CHAPTER 4:
BECOMING
I never thought I'd find my way
Out of yesterday
Time really passed me by
But now I need to concentrate
On the steps I take
I try, I fail, I try...
Now I'm searching in my memory, in my memory
For the man I used to be
I'm searching in my memory, in my memory
For the man I want to see
A heart of stone
Unhappy soul
Believe me, it doesn't hurt
My god he said
Don't be afraid
Don't you cry
'cause it won't be heard
~Heart of Stone, DeVision
Present Day
"He's gone," Madelyne said, green eyes filled with
something more than cool distance for once as she gazed down upon the body of
the once formidable Master of Magnetism. And if her voice trembled, or her eyes
grew damp, the other X-Men pretended not to notice.
"No," Rogue said, her voice still filled with the strange chorus of her and
Magnus' voices together. "He isn't."
"Mom?" Irinee' asked, her voice like a shudder in the darkness of the room.
Rogue turned eyes that were cold and calculating on her daughter, and Irinee' shivered beneath the lack of humanity in them. But
only for a moment, and then Rogue's vision seemed to clear as she recognized
her daughter. Her face composed itself, and she nodded once.
"Let's do it, then."
She lashed out with her bare fist and shattered the glass cylinder. The X-Men
took a collective step backward as fluid flooded the room, its blue
phosphorescent glow already beginning to fade as it gushed forth.
Rogue reached out and caught the limp body in her arms as it fell free of its
casing, her face conflicted with a thousand emotions as she cradled it close.
She bent to her knees, moving and holding it is as if it were a precious gift
that might break if she were careless.
"Give life, shugah, and be at peace," she whispered,
and pressed her fingertips against wet temples.
"Jean-Luc! Irinee! Now!" she
cried, eyes clenching shut with the force of focusing her power. She had never
attempted this before, but she knew she could do it… she could do it… for him.
She gathered Magnus' awareness within her mind and wrapped it into a tiny ball
with the most attentive of care, not neglecting a single strand of thought or
persona. She had never done this before, this tight, tiny wrapping of a million
threads, but she knew in her heart that if she had the power to steal from
others, then she also had the power to give it back. A
reversal of mental pathways, pushing out instead of drawing in. It stood
to reason… it was probable.
Fuck, this is such a gamble, she
thought, sweat beading on her forehead in sudden, cold bullets.
Her fingers trembled against cool skin and she shivered. Please… trust me, Erik.
She gathered him in the cradle of her mind, holding him close and safe,
whispered another prayer—and then sent him shooting from her body with the
force and speed of a rocket. She could feel him as he left her fingertips, and
she took one last moment of familiarity, touching his awareness with the
tremble of butterfly wings.
Live, Magnus. Live for me.
And then he was gone.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Jean-Luc and Irinee' went… away. There was no other word for it. The other X-Men shivered as
they watched the twins' eyes close in unison, their bodies relaxing even as
their brows tensed with concentration. In this moment they were one, acting as
a single unit in perfect synchronicity, and though the others had witnessed
this in practice tests, they had never seen it actually applied.
Pale faces were deadly calm save the furrowing of their brows, their beauty
almost an affront to the angels of heaven itself as they worked in singular
focus. They opened the pathways of their minds,
telepathic waves rising and crashing with such intensity that each of the X-Men
were drawn into its embrace. Images flashed through their minds even as they
flashed through the twins' minds—Magnus as a child, a boy, a near-man who loved
and lived and married, to a prisoner caught in the Nazi concentration camps, to
the insanity that inevitably followed. Each moment, each pinpoint of
excruciating pain and loss collided with their minds, projected by the psionic energy in the room through their minds as if across
a movie screen.
His essence flowed through each of them, lacing and catching in their thoughts,
becoming each of them. Each one of them lived through the horror of the Nazi
concentration camps, through the loss of his family. Through the madness that
followed in tragedy's wake. Tears fled from the eyes of each person present,
each one overwhelmed by the psionic resonations and
memories of a man they had known well, but never as close, never as intimately
as this. His pain, his secrets, had ever been his own, locked behind dignity
and grace that few others could match. No longer.
