Thanks to summer'04 and Darlin for your reviews!
8th ---
Vargas came to her side, and with the flat of his sword, hit her across her chest, flinging her across the room, where she came to rest next to the battered body of Sage, next to the body of Thaiis equally spent.
Vargas knew she was still breathing, and came up to her, ruthlessly pulled her chin off the floor, and said, "Despair.", spitting the words at her. He walked back to Neal and raised the sword above his head, ready to plunge it into the crumpled body in front of him.
A pervading sense of doom paraded its way about the fallen and falling people in the room. It side stepped over the bodies cautiously, keeping its hands behind it's back as it galloped in diagonals and whistled, dreamily gazing at its pointed feet that blithely touched the ground. It made it's way up to the barely conscious entity on the floor and stood with it's feet apart over her shoulders, and bent forward so that it looked upside down at the lady's face. He looked from the left, then from the right, then settled on the left and tauntingly whispered into her ear
Nannynannybooboo.
It grinned and ran away, the bells on its Jester's shoes tinkling.
Ororo lay on the floor, and moved a trembling hand to the corner of her mouth to wipe away the blood. Was she dead? She suddenly felt a very extra- body experience, unable to focus on anything, shrugging off humanity and grappling for Neal's hand to jerk him out of mortality and accompany her into ethereality. She didn't think about her mistake, how she had failed her friends, only a very calm wonderment of Now where is the tunnel and the bright blinding light?
People die only once. Oh if she should be so lucky to have that reputed sweet release. She'd been cheated of it once.. no twice.. too many to count, too many to be just. You're only happy to live the second chance when you're happy living. And sometimes in lives like hers you start to want that saccharine assurance that there's nothing more that need be done, what you see will be true Heaven's luminance and not pseudo-incandescence of the Xavier med-lab.
Neal.
Neal. Look at Neal flying woman. She saw his body rested in a twisted angle, like a spent chew toy covered in Death's slobber of blood and done with. She couldn't let him die, not like this, not under Vargas' hands. Not when she so helplessly watched from a few feet away. Not when she could do something still.
She was responsible. Their angel, this being as far incompetent as angels could come. She saw no tailored bleached feathers descend from a parting in the heavens, only her own home-made sky-spawned lightning. She had no halo, only a shackle, no calling, only a duty. She had no lyre, only a scale that she borrowed from the wrong Greek on which guilt and relenting bliss lay en guard.
No.
Death and Doom sat on the fire place swinging their legs with their chins in their hands as Hope ran around Ororo's head screaming.
She would do something.
Do what?? Her body felt warm with the blood flowing from her back down her arms and her sides, and she thought to simply let it be and let go in this comforting womb of blood.
No!
She could do it. Come on! She controlled the weather. She controlled all wind, all rain, all lightning. Lightning! Electricity. Any charge. All she had to do was think of how to bend her powers. Think Ororo, Think of how much you want to save him. Her powers, they were limitless, she had only to concentrate. She wanted it badly enough. Outside the sky was already dark, swirling blackened clouds struggling for space in the crowded canvas of her pain, threatening to spiral into tornados. She held out her hand towards Vargas, still lying on the floor.
No!
She could do this. She had to. She had seen what her powers could do, and proven herself that there was so much more than petty storms. Her powers were indefinable. All up to this while she had thought herself mainly concerned with the weather, just a weather goddess, but she wasn't a goddess. She was a mutant not defined by the expectations of helpless thirsty blindsided worshippers, and a very good mutant at that. She was her own to mould. Why had she never seen this? Now, she knew. She could save Neal and her friends, and she would. They depended on her.
She called lightning to her hand, panting as she did from the overexertion that was even further widening her gaping wound in her back that freely leaked onto her costume. She let her hand become aglow, but now no stray bolts shot out from it randomly. Her heart raced as she saw the sword slowly reaching its pinnacle before its plunge, and her breath was sharp and short as she tried to channel the electricity around her hand so that it swirled clockwise around it. She charged it further and further, until finally you could actually see the lightning running around on the circular plane of a track surrounding her hand. Moving charges. She began to waver the strength of the spiralling lightning, making the ring around her palm glow dark then brightly then dark again. Moving charges with an alternating current create a magnetic field.
