things, but the goodness in you remains intact."
Christy didn't look like she knew what to say to that, so Emma didn't wait for her to think of something. "So let's check this out." She motioned to the memory. She waited for Christy to nod before going in.
********
Greg never gave her a moments peace. Christy felt like screaming at him. They had the prisoners, they had managed to load meat on the Raiders cart, but with Greg here at the interrogation she was put in another corner. Either she was too soft and didn't get the information they'd ordered or she was hard and came across looking like a monster in front of someone that would most likely tell the others.
Fuck, knowing the routes these guys used would save lives. They could attack them with better plans, stop raids, and get their takes. Looks like she's gonna go hard. "If you refuse to do it, you stay quiet and don't undermine my authority." She growled at him. "Remember, I'm doing what you don't have the stomach for." She was still mad he refused to help, but still wouldn't leave her alone.
The men were chained to the side of a building or the fence across from it. They managed to capture six. Three died in the fight, and one of the six was going to die from the wound he got. Well, she'd dole out mercy in a way that looked very cold. "This man is useless to us." She spoke loudly, complaining to Mark who had guard duty. She walked over to the man hanging from his good arm and pulled out her knife to quickly slit his throat. The other raiders voices rose in protest, but it was already done. "Those that are useless aren't worth taking prisoner." She smirked at the man in charge of these men. "I gave you that death easy. The next one will die hard."
She turned to face the dead man hanging from his arm on the fence and sighed. Better to do this than torture a live man first. He wouldn't feel it. She wiped her knife off on his shirt before putting it back in her scabbard, and then moved to open his shirt, pulling it clear of his chest. "I want to know the routes you take. I want to know the schedule for the raids. I want to know where you get all your supplies and where you take them."
"Fuck you bitch." Was all she got in response. Christy gave Greg a warning with her eyes to stay out of it as she pulled the knife back out to use.
"Well, I'll show you what I do to prisoners on this man, but it isn't the same. Normally they would be alive. Consider this an interesting visual." She let a fake madness enter her eyes as she stared at the leader of these men and stabbed the body behind her in the damaged arm, causing blood to run out yet another slash in him. She then ignored the audience and turned to shove the knife into his stomach, running it along it low on him and spilling his insides onto her and his feet.
"Jesus Christ." She could hear a few people didn't care for that, some of which were her own.
"Woman has balls when they're already dead." The leader man hissed and Christy turned to stare at him. His contempt for her, or just women, was clear.
"Rip the clothes off the others. I'm going to have lunch and be back." Her voice held a fake cheery note, but really she needed to get away from the smell of blood and the guilt of what she was about to do. She knew that she'd have to hurt a live man and hurt him bad before anyone took her seriously. The leader man didn't seem to believe in her ruthlessness. He was a fool to taunt her, because Christy could feel that ruthlessness in her veins. It was what got her up every morning, what drove her to kill for her people. There really wasn't anything she couldn't do. Hell, she'd killed a friend this week. Killing rapists and murderers wouldn't be hard after that. She ate mechanically as she worked to distance her emotions for this. She worked to believe in what she was doing so that no one would see her hesitate. Hesitating showed weakness, and she couldn't afford that.
She ignored Greg's questions and his disapproval. She didn't respond to him except to tell him he had two options, to stay and be quiet or to leave, but if he chose any other course of action she'd have her men tie him up and gag him. This had to be done. You don't make threats and not carry through. You just don't.
She walked with her back straight, her stride in command. She walked into that alley with those men like she owned the entire city, part of her repeating that she should walk like Emma, talk like Emma, and take no shit like Emma. But carve people up like Sabertooth. The stench of the dead man had a chance to spread, but she was used to death now, and didn't let it bother her. She could honestly say she'd probably seen more death up close than these soldiers had. Carving people up for food did that to you. That's what taught her how to gut a man.
"So, you know what I want." She gave the naked leader an evil smirk. "Let's hear it."
"Fuck you bitch." He growled out. Christy moved closer to him and glanced down at his penis in a silent threat, but this man was going to be the last to go. He knew that. He had the information.
"You know I'm going to kill you all." She spoke softly, almost a flirtatious tone as she ran a hand over his chest. "It's just a matter of the amount of pain you'll be in. You won't have to face the others to tell them you spilled your secrets to a woman, and if I can't get anything out of you, I'll just keep taking your teams until someone does talk." She leaned closer to him and smirked. "Pick a man."
"What?"
"Which one do I kill next? Pick one. It's how the game is played. You pick one. I pick one. One is picked at random." She sounded insane, which was a useful thing. People hate facing the insane, you can't predict them.
"I'm not going to pick." He said with disgust.
"Okay, I'll take your turn this time. Next time you do." Christy turned to study the nervous looking men. "Eni, Meani, Mini, Moe." She started to say, but then saw the terror in one man's eyes. It was more than the others. That was the target. She took a few steps towards him and noticed the others struggling. The rookie of the team. They were protective of this one. Sad for him, it cemented his fate. "Oh, this one's perfect. What is he? Sixteen? Were you taking him out for his first rape?"