"My God," Madelyne whispered, tears trailing down her
cheeks with a quiet kind of charity.
And now into adulthood, through fires and trials and battles
untold, many of them against the X-Men themselves. For all their psionic protections, each X-man was consumed, immersed in
the life of Erik Magnus Lensherr, glorying in each of
his triumphs, crying with each of his losses.
"Dampen down," Madelyne shouted, her voice caught
between a plea and a command.
The twins acquiesced, their understanding made clear with the way the images
receded, leaving the X-Men in control of their own minds again, the trials and
tribulations of the mutant known as Magneto reduced to background noise.
"I never… I never knew…" sobbed Wanda, collapsing to her knees.
"Shh…" Colossus whispered, catching her and
comforting her in the broad expanse of his arms.
"None of us knew," Logan said,
eyes still skewed as they struggled for domination over the animal rage Magnus'
memories had inspired.
"No," Siryn contradicted, still standing despite the
sorrow that racked her form and trailed down her cheeks. "We all knew. But none
of us understood."
"Be still," Storm said, her face shining with tears that shared the same memory
and sorrow. "We must let them concentrate."
* * * * * * * * * * * *
For Jean-Luc and Irinee', the world fell away.
So rare, so beautiful, this opportunity to experience
telepathic power in its most pure and ultimate form. In an instant, they
were part of the world, part of the universe itself as they connected to
everything and everyone in one, bright, shining moment. Thoughts shimmered like
endless paths of sweetness and poison, stretching out into eternity before
them. They could live here, grow lost here, following the train of others
thoughts until they were lost to themselves. But there was one pathway that
shined with a light that threatened to blind, stretching forth from their
mother's fingertips and into the mind of the man—perhaps the only man—who could
hold all that it contained, and it was this that called them.
Images that assaulted the others passed through them with the speed of light,
shared, understood and remembered. They, too, would have cried, if not for the
body of work before them.
Dampen down, Madelyne
commanded, her voice small within their minds, but heard nonetheless.
With a mental turning to one another, Jean-Luc and Irinee'
tightened the focus of the power, helping their mother funnel this thread into
the new vessel that waited. It was as easy as she'd predicted—almost
terrifyingly so. The neural passageways that existed within welcomed the
presence they pushed, so easily that they had to pull back, for fear of leaving
them damaged. It should have been
easy… after all; this body was but a duplicate of Magnus', with the same neural
pathways and powers as its predecessor.
With a delicacy and precision that belied the youth of their bodies, Jean-Luc
and Irinee' built tethers with a patient slowness,
anchoring each thought here, each memory there, in line with what had gone
before. Some parts were missing, or erased from the
conscious mind all together, but a bit of probing, a moment of digging beneath
the surface, and they found the mental pathways that had been repressed. It was
easy. Too easy. Child's play.
Their minds opened in a roaring focus, hands of their corporeal bodies reaching
out to form a physical connection.
Ready? Jean-Luc asked, his form
rippling on the astral plane as if a caught in the grip of a hurricane.
Yes, Irinee'
said, clutching his fingers between her own.
Let's bring it home.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Rogue held the prone form in her arms as if it were a dream, a prayer that
might vanish into nothingness if she ceased to concentrate on it for a single
second.
The body still breathed, still connected to the thin tether of wires that kept
it alive, but she knew they had only moments at best before it failed. Before
the machine powering the rise and fall of lungs realized its subject was no
longer safe within embryonic fluid.
"Come on, Magnus, live…"
Alarms began to sound in the background, flaring to life with a sonic force
that pierced the skin of their souls.
The machine knew; it was aware… only seconds remained until it drew back the
force that fired life into this dormant brain.
Precious seconds, and she was helpless. She could nothing but trust in the
power of her children now.