She further stretched out her hand towards the sword, and with a final burst of strength, fine tuned the magnetic field she was generating, and directed all its force towards the sword that sat in Vargas' hands. Suddenly the sword pulled itself out of Vargas' grip and its metal hilt came slicing through the air to land with a firm 'thud' in her cupped palm. She pulled her body forward, grasped it, doused the lightning, and curled her fingers around the hilt.
Vargas at first looked shocked, having his sword suddenly pulled away from him, and even more shocked when he saw it had flown into the hand of Ororo. Her powers were nothing like this, she was no mistress of magnetism, only of the storm, how could she be doing this? Then his shock simply turned to anger of having been defied, having had his sweet vengeance snatched from his clenched hands.
Ororo couldn't be bothered to quell his surprise, and was reminded, as she tried to stand up, of the searing pain shooting itself up and down across her back. She couldn't fight like this. But odds are rarely even. If they are, we can never overcome a loss and win. She dug the sword into the ground, putting her weight on it as she tried to get up. Leaning on it, her eyes misted over, and actually began turning into a film of electric blue as she began to further explore the extent of her powers.
Think, Ororo, Think. She tried to see how she could bend her gifts into strengths so new she never though possible for herself. It was all hers to call upon, and hers she would, to save the life of her love and her friends and maybe even herself. She strained herself to her limits, not so much caring about how dark the sky was already, though she still tried to keep that under rein so something in China wouldn't explode from a lightning strike. She pushed herself far past her limits now, not caring because either way she was just as about dead. At least this way she had a hope.
She had done this before, seeing things in its electrical energy form, and had done so very vividly to her surprise just today when somehow she had almost killed Sage. A thin film appeared in her mind, covering everything in the room, letting her see a little into the cables that ran under the floor and through the walls. Then she strained further, and further, until she could see what she had seen sitting on her bed early this morning, nothing but blue-white lights shooting from point to point. She knew what she had done to Sage. Nervous impulses are merely electricity, and somehow she had stopped Sage's nervous impulses altogether, making Sage just 'stop'. Right now, she could feel every neurone, every axon, every dendrite, every synapse that lined her own body. She let her eyes close over as she took a deep breath, and with her mind's control over all electricity and weather, she stopped the synapses that linked themselves to the nerves in her back, and suddenly all the pain was gone, and the strain was far less pronounced. She was suitably impressed with herself, and with surprising feats such as this, no one needs humility. And with that confidence, she rose to defeat Vargas once and for all.
Vargas had seen Ororo panting over the sword, blood sliding over from the wound on her back to the floor at her side, blood leaking out of her mouth as well. Suddenly he saw her eyes shoot open, saw her right herself, and pace quickly towards him as if nothing had happened. Safe to say he had never seen an opponent like this, who got up and challenged him with a fatal wound having struck her down only seconds ago. Also safe to say, he was defenceless. This woman, he knew, was far too strong for him, and he held no sword. With his fatalism he was already defeated.
She came quickly towards him, before he could register back with reality, and emotionlessly thrust the sword into his stomach, making his upper body lurch forward from the pain, then he collapsed and rolled over to his side.
Honour, honour.
But she held strong to who she was. She wouldn't kill him, no matter how much pain, physically and far more emotionally, he had already caused her.
No! Honour!
He grabbed the hilt and drove the sword right through. He wouldn't be pitied a second time, not mercilessly left to live.
Honour.
Ororo tried to run to him to stop him, but his eyes, refuting, irrevocably closed. She now stood in the centre of the room, with people fallen all around her. She had to pick them up.
Then she looked down at her feet. Neal lay unconscious and she brushed a hand along his cheek and propped him up against the back of an armchair. His blood smeared her chest, and she didn't want to think how much of it was being lost. He looked so peaceful and serene that she hardly wanted to disturb him and move him. He wished he would just open his eyes, and stop playing with her and put her out of her misery. But she couldn't stay and watch over him, she couldn't be selfish because her friends needed her as well.
