Thanks to:
Todd Fan – This fic is gonna get darker before there's light at the end of the tunnel for our mutants.
XME – The flu will finish before the fic does. I've no concrete plans for the end of the fic although I'm working with some ideas.
TheDreamerLady – I don't know about Emma! Presumably she's been taken to a SHIELD lab somewhere…My computer probs are still ongoing but the real reason behind the wait for this chapter is a damn good case of writers block coupled with a lot of homework.
UncannyAsianGirl – Lol, I think I answered most of your questions in the E-mail! I will be sending the next one tonight, I've barely turned on the computer over the last couple of days but I did start to type it up! Magneto is just too damn tenacious to die that easily but he won't be showing up for a while at least.
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Rogue hadn't slept for two days. Irene had seemed to be getting better, she had been lucid and her temperature had gone down. But that hadn't lasted long. The temperature had returned suddenly and Irene had been muttering incoherently for almost eighteen hours. Rogue had tried to give her cold water and hadn't stopped phoning the doctor, still with no success. No one from school had called to see where she was. She was beginning to think that something was seriously wrong not just in their house, but across the whole of Caldecott County.
She was exhausted and afraid, wishing she knew what to do. The only thing she could think of was to leave the house and get the doctor herself. She could drive almost anything, although she had no recollection of ever being taught. The only thing that stopped her was a superstitious dread, the nagging thought that something would happen to Irene the moment she turned her back. She told herself it was stupid, that her presence or lack thereof was going to make no difference to Irene's recovery – but she couldn't bring herself to leave Irene alone in the house.
Heading into her third sleepless night, Rogue sat on the chair beside the bed and tried to keep watch over her adoptive mother. Her eyes were heavy and she felt herself beginning to doze…
The bedside light went out, plunging the room into darkness. Rogue snapped herself awake and clicked the button irritably. The light stayed off. Frowning, she stood and went over to the window. None of the neighbours had any light on either and the streetlights were off. Power cut.
"That's just great," she muttered under her breath.
"Raven?" Irene twisted around in the bed and Rogue hurried back to the bed, wondering who Raven was. Irene had spoken that name several times in her delirium yet Rogue had never heard her mention it before now.
"Ah'm right here," said Rogue, glancing around for her gloves. She had a skin condition that her dermatologist had said was infectious and she shouldn't have skin contact with anyone, although she had to wonder how a little eczema could make Irene any worse.
"The girl…Raven, the girl!"
"Irene, hush. Save your strength."
"Why did you have to go after that virus?"
Rogue sighed and gave up searching for the gloves. The inky blackness of the room had rendered her as sightless as Irene. There were no lights on nearby and the darkness was total.
"Rogue…I have to tell you something."
"Huh?" Rogue started at the sound of her own name, wondering if Irene was back with her. "What do you have to tell me?"
"You can't…don't blame yourself."
"What? Irene…"
Irene began to cough, the rasping deep within her chest making Rogue shudder. She tried to sit Irene up slightly, resting her hand on the back of the woman's head and feeling her usually clean hair a tangle of knots and grease beneath her fingers.
When the coughs tapered off, she laid Irene's head back on the pillow and sighed, wondering if Irene's relapse would wear off quickly. She reached out and felt across the bed for Irene's hand, taking it in her own to try to provide some comfort…
There was a weird sensation; a tingle like static electricity coursing through her and a flash of memory filled her head.
A child of privilege, born into an age when science and romance walked hand in hand and into a society that felt its birthright was to rule the world…When she was 13, she gained the ability to perceive the future in all its myriad permutations. It came upon her with a terrible rush and irresistible force, like an avalanche, threatening to overwhelm her. Somehow she managed to resist this onslaught…
Her 'gift' had a price. She could 'see' the future but she had become physically blind. Much of what she 'saw' was in languages unknown to her, in code and in pictograms, involving places she'd never heard of and scores of people yet unborn. Some images were more fanciful – and terrifying – than the wildest flights of her imagination…
Her challenge was to determine which scenario was the true timeline and which the most desirable and if necessary to bring the two together. To aid in her quest she enlisted the services of a consulting detective named Raven Darkholme…
With a gasp, Rogue tried to pull away but Irene tightened her grip on the girls hand and although her hold was weak, Rogue was too startled to do anything about it, too overwhelmed with memories that were not her own.