She hoped it was enough.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Jean-Luc and Irinee' were oblivious to the blaring
sound of alarms that assaulted the other X-Men. They only knew that their time
was short.
Bring it home, Rinny,
Jean-Luc said inside her mind, and together they gathered themselves, then let it all go.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Power exploded within the confines of the room, invisible and unseen, but felt
nonetheless.
The X-Men were thrown to the floor to a man, all save Logan, whose effort to
remain standing was reflected clearly in the trembling of his face; the blood
that flowed in a sudden trickle from his right nostril. His eyes rolled up in
their sockets, but still he stood, bracing himself with bended knees against
the force that assaulted and insinuated itself inside him.
He could feel it happening. Could feel the beauty of pathways
reconnecting, of life beginning again, blood flowing through new, young limbs.
Maybe you'll get it right, he
thought, consciousness slowly fading. Maybe
you'll get to have what I almost did.
And so thinking, the warrior known as Wolverine collapsed into a broken heap
upon the floor, his body convulsing in time with those around him, in time with
the ebb and flow of a steady heartbeat as it sprang into being.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
The body choked on embryonic fluid, droplets flying from its mouth in
crystalline, vaguely glowing flecks that glistened on Rogue's face.
And then, Joseph opened his eyes.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Awareness flashed through him like a flood, tingling in every nerve ending. His
heart beat, and his lungs breathed and oh—it hadn't
been like this since he was a boy! The slow, thundering of
energy that pulsed like a living thing in every muscle and sinew.
Thick fluid built in his mouth, his lungs, and he choked to be rid of it, liquid
leaving him in sudden, hacking outburst.
He could feel the connections of his mind, could feel the speed at which the
messages of thought traveled inside him, and marveled at it. It was all new, and somehow all familiar at the same time.
"Rogue?" he asked, voice husky and low with the disuse
of vocal cords.
"Yeah, shugah, Ah'm here,"
she said, her very voice like a caress.
Yeah, shugah, Ah'm here… the voice trembled in his mind, mocking and
deep in a voice that was neither his nor hers. It troubled him for an instant,
its dissonance raising the hairs at the back of his neck—and then it was gone,
vanished as if it had never been, and he promptly forgot it as warm, sweet lips
neared his.
"You're alive," she breathed.
And he realized that he was.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Irinee' and Jean-Luc emerged from their trance,
emerald green eyes flickering in synchronous confusion.
The X-Men raised their heads, freed at last from the psionic
backlash.
"It's done," they said in creepy unison.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Magnus/Joseph felt himself held within Rogue's embrace, and there was a moment
of sheer horror as he realized what had happened. Rogue's memories, still
shared through the brief union they had experienced—his own memories--explained
it all.
The Shadow King… the creature who had possessed and used his body for almost
two years had cleansed the vessel he now inhabited. Its pathways were cleared,
memories that he already possessed from the Shadow King's merging of Joseph
echoing in his mind. He had made his peace with this ghost years ago, had
incorporated Joseph's thoughts and memories into his own as part of the
recovery process once the Shadow King had been removed. But because he was the
vessel that had been imbued with the power of the Shadow King when all this had
happened, he was gifted with its final, horrific remembrance, overwhelmed by
the memory of psionic rape.
Joseph screamed and bucked within the confines of his cylinder, trying
desperately to force the Shadow King from his mind. There was pain! Pain beyond
imagining as every piece of his mind was stripped away in long slivers of
thought that felt like flesh. The Shadow King sifted through his mind with
greedy fingers that took what they wished with ease, leaving him exhausted, a puppet within a master's hands. Knowledge was
taken, power was shut down, and eventually… even awareness shut down, leaving
him in a state of dreaming remembrance.
The memory screamed, and so did he… and then it dissolved, swallowed by the
length and breadth of his mind.
His lungs gasped for their first breath of true air, and his deep, gray-blue
eyes focused on hers as he clung to her, every thought, every
second of awareness given completely to her. She was all that existed; his only
tangible connection to the world.