She ran up to the side of Jean, who stared catatonically at the edge of the handle of the sword that rose out of her shoulder. Ororo looked down and gasped to see that the sword had struck through to the floor, where it slowly but surely tapped out Jean's blood. She rushed to pull her cape off her back, and found it practically completely drenched in her blood, which jolted her back to the memory of her pain. As gently as she could, slid the sword out of Jean and wrapped her wound with her own cape, to stop the blood and it's widening pool under her. The sudden anguish caused Jean's eyelids to flutter, and her lip flinched in pain. She looked up to see Ororo emotionlessly looking down at her.
"Hey, you got to stop saving my life. Thank you." she said weakly, swallowing hard from the pain. Ororo merely gently blinked to say her welcome as her expression remained indifferent. Her own pain was getting very hard to keep under control, and the sting was slowly creeping back into her senses. She breathed deeply to keep her mind clear from the pain, and lifted Jean up and walked over to the couch with her in her hands, lying her down to give her some comfort, as people are gravely in need of after being impaled.
Suddenly the sound of a plane could be heard right outside the house. Ororo looked up to see the blackbird descending onto front lawn. Perhaps they had noticed their absence at the mansion, for Jean hadn't wanted to involve more people in the list of who Vargas wished dead. Perhaps it was Xavier who had felt his students popping like suicidal moths on a flame.
Crimson veins seeped through the morning sky, buffered by the supple ends of the clouds.
Ororo sighed with relief. At least help was here. She was afraid she might not be able to go on any longer. From behind her, Neal began to gesture towards her.
"Or."
She quickly turned around and ran to his side, just as his eyes gently closed again.
"Neal. Neal!" Ororo knelt down next to him, trying to scream into his face so that his eyes would open. It worked, they did, and he looked back at her and smiled very gratefully that she hadn't gone and killed herself. How, he wasn't so sure, but the joy gave him enough strength to push his upper body toward her, to be closer to her and try to find the energy to say how much he loved her, how glad he was he hadn't lost her.
At this moment, Hank came running into the room, and surprisingly with Rogue and Gambit there as well who had found out about Vargas searching for them. Rogue felt immeasurable guilt rising up her throat, as she saw her injured friends littering the floor. Why had she ever gone? What in the world possessed her to not kill Vargas? Now her friends had suffered at her cost, and from the looks of Neal and Jean, they were probably going to die because of her. Damn herself.
She saw Ororo kneeling over Neal holding his hand tightly in hers. The scene touched her as she heard Ororo softly whispering words of comfort and love to Neal. She found it not so much a surprise that Ororo was the last one standing, the only one who had been able to win over Vargas. Then she saw her lift a hand to her face and put it back down. Was Ororo. crying?
As she came closer to her, to reach out her hand to her shoulder and apologize for all she had caused them, she saw to her surprise that there was a large slit in the back of her costume, though through her manner she did not appear to be wounded. But then again.
Rogue looked closer, and saw that the black of her costume had been camouflaging dark lines of blood that had soaked themselves into her costume.
Rogue gaped, as the blood stained tip of Ororo's white hair licking her back confirmed her suspicions.
Neal gathered his last remaining strength to bring her head closer to his and kiss her gently on her lips.
"Ororo-- !" Rogue shouted from behind her.
She felt Neal's cold lips touch her own, and she gratefully, exhaustedly, kissed back, and as she did, she let go of all her strained efforts and heavily breathed onto Neal's face as their lips remained locked. She couldn't hold it back any longer, the pain was far too much greater, the gash far too deep, and her synapses were being overloaded with urgent neuro- transmitters screaming messages of pain that she could no longer keep at bay. They pain came rushing back headlong into her, cruelly and unsympathetically. She pulled away from Neal's kiss at that moment, still leaning over his face as she hyperventilated, gasping desperately for air. For a moment, she just stared at him, looking into Neal's worried eyes. Then she let her own eyes gently close as she fell onto Neal's chest, her head resting over the edge of his left shoulder. The blood freely flowed now, shielding her and Neal in a crest of tender enrapture.
.
I am ready to climb into the maw of Death. Masticate me. Salivate, strew me and spew me and separate me, take me apart and let me depart. Stain me with your breath as I stain yours with mine and give me your fanged embrace so I may find final finality in the crevices of your jaw corroded with over expense. Sequester me in your scabbard of the caveat growl for the weak, for those whom you chose to grant again your fatal passion-kiss. Ingest and keep me in your weathered gut.
.