…I perceive the form the girls powers will take…
…Don't go to Thailand…
…The boy needs a family he will join us willingly…
…Moves the earth…
…Red on black heading this way…
…The sins of the father visited upon the children…
…Riding to Bayville…
…This is power; this is what true power is all about…
"NO!" Rogue yanked her hand forcibly away from Irene and took three steps backward, reality coming back and replacing the bright jumble of words and images with absolute darkness. Breathing hard, she ran a shaky hand through her hair.
What the hell…what happened?
Heart beating rapidly, she was distracted for a moment by a light by the window. For a moment she thought it was another vision or memory, then realised some one outside had a torch, its faint illumination enough for her to see but not enough for her to see by.
"Ah can see?"
She negotiated her way to the window by memory alone and looked out, seeing the light throwing its bearer in silhouette.
"But…how? How can ah see? Who am ah?"
Two opposing sets of memories battled in her head. One part of her was saying she had always lived in the South, for the last five years in Caldecott County, she was a teenage girl with a skin condition and perfect vision who didn't really fit in around school and was brought up by her blind foster mother. Another part of her said she'd left her teens behind years before and had been blind since then, that she could see the future and she was part of some secret organisation called the Brotherhood…
"Who am ah?"
Struggling to remember which of the memories were hers and which were not, she hit on an idea. If she could see, that suggested she was a teenage girl and therefore not Irene. Irene was her adoptive mother and was lying on the bed where she'd been left after – something – had happened.
Turning, Rogue found that the light had only served to make the darkness more intimidating. She could hear the hammering of her heartbeat in her ears and forced herself to calm down. There was an easy way to prove or disprove her identity and that was to see whom, if anyone, was in the bed.
Memory played a large part in getting her to the bed, Irene's memory being the easiest way for the blind woman to find her way around a familiar room. She found her way to the bed and groped for the woman's form. Irene lay in the bed, unmoving.
"Irene? Is that you?"
There was no response from the woman in the bed and Rogue realised three things at once. She couldn't hear Irene breathing, she didn't respond to her daughters voice and she knew who she was, if not how she'd got Irene's memories.
"Irene?"
Nothing. Rogue reached out to shake the woman and hesitated. Something had happened the last time she'd touched her, something unpleasant. If something had happened, maybe it would happen again. Instead she made her way into her own bedroom and found where she kept her candles and a lighter, the flame proving to her that she wasn't blind. She lit the candle and hurried back to Irene's room, using the light to see what was happening.
Irene's eyes were partly open, revealing the clouded orbs that had been sightless for decades. Sweat was drying on her brow and at some point since the loss of light blood had run from her mouth and was now drying in rivulets on her cheeks. It didn't matter what Rogue did from now. Irene was beyond saving.
"No, oh no." Rogue's voice was small and hurt. She reached out a hand, hesitated for a moment and rested her fingers on Irene's face. There was no repeat of the strange thing that had happened before. The skin was already cooling, the last vestiges of the fever dissipating.
Rogue shook her head, hardly feeling the pain as candle wax spilled onto her hand. The woman on the bed was her mother and she was dead. Rogue knew that. But another part of her was insisting that her name was Irene Adler and she was staring into her own dead eyes.
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Lance hadn't told anyone he was going. Who was there to tell? His foster parents were sick and he had no desire to watch them sicken and die. They had no great bond, nor did he bear them any animosity, but he wasn't about to hang around and tell them that everything was all right when it clearly wasn't, waiting for the day when he woke up with the flu.
There had been a couple of hundred dollars lying around the house, not much but better than nothing. He didn't think that money was about to help him. The sick and the scared rarely hung around to pay for anything, nor did they show up to open shops and serve customers. That stuff was there for the taking and people had been taking everything they wanted. Northbrook was a small town but it had its fair share of shops and banks, which had already been plundered. Lance had been tempted to go help himself to anything he wanted but in the end had opted to stay the hell out of the way. Seeing the scene at the girl's house had freaked him out more than he cared to admit. Some rumours had been going around the town, many people whispering that the flu would eventually make you disintegrate. Just like the girl he had seen.
He knew better.