"Rogue?"
"Yes, shugah. It's me." Her hands smoothed
back wet, unruly hair, and she gave him a fragile smile. "You're all right. Everything's gonna be all right
now."
He closed his eyes and collapsed into her embrace, given at last to the exhaustion
of birth. And as he spiraled down into darkness, a disc of bright white light
closed and dissolved in another time and place, carrying the body of Kitty Pryde with it.
But he knew nothing of these things, barely even knew that he was alive. And
somewhere, at the bottom of the deep well of his mind, another voice greeted
him, its tone thick with hatred and loathing.
"Oh yes. Everything's going to be just fine."
* * * * * * * * * * * *
The Scarlet Witch rose from the wet confusion of the floor, legs wavering as
they threatened to give out beneath her.
"I… I can't," she said, simply, eyes going to the body in Rogue's arms as it
breathed and lived. "I thought I could… but I c-can't."
"It is all right, Wanda," Colossus replied, his arms never leaving her as she
rose to her feet, their circumference still locked around her waist as he
helped her stand. "We will wait for the others outside."
Lost, she gazed up at him in open wonder, as startled as a deer who finds its
thicket disturbed.
"I…" she began, at a loss for how to continue.
"Do not worry," Colossus said, even as he steered her toward the open door.
She opened her mouth to speak again, closed it, opened
it again.
"I can walk," she said, tone almost defiant as she straightened.
"I know," Colossus said, his non-metallic face stretching in a somber smile.
"But you do not have to."
And so speaking, he led her to the door.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
"Lorna?" Bobby asked, reaching out to touch her, needing to touch her in the
wake of all that had happened.
She stiffened, then relaxed within his embrace. She shook her head with a
bitter smile that twisted her features.
"He's not my father, Bobby." Her tongue clicked against the roof of her mouth
as she sought the words to convey what she felt. "He's not my father…" she said
again, as if to convince herself. "But that doesn't make it any easier."
"I know," Bobby said, arms encircling her completely.
He felt like he'd glimpsed Magnus' dirty underwear as it hung from the line, as
if he'd gotten a peek at ugliness—TRUE ugliness—the kind that even this
shuffling, stuttering, post-apocalyptic world couldn't hope to match. He was
overwhelmed, and even though he knew, even at this point, that it would pass,
he couldn't help but think that he would always remember.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Long, slender, brown fingers reached out toward Logan's back and hesitated there.
"I'm all right, Ororo."
His tone was brisk, sharp and to the point, and even if it hadn't been, she
would have recognized the distance there in the full syllables of her name,
alone.
She should have known better.
Six years since Jean's departure. Six years of solitude between them, and still
she reached for him as if it were some kind of instinct.
Forced by her pride to choose between best loved and second best, she had
chosen not to place at all. It had been, for her, the best of the choices
given.
Fingers wilted, clutched against her breast in useless emotion.
Sometimes, she regretted her decision.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
The Past
In the outer limits of the Earth's atmosphere, Nimrod II paused to consult his
programming.
Time loss experienced during travel
through digital security systems; assessing precise amount of time lost. Consulting with internal clock settings as set in accordance with
the year 2004.
Time loss is approximated at one day,
three hours and four minutes.
Time loss considered irrelevant as
applied to mission concerning secondary directive. Anomaly is still within
reach. Tracking…
Nimrod II sailed through the silence of space, his goal close.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
The Phoenix paused in her flight, her thoughts
of her recent goodbye to Logan still fresh in her mind as she
was… distracted.
Something…
Something wicked this way comes—
Was coming.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
The Present
Thoughts slid like quicksilver through his mind, ephemeral ghosts just beyond
his ability to grasp. He could see the shape of them… could almost understand
them if he tilted his head to the side and squinted, but movement seemed beyond
him now. Because he… because he was…
He was dying! Every cell in his body flared with a burning agony, turning flesh
to smoking cinder. The pain was so excruciating that he could barely think past
it, barely hear the weak voices that pulled at the fringes of his mind. But
they were there, and they called to him with an intensity that stirred the last
of his dying soul--an undeniable thread that he felt a desperate need to cling
to, hold to as if it were a lifeline.