Everyone was safe now. Let go.
--
8th ---
Vargas came to her side, and with the flat of his sword, hit her across her chest, flinging her across the room, where she came to rest next to the battered body of Sage, next to the body of Thaiis equally spent.
Vargas knew she was still breathing, and came up to her, ruthlessly pulled her chin off the floor, and said, "Despair.", spitting the words at her. He walked back to Neal and raised the sword above his head, ready to plunge it into the crumpled body in front of him.
A pervading sense of doom paraded its way about the fallen and falling people in the room. It side stepped over the bodies cautiously, keeping its hands behind it's back as it galloped in diagonals and whistled, dreamily gazing at its pointed feet that blithely touched the ground. It made it's way up to the barely conscious entity on the floor and stood with it's feet apart over her shoulders, and bent forward so that it looked upside down at the lady's face. He looked from the left, then from the right, then settled on the left and tauntingly whispered into her ear
Nannynannybooboo.
It grinned and ran away, the bells on its Jester's shoes tinkling.
Ororo lay on the floor, and moved a trembling hand to the corner of her mouth to wipe away the blood. Was she dead? She suddenly felt a very extra- body experience, unable to focus on anything, shrugging off humanity and grappling for Neal's hand to jerk him out of mortality and accompany her into ethereality. She didn't think about her mistake, how she had failed her friends, only a very calm wonderment of Now where is the tunnel and the bright blinding light?
People die only once. Oh if she should be so lucky to have that reputed sweet release. She'd been cheated of it once.. no twice.. too many to count, too many to be just. You're only happy to live the second chance when you're happy living. And sometimes in lives like hers you start to want that saccharine assurance that there's nothing more that need be done, what you see will be true Heaven's luminance and not pseudo-incandescence of the Xavier med-lab.
Neal.
Neal. Look at Neal flying woman. She saw his body rested in a twisted angle, like a spent chew toy covered in Death's slobber of blood and done with. She couldn't let him die, not like this, not under Vargas' hands. Not when she so helplessly watched from a few feet away. Not when she could do something still.
She was responsible. Their angel, this being as far incompetent as angels could come. She saw no tailored bleached feathers descend from a parting in the heavens, only her own home-made sky-spawned lightning. She had no halo, only a shackle, no calling, only a duty. She had no lyre, only a scale that she borrowed from the wrong Greek on which guilt and relenting bliss lay en guard.
No.
Death and Doom sat on the fire place swinging their legs with their chins in their hands as Hope ran around Ororo's head screaming.
She would do something.
Do what?? Her body felt warm with the blood flowing from her back down her arms and her sides, and she thought to simply let it be and let go in this comforting womb of blood.
No!
She could do it. Come on! She controlled the weather. She controlled all wind, all rain, all lightning. Lightning! Electricity. Any charge. All she had to do was think of how to bend her powers. Think Ororo, Think of how much you want to save him. Her powers, they were limitless, she had only to concentrate. She wanted it badly enough. Outside the sky was already dark, swirling blackened clouds struggling for space in the crowded canvas of her pain, threatening to spiral into tornados. She held out her hand towards Vargas, still lying on the floor.
No!
She could do this. She had to. She had seen what her powers could do, and proven herself that there was so much more than petty storms. Her powers were indefinable. All up to this while she had thought herself mainly concerned with the weather, just a weather goddess, but she wasn't a goddess. She was a mutant not defined by the expectations of helpless thirsty blindsided worshippers, and a very good mutant at that. She was her own to mould. Why had she never seen this? Now, she knew. She could save Neal and her friends, and she would. They depended on her.
She called lightning to her hand, panting as she did from the overexertion that was even further widening her gaping wound in her back that freely leaked onto her costume. She let her hand become aglow, but now no stray bolts shot out from it randomly. Her heart raced as she saw the sword slowly reaching its pinnacle before its plunge, and her breath was sharp and short as she tried to channel the electricity around her hand so that it swirled clockwise around it. She charged it further and further, until finally you could actually see the lightning running around on the circular plane of a track surrounding her hand. Moving charges. She began to waver the strength of the spiralling lightning, making the ring around her palm glow dark then brightly then dark again. Moving charges with an alternating current create a magnetic field.