Greg took a step towards her and Christy turned to glare at him. Her eyes screamed that if he interfered he would regret it. The threat worked. He went back to his post. She even scared her own men. How lovely.
The knife was in her hand without her even remembering pulling it out. Time seemed disjointed, like it came in flashes and each press of reality was a horror. She needed the man to live a while, hopefully scaring the others into complying. If she didn't torture this one properly she'd have to do it again. She didn't think she could do it again. The screaming was like white noise. It didn't even register with her. She removed his toes slowly. This was a kid, but she refused to think of that. He was as big as a man, and did raider things. She had to continue. She covered her hesitation to turn and glance at the leader with an eyebrow raised in a silent question. He looked horrified, but he didn't look ready to talk.
She burned the foot so that Kevin wouldn't bleed to death. She really could have done without knowing his name, but the others screamed it so often that even through her fog it stuck. Another thing stuck. He was the son of one of the other men. Dammit. Things really couldn't get worse. "Spare his this and talk. I'll get the information some time." Christy was amazed at how steady and in control her voice was. She turned to stare at the leader while gently trailing her blade along the man's stomach and down towards his pubic hair. "Has he used this yet? This boy dying a virgin, or is there a woman out there crying and broken because you took him out to play?" She couldn't believe that the leader didn't cave. She needed him to cave and he just stared at her in horror but said nothing.
She leaned closer to the shaking man at her mercy. "Do you have any information that would be useful? I could leave it attached if you give me something." The sob in response almost shattered her resolve. She ignored the tears in her own eyes as she spoke more gently into his ear so that the others wouldn't hear her voice crack. "Please give me something. I don't like hurting you."
"They don't tell me anything." He managed to whine out. "I would… I would … but they don't tell me."
Christy leaned her head on his shoulder. "I'm sorry." She whispered and took a moment to pull herself back together. She didn't start to cry. "It's almost over. I promise, almost over." She managed to make what she'd done with the boy look like a mockery of a lovers embrace. Part of her desperately wanted to protect him from herself, but she couldn't show weakness to the enemy. She couldn't bring him home and take care of him, couldn't adopt him like she had Shelley, or joke with him like she did Tom. She had to kill him. No one seemed to realize what had really happened, no one seemed to realize that Christy was once against standing on a ledge and just wanted to jump off. She shouldn't have gone for him first. That became painfully clear. The raiders were supposed to feel protective of him and stop her after she'd taken a toe or two. She forced herself to stare him in the eye, letting him see the regret as she ran her blade over his chest deep enough to make the blood run. She moved it more deeply across his stomach, moving too soon for such a fatal wound, but unable to draw the torture out on this boy. Even if the others didn't cave, he wouldn't live long. She wouldn't have to hurt him anymore. She petted his hair and didn't look down to see what now lay on the ground. She was torn between comforting and hurting and she didn't know what to do.
"If someone tells me what I want to know I'll end his pain." Sobbing and screaming continued and it took every ounce of will power she had not to do the boy the only mercy she had until she got something. "Just a little information. Not even all of it." She was lowering her standards, trying to make them give just enough so she didn't have to be this monster. She'd promised Kevin it was almost over, and right now she prayed to these men to not make a liar out of her.
Finally it was the father that chose to give her something. "We rotate teams, so that ten teams leave the outpost every week, on a Monday. We usually take a four to six day tour. It's been getting longer since there are fewer tribes and supplies are low everywhere. We've been losing teams, but right now there are around fifty left. There are other outposts as well." The other men tried to stop him. Christy could see the tears in his eyes. She always tried to avoid talking to Raiders. Made sure they were dead. Didn't listen in on their conversations. She did that so that they didn't become people to her. She couldn't look in any of their faces now and pretend they weren't people. "Please, my boy's hurting." His voice wavered and Christy whimpered in sympathetic pain before moving quickly so the boy wouldn't see it coming as she slashed his throat and ended his pain. The strange look of gratefulness in his eyes before he died shook her to the core. The familiar tingle disgusted her.
Throwing up was a huge waste of already limited resources. Christy knew that, but it didn't help stop her. She'd made it away from the others and Tracey helped hold her hair while she felt like her stomach would come out her mouth. "I hate them." She cried.
"Who."
"Our fucking leaders are making me do this… and I hate them." She fell apart and Tracey rocked her gently in her arms while she cried.
"Do you want someone else to…"
"No." Christy couldn't make her people do this. "I've already established myself as the one to fear. Switching now shows weakness. I have to do this." She wiped at her face. "I need to clean up and get back to this."
Tracey started to help her look more presentable. They had no mirror so Christy had to rely on the woman to help her look like she couldn't care less about what she was doing. "I'm sorry."
"You are the strongest person I know." Tracey told her solemnly. "But if you could do this without crying, I wouldn't be able to look at you again. We're Death squad. We do what the others won't but that doesn't mean we should ever lose what makes us human. You told us that. You're human Christy, and if you weren't none of us would be following you." It almost made Christy cry again, but she took a deep breath and nodded to Tracey in appreciation.