His eyes opened, and dry, cracked lips parted with last of his energy.
He spoke into the void that rose up fast to claim him with deadly intent.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
"Oh, my God," Irinee' whispered. Green eyes the color
of young spring leaves widened into saucers. She'd cut her awareness from
Magnus' mind as he'd awakened, but her senses were still open to the world, and
among the many, thousands of voices that flitted through her mind, one spoke
with a loud, desperate distinction that she could not deny.
The other X-Men took her words as a testament to the miracle of Magnus'
rebirth, and did not even spare her so much as a
glance. But her brother was staring at her with wide eyes that echoed the
astonishment and aching need to disbelieve she felt within her own heart.
Did you—was it—
I think it—
I think—I'm not--
I don't know—
It can't be, she thought, the proclamation weak in the echo of the psionic cry that still lingered.
What else could it be?
I don't know.
Oh… my God.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
"What did he say?" Renaldo asked, leaning down from his console.
Dr. Hayes pursed her lips, shook her head. The fluid was drained from the tanks
now, the restoration complete, but her subject seemed frantic, confused, his
words so many garbled, hurried syllables that she could not make out.
"I don't know," she admitted. "But I think he's remembering something… maybe he
even…"
Her brows rose in surprise with the sudden thought.
"Shut it down, Renaldo. Shut it all down!"
Renaldo's face worked with confusion for a split second, skin flowing with
contorted emotions over bone like some kind of distorted symphony.
And then his fingers were at the switches, cutting power.
Emergency lights flared into life all around them, the lab seeming wrong
somehow in their warm yellow glow. This wasn't a room meant to be lit with
atmosphere; it was meant to be harsh and cold. Veronica liked it that way. It kept her job simple.
"Shit," she hissed through tight lips, and then there was no more time to give
it thought. Her patient's eyes opened; alien eyes that had never seen this
world.
Pupils slowly contracted, focused on her. Their depths swirled with confusion,
swam with endless questions, and she found herself tired, unwilling to answer.
She didn't want this.
But it was hers.
She took a deep breath, met his eyes with a smile that she dredged up from
somewhere in the depths of memory.
She hoped he was still dazed enough to buy it.
"It's all right," she said, and had to bite back a chuckle at her own words.
She pressed her fingers against her lips to still their growing curve and
waited until the moment of odd hilarity had passed. "You're… safe."
Eyes focused on her with sharp clarity for a moment, then
lost focus again as they traversed the tube that contained him, the mass of
wires that extended from them like so many thousands of umbilical cords.
"Where…" Eyes stuttered, finding no familiarity, no comfort in his
surroundings. For an instant, there was a flash of danger in them, and Veronica
thanked whatever God's might be listening that he wasn't at full strength yet.
The lab had failsafes, defense systems, and
auto-self-destruct, of course—but none of those things were making her feel too
safe just now.
The moment passed, and vague confusion returned, and she heaved a silent sigh
of relief.
"Where… am I?" he asked, voice weak and raspy.
She ignored the question, as protocol demanded, save the only answer he needed
to hear. "Safe, as I said." She paused, shifted her body toward him a gesture
that she hoped inspired comfort. She was Doctor of science, dammit,
not people.
"Do you know who you are?" she asked. The click of her manicured nails sounded
very loud to her ears as they skittered over the edge of the glass. So much depended on this. Too much, maybe.
More than she was, perhaps, capable of outside her arena of machine technology.
"I…" his eyes rolled up in his head, fluttered shut as he struggled to answer
the question.
"No," he said, and the answer was so raw, so naked and filled with desperate
sadness that it nearly broke her clinical heart.