She further stretched out her hand towards the sword, and with a final burst of strength, fine tuned the magnetic field she was generating, and directed all its force towards the sword that sat in Vargas' hands. Suddenly the sword pulled itself out of Vargas' grip and its metal hilt came slicing through the air to land with a firm 'thud' in her cupped palm. She pulled her body forward, grasped it, doused the lightning, and curled her fingers around the hilt.
Vargas at first looked shocked, having his sword suddenly pulled away from him, and even more shocked when he saw it had flown into the hand of Ororo. Her powers were nothing like this, she was no mistress of magnetism, only of the storm, how could she be doing this? Then his shock simply turned to anger of having been defied, having had his sweet vengeance snatched from his clenched hands.
Ororo couldn't be bothered to quell his surprise, and was reminded, as she tried to stand up, of the searing pain shooting itself up and down across her back. She couldn't fight like this. But odds are rarely even. If they are, we can never overcome a loss and win. She dug the sword into the ground, putting her weight on it as she tried to get up. Leaning on it, her eyes misted over, and actually began turning into a film of electric blue as she began to further explore the extent of her powers.
Think, Ororo, Think. She tried to see how she could bend her gifts into strengths so new she never though possible for herself. It was all hers to call upon, and hers she would, to save the life of her love and her friends and maybe even herself. She strained herself to her limits, not so much caring about how dark the sky was already, though she still tried to keep that under rein so something in China wouldn't explode from a lightning strike. She pushed herself far past her limits now, not caring because either way she was just as about dead. At least this way she had a hope.
She had done this before, seeing things in its electrical energy form, and had done so very vividly to her surprise just today when somehow she had almost killed Sage. A thin film appeared in her mind, covering everything in the room, letting her see a little into the cables that ran under the floor and through the walls. Then she strained further, and further, until she could see what she had seen sitting on her bed early this morning, nothing but blue-white lights shooting from point to point. She knew what she had done to Sage. Nervous impulses are merely electricity, and somehow she had stopped Sage's nervous impulses altogether, making Sage just 'stop'. Right now, she could feel every neurone, every axon, every dendrite, every synapse that lined her own body. She let her eyes close over as she took a deep breath, and with her mind's control over all electricity and weather, she stopped the synapses that linked themselves to the nerves in her back, and suddenly all the pain was gone, and the strain was far less pronounced. She was suitably impressed with herself, and with surprising feats such as this, no one needs humility. And with that confidence, she rose to defeat Vargas once and for all.
Vargas had seen Ororo panting over the sword, blood sliding over from the wound on her back to the floor at her side, blood leaking out of her mouth as well. Suddenly he saw her eyes shoot open, saw her right herself, and pace quickly towards him as if nothing had happened. Safe to say he had never seen an opponent like this, who got up and challenged him with a fatal wound having struck her down only seconds ago. Also safe to say, he was defenceless. This woman, he knew, was far too strong for him, and he held no sword. With his fatalism he was already defeated.
She came quickly towards him, before he could register back with reality, and emotionlessly thrust the sword into his stomach, making his upper body lurch forward from the pain, then he collapsed and rolled over to his side.
Honour, honour.
But she held strong to who she was. She wouldn't kill him, no matter how much pain, physically and far more emotionally, he had already caused her.
No! Honour!
He grabbed the hilt and drove the sword right through. He wouldn't be pitied a second time, not mercilessly left to live.
Honour.
Ororo tried to run to him to stop him, but his eyes, refuting, irrevocably closed. She now stood in the centre of the room, with people fallen all around her. She had to pick them up.
Then she looked down at her feet. Neal lay unconscious and she brushed a hand along his cheek and propped him up against the back of an armchair. His blood smeared her chest, and she didn't want to think how much of it was being lost. He looked so peaceful and serene that she hardly wanted to disturb him and move him. He wished he would just open his eyes, and stop playing with her and put her out of her misery. But she couldn't stay and watch over him, she couldn't be selfish because her friends needed her as well.
