Chapter five (finally! Don't give up on me, I promise I'll keep writing)
Lily winced as Jean Grey extracted the needle from her arm.
"I know," Jean sighed. "But we're almost done here."
"I thought all the tests were done already. Why are we doing more?"
"The professor requested it." Jean Grey's facial expression was hidden by her red hair as she bent over, fiddling with the instrument. "You know you're not just any ordinary mutant, Lillian. The professor has to be cautious. With all of us. Powers can be dangerous. People's lives are often in our hands. And he has to know all your capabilities before he lets you help others."
"I wish I didn't have so many capabilities," Lily said softly, brushing a lock of silver-brown behind her ear.
"Most people feel that way at first." Jean stood up. "Denial, revulsion at their own gifts, the desire to be whats so called normal. But you have to accept who you are."
"No, its no that. I was always in awe of mutants. And I wouldn't mind having a power. But that's just it. A power. Not a bunch of different things that no one can understand."
"The professor will, in time."
"I don't know. Maybe its better if he didn't." Jean peered at the girl through her wire-rimmed reading glasses. And it seemed to Lily that she was looking at her for the first time.
"So, " Hank started, giving Logan a sly smile. "I hear you went out with a stunningly pretty young girl yesterday."
"Can't anyone around here keep their mouths shut?"
"People can. Jubilee can't."
"When I get my hands on that girl…" Logan's empty threat created no alarm for Hank, who knew that Logan would rather harm himself than Jubilee. Or any of them for that matter.
"What does it matter who knows?"
"I don't know, Hank. We've got enough trouble as it is in this place without making a soap opera out of…Lily and I…"
"Is there a Lily and you?"
"For a scientist, you sure are one nosy bastard, Hank." Hank laughed and sifted though the lab reports on his desk.
"I suppose. But I feel a need to discuss it because it relates to science since you obviously have a lot of…chemistry"
"That was REALLY lame." Hank shrugged.
"I'm getting old."
"You're not the only one." Logan stretched his arms and laid back on his recliner. "You know, Lily thinks I'm only a few years older than she is."
"And you told her what exactly?"
"What could I say? Admit that I have no idea of my real age and I'm probably a few millennia older than her?"
"Such hyperbole, Logan, ever think of becoming a writer?"
"Sometimes, "Logan laughed. "Tales of the Neurotic X-Men, maybe?"
"Be a few extra cents in your pockets." Then he got serious. "So what do you feel for her?"
"Feel for her? Did I mention how we're not in a soap opera?"
"Logan…I'm not a psychic…But I'm also not blind."
"She's been here for like two minutes Hank!"
"All it takes is one."
"A philosopher, a scientist, a comedian, and a romantic all in one. How do you manage?"
"Logan, you do realize the extreme dangers linked to this girl?"
"Danger of being forced to go to prom and buy an NSYNC poster?"
"Logan!"
"Hank!"
"Alright, I see I'm not getting anywhere with this. Just think about it, Logan."
"About what exactly?"
"What you're getting yourself into. And even more so, what you're getting her into."
Rogue crept carefully along the window of the crumbling mansion.
"He's gone," A squawky voice said. She squinted her eyes through the dirty glass window. The man was barely five feet tall and had the voice of a crow.
"I know," She heard another voice. But this was a calm, woman's voice.
"Did he take anyone with him?"
"Yes. He's not stupid, Skylark, he's not going to walk in blindfolded into a the lair of some of the most powerful mutants in the world."
"I hope not. Since they have…her."
"Not yet," the woman's voice was low and clipped.
"But She's there already with that damned mutant faction and you know Xavier's not one to-"
"Wait!" The woman commanded as the fear rose in Rogue's throat. "There's someone here." And Rogue didn't have time to blink before she was knocked unconscious.
Before Xavier had laid down to sleep, he had decided that this sleep would reveal all the answers. He closed his eyes knowing he was leading himself to oblivion and let himself get lost in the ages.
He was in the axis of time, left undisturbed, Apoclapyse's scemes had left no trails. The broken chamber pieces were still on the dimension lines, but there was no loose psychic energy or erupting chains of lava. He was walking, as he always did in dreams, across the lines and millennia, staring at the pictures above him. Ancient Egyptian harlots bewitching their pharaohs, Roman guards sticking daggers in a blind man's chest, a silver guillotine dripping with blood, trenches dug across miles of land filled with shell bits and men's limbs. He saw different pictures every time he looked, as the past was always replaying itself and would forever.
It was then that he found himself at the foot of the temple. He remembered it well. One with such a link to the past, present, and future, could hardly forget the Temple of Time. It still stood, despite Apocalypse's efforts at destroying all time and space. He walked up slowly, not so much in fear for his own safety, but fear for what some subconscious part of him knew he would find.
The walls were caked with dust and the windows looked out to nowhere, but eternity. Though every wall was covered in writing, he knew which wall to look at. Of course he didn't know how he knew, he just knew and that was always the way of it for a psychic. His eyes quickly adjusted to the dim lighting. The Temple of Time walls were not written in any language man could understand, but as he drew nearer, the words were suddenly in English. He leaned down and read the lines that he knew held the answers.
"And it will come, this creature, who shall be the Savior or destroyer of all time and space. And it will be an unseen plague on all that exists. For it is not human, it is time, it is space, it is death. It will feast on man, and suck the worlds dry. Even the Underworlds will not be saved from this force of evil. It will crave all forms of life and matter, therefore it will destroy all and give us back to the dust from whence we came. It will be the true apocalypse, and it will be called The Living Death."
As Charles Xavier realized the peril of all existence, he heard the mansion alarms go off and screams start to shudder through the air.