"Memory loss is… typical in this situation," she tried to assure him. Even
knowing it was true didn't make it fair. But then again, neither was anything
she'd involved her life in.
She drew the syringe from her pocket, tapped it, and it squirted just a bit
liquid as she cleared the air from it.
"But it's all right," she went on. "Because you're not going to remember any of
this, either," she said, piercing his bare flesh with the needle.
His eyes opened with the penetration, met hers again—so strange, so alien. She
found herself drawn into them, caught by the misery and need that so consumed him.
"Let… me go," he whispered, and for an insane moment, lost in the swirl of his
eyes, she was tempted to do just that.
Then his eyes fluttered shut again, and he lapsed into unconsciousness, body
going limp.
Dr. Hayes rose briskly from her perch and turned to Renaldo.
"Do whatever you have to do. I don't care. I want him out of here as soon as
possible."
"Well, there's still the temporal--"
"I don't care," she said, cutting him off. "Just get hi—it, out of here."
"Yes, Doctor," Renaldo said dutifully, and returned to his back-up powered
computer screen.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
"Rogue…" Storm approached the woman with grace and caution, her voice hushed in
the stillness of the room, its machinery silent now. In the rapidly fading blue
light, she could just make out Rogue's face, the shape of the body she still
held in her arms.
"Is he…?"
"He's fine," Rogue said, almost snapping. She sighed, then
shook her head. "Ah'm sorry, Ororo.
Ah'm just… he's alive… but Ah want him to wake up."
"We need to get to the Blackbird," Storm replied, understanding but urgent. "We
can do more for him there."
Rogue nodded and rose, lifting the pliant body in her arms as easily as if were
a sack of groceries.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
The daylight seemed bright to her eyes, so much brighter than it had when they
had entered, and she squinted against its intrusion.
She shifted Joseph—Magnus' body in her arms—and suddenly he moved.
She set him down, too stunned to do much else, still not quite believing what
they had done.
He rose to his full height with a regal composure that was owned and
trademarked by Magnus alone.
"Magnus!" Theresa exclaimed.
He turned his head just slightly toward the exclamation, long, white hair
trailing over one shoulder, and a familiar smile passed over the face that was
his, but not quite his.
"Are you… Are you okay?" Rogue asked, the words squeezing from her throat with
palpable hope.
He considered a moment, then tilted his head at her,
that smirk never leaving his lips.
"I have absolutely no idea. But I am alive. And while I am, and before I
discover what you have done and find out exactly what all this means, there is
one thing I want to do before the moment escapes me."
Rogue shook her head, just barely—it almost seemed as if all her movements had
become very tiny, miniscule, all the way down to her heart, which was not
diminished, but suddenly filled with the thundering hooves of a thousand
horses.
"What?" she asked, completely at a loss.
He gathered her in his arms and pulled her to him, her body pressing against
him with a sweetness that stung him to the core of his heart. He could scarcely
believe the feeling of new limbs, the blood and passion that coursed through
them, so much hotter than he'd ever remembered. And she answered him. She was a
hurricane of need, a tornado that teased and twisted at his tongue, drawing him
in deeper, and deeper, devouring his awareness, devouring the moment until time
ceased to exist.
The X-Men turned away, avoiding their eyes with the respect due to both of
them; some of them shifted uncomfortably, others smiled and looked at each
other.
Jean-Luc and Irinee' were
the only pair who were not lovers who looked to each other, their eyes wide and
lost.
Shouldn't we—
No, Irinee'
said. They deserve this, at least.
Their kiss the narrow point on which reality balanced, Magnus and Rogue
were, in that moment, blissfully unaware of anything beyond each other. In that
moment, they did not think to question how long this could last—indeed, it
seemed to last forever. In that moment, they forgot themselves completely and
gave over to a single, primal moment of unity.
In that moment, they forgot that Time was a thief who stole everything—one way
or another.
And perhaps it was well that they did.