She ran up to the side of Jean, who stared catatonically at the edge of the handle of the sword that rose out of her shoulder. Ororo looked down and gasped to see that the sword had struck through to the floor, where it slowly but surely tapped out Jean's blood. She rushed to pull her cape off her back, and found it practically completely drenched in her blood, which jolted her back to the memory of her pain. As gently as she could, slid the sword out of Jean and wrapped her wound with her own cape, to stop the blood and it's widening pool under her. The sudden anguish caused Jean's eyelids to flutter, and her lip flinched in pain. She looked up to see Ororo emotionlessly looking down at her.
"Hey, you got to stop saving my life. Thank you." she said weakly, swallowing hard from the pain. Ororo merely gently blinked to say her welcome as her expression remained indifferent. Her own pain was getting very hard to keep under control, and the sting was slowly creeping back into her senses. She breathed deeply to keep her mind clear from the pain, and lifted Jean up and walked over to the couch with her in her hands, lying her down to give her some comfort, as people are gravely in need of after being impaled.
Suddenly the sound of a plane could be heard right outside the house. Ororo looked up to see the blackbird descending onto front lawn. Perhaps they had noticed their absence at the mansion, for Jean hadn't wanted to involve more people in the list of who Vargas wished dead. Perhaps it was Xavier who had felt his students popping like suicidal moths on a flame.
Crimson veins seeped through the morning sky, buffered by the supple ends of the clouds.
Ororo sighed with relief. At least help was here. She was afraid she might not be able to go on any longer. From behind her, Neal began to gesture towards her.
"Or."
She quickly turned around and ran to his side, just as his eyes gently closed again.
"Neal. Neal!" Ororo knelt down next to him, trying to scream into his face so that his eyes would open. It worked, they did, and he looked back at her and smiled very gratefully that she hadn't gone and killed herself. How, he wasn't so sure, but the joy gave him enough strength to push his upper body toward her, to be closer to her and try to find the energy to say how much he loved her, how glad he was he hadn't lost her.
At this moment, Hank came running into the room, and surprisingly with Rogue and Gambit there as well who had found out about Vargas searching for them. Rogue felt immeasurable guilt rising up her throat, as she saw her injured friends littering the floor. Why had she ever gone? What in the world possessed her to not kill Vargas? Now her friends had suffered at her cost, and from the looks of Neal and Jean, they were probably going to die because of her. Damn herself.
She saw Ororo kneeling over Neal holding his hand tightly in hers. The scene touched her as she heard Ororo softly whispering words of comfort and love to Neal. She found it not so much a surprise that Ororo was the last one standing, the only one who had been able to win over Vargas. Then she saw her lift a hand to her face and put it back down. Was Ororo. crying?
As she came closer to her, to reach out her hand to her shoulder and apologize for all she had caused them, she saw to her surprise that there was a large slit in the back of her costume, though through her manner she did not appear to be wounded. But then again.
Rogue looked closer, and saw that the black of her costume had been camouflaging dark lines of blood that had soaked themselves into her costume.
Rogue gaped, as the blood stained tip of Ororo's white hair licking her back confirmed her suspicions.
Neal gathered his last remaining strength to bring her head closer to his and kiss her gently on her lips.
"Ororo-- !" Rogue shouted from behind her.
She felt Neal's cold lips touch her own, and she gratefully, exhaustedly, kissed back, and as she did, she let go of all her strained efforts and heavily breathed onto Neal's face as their lips remained locked. She couldn't hold it back any longer, the pain was far too much greater, the gash far too deep, and her synapses were being overloaded with urgent neuro- transmitters screaming messages of pain that she could no longer keep at bay. They pain came rushing back headlong into her, cruelly and unsympathetically. She pulled away from Neal's kiss at that moment, still leaning over his face as she hyperventilated, gasping desperately for air. For a moment, she just stared at him, looking into Neal's worried eyes. Then she let her own eyes gently close as she fell onto Neal's chest, her head resting over the edge of his left shoulder. The blood freely flowed now, shielding her and Neal in a crest of tender enrapture.
.
I am ready to climb into the maw of Death. Masticate me. Salivate, strew me and spew me and separate me, take me apart and let me depart. Stain me with your breath as I stain yours with mine and give me your fanged embrace so I may find final finality in the crevices of your jaw corroded with over expense. Sequester me in your scabbard of the caveat growl for the weak, for those whom you chose to grant again your fatal passion-kiss. Ingest and keep me in your weathered gut.
.
Everyone was safe now. Let go.
--