Emma decided to spare Christy the rest. The memories were disjointed images of horror after that and Emma could tell that Christy had distanced herself from her own body so that she could torture more information out of them. She'd retreated into her mind a little to deal with it and it worked. They got what they needed, and Christy really did look like a monster to those that watched it. On the walk back to base it took time for some of her men to be able to look at her again, and Tracey's wandering around to talk to them had something to do with it. By the time they camped for the night several of them moved to squeeze her shoulder in sympathy or other quiet forms of comfort.
********
Emma decided that it might be best to not give Christy time to dwell on each potential memory before they leapt into it so she moved to the next emotional moment quickly. She also had to admit she needed time to digest what she'd seen, and didn't want Christy to see her expression or sense how horrified she'd been. Christy was right. The leaders would never have done that themselves, they ordered Christy do it so that they could pretend they were good people that didn't do such things… but Christy could have refused. She could have, probably should have, but she didn't. Christy seemed to think she was buying the leaders silence about the meat, but from talking with Christy Emma knew that hadn't worked.
********
Christy sighed as she watched the man run up the hill in front of them. They'd been trailed. She glanced at the men they'd been carving up for meat and then back at the man rushing to inform the tribe. It had been over a week since the interrogation and she really thought she'd dodged the bullet. Greg had reported that the meat was on the Raiders cart.
She looked around at her team. They'd all noticed the audience and were waiting for Christy to utter some miracle words to make it all better. There was no fixing this one. "Keep working." She sighed as she moved to distance herself and think.
This was on her orders. Hopefully whatever happened would be focused solely on her, but she doubted it. The tribe leaders may actually dirty their hands to kill for this one. Banishments happened for lesser crimes. This would be the biggest internal issue to date. She was definitely going down for this… unless she could talk sense into them. She was tempted to just not go back, but she owed it to the tribe to try. She was doing this for them, to keep them alive. She needed to see if they could understand that.
Once she came back to a very quiet hunting team she had a plan. "They know." She informed the team even though it wasn't necessary. "I want you to go to the apartment complex we found and bring the Take with you." She could see stunned looks. "I'll go back and explain, but if you don't hear from me assume it isn't safe to go home."
"What?" Tracey looked stunned. "You think they'll kill you and you think we'll just let you go alone? Hell no. We're a team."
"They've never killed anyone before." Christy sighed. "We can't lose the guns and ammo, they would take that. Banishment is done without any supplies and these things are ours. We fought for them." She lifted her rifle to illustrate it. "I'll explain and try to get them to understand. I mean, we are the only ones keeping them all alive right? They should listen to reason." Christy gave her team a weak fake smile. She already knew how the other leaders felt about this and it wasn't good. Her only chance was to appeal to the people. She'd need to overthrow the tribe leadership entirely and take sole leadership, and do it without fighting. She had to get the tribe to give it to her.
"You're trying to be a god damn savior Christy." Mark growled at her and Christy was shocked at the anger. "We all chose this. You don't need to take this alone."
"What good will it do to take you down with me?" Her voice rose. "What good? I have to give them a chance to wake up. I can't just write them off. I have Debbie and the kids to think about too. I can't run away, but you can."
"I say if you go in we should have people on surveillance to make sure they don't go any further than banishment." Mark spoke as if he were in command and Christy didn't care for it. She was the leader here.
"We can send Tom, Tracey and Aaron to the new location with the Take, and have them meet up with us." Mark was still doing it. "You go in alone and we come in from a different direction they aren't watching."
"And do what? Walk right in?" Christy's voice was heavy with sarcasm. "Or maybe shoot us out of there? These are our people, not raiders."
********
Christy could hear the loud voices as she came over the hill and stared down at the camp. There were a lot more people outside than normal and she felt naked and scared, but she held her head up high and walked down to them alone and without a Take for the first time. She didn't even have her rifle, because she knew they'd take it.
The trial was set for the next day. Public in the parking lot. It was clear from the look in the leaders eyes that it was merely a formality. The guards on her door were a joke. If she were going to run she'd never have come back. That was something the leaders didn't seem to understand. Christy was here voluntarily. They said she'd get to talk tomorrow, but she wasn't sure they'd listen.
********
Christy was surprised when the memory just stopped. She turned to see Emma standing next to her. "It's almost dinner time. We can pick this up later."
It was jarring to have it all stop like that. It took Christy a moment to collect her thoughts. "I'm going out tonight." That earned her a surprised look. "Sage asked me out with her team."
"Okay, we'll pick this up tomorrow." Emma still seemed a bit surprised but she covered it up quickly. "It's Thursday so I have a faculty meeting to attend, but a little later. Maybe we can go have dinner and then come back and work."
********
Emma wasn't very happy with Tessa's interference. It seemed too much like what the woman had done in the Hellfire club. Hopefully Tessa wasn't up to something, but if she were Emma now had Thursday night to repair any damage done without any interruptions.