A few months earlier he had been fighting a killer headache. It would go for as long as three hours and then return as bad as ever. It had gone on for a fortnight and throughout that time he had gritted his teeth, taken enough painkillers to kill a rhino and taken a lot of time off school. He'd begun to wonder if he had a tumour or something. Then one day, thankfully left alone in the darkened house with his head still pounding, something in his head seemed to push and the house began to shake. Alarmed, he sat up and watched as the lights began shaking, the force in his head still pushing. He felt his eyes roll back in his head and wondered if it was some symptom of a fit, if this was the last hallucination before his tired mind simply blew out like an overloaded light bulb.
Then suddenly the house stopped shaking and his headache was gone as if it had never been there.
He had wondered what the hell had happened and at first, when he realised that he could cause the ground to shake whenever he wanted, he'd been afraid. He couldn't tell anyone. Even if they did believe him, what would they do about it? Lock him away? And surely if they did, he could knock down walls with a thought. After a while though, the fear had given way to a low-key excitement. He could do anything he wanted, go anywhere. If anyone tried to stop him, he could bury them. That was the main reason he'd let Pete and Griff in on his secret. It made him look cool, powerful, showed them who was in charge.
Occasionally he'd wondered if there was anyone else out there like him, some one who could make the earth shake with just a thought. It had never occurred to him that other people might have different powers until he saw the scene at the girl's house. She had fallen through the floor and he doubted it was a side effect of the flu. It was a power just like his and her illness had made her lose control of it. Even if she had managed to stop falling, the alternative was being buried beneath the earth, unable to breathe, trapped too far down to ever come back up again…
No way. That wasn't going to happen to him. He had to get away from these people. If his power ever went out of control then he could bring half the town down around his ears, leaving him in exactly the same place the girl had ended up. Trapped under a ton of rubble, running out of air even as he brought more debris down on himself.
He had to get away from people who might infect him.
He'd loaded up the jeep and drove off into the night, refusing to let his mind contemplate that he might be running away. After all, there was nothing left for him to do. He drove through the night, not really sure where he was heading. When he got to the freeway he paused and took a quarter out of his pocket. Heads he went west, tails he went east.
The eagle gleamed dully in his hand and he indicated the turn, heading toward Indiana.
He wasn't the only one with the same idea. Traffic was heavy, people with an entire lifetime worth of possessions crammed hurriedly in their cars. He could barely get above thirty miles an hour and that was in the middle of the night. Angrily, he slammed his fist into the steering wheel and laid on the horn, knowing it would do no good. For the time being, he was stuck in a row of traffic with hundreds of other people trying to flee the sickness.
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Mystique growled as the lights in the Brotherhood house went out, stuttered back to life briefly and then died for good. She had been trying to get through to Irene again but she suspected that Rogue had turned the phone onto silent. It rang, but there was no reply.
I have to know if Irene is dead…
For the first time in her life, she had no idea what to do. All she knew is that she was responsible. For every sick person, for every death, for everyone looking after their terminally ill family and praying for a miracle. She was responsible.
The guilt was too much to bear.
She had forbidden Todd to leave the house. She had fixated on his well being in a way that she knew wasn't healthy but she couldn't seem to help it. She had a son of a similar age stranded in Germany, a daughter in Mississippi who didn't remember her. She had no way of knowing if either of them was alive or dead. If they had caught the flu it was because of her.
A part of her was crying out for her to go to the Xavier Institute. Maybe if she told the Professor what she knew they could collaborate somehow. Yet her pride wouldn't let her. She wasn't ready to go to the mansion and tell them how she'd screwed up, ask for their help, join their crusade. Not that there was much to crusade for now.
And she had no way of knowing if any of them were still alive.
The virus had hit Bayville hard. She had left the house in bird form and flown to the heart of New York City. Her worst fears had been confirmed. Times Square had been filled with looters, throwing bricks through windows and climbing into the shops, taking whatever they could. A teenager navigating his way through the rioters had been hit in the head with a brick. An elderly man was trampled in the rush as looters tried to flee the sound of a siren, the cop car that turned up being manned by a lone police officer with a runny nose and no way to stem the tide of frightened people joining the mobs.
There were few police about that day and most of the rioters were sick. Mystique had morphed into a normal human form and watched in dismay as she saw what she was responsible for. There was no way that anyone could cope with what was happening here.
She wanted to do something, say something that would make the difference. But there was nothing to say, nothing that anyone could do now. All she could do was to go back to Bayville and hope that Todd didn't go down with the flu. He had come to the Brotherhood hoping for something more than he'd had in the home. She wasn't about to remove him from there to die with some one who didn't care for his feelings, only his powers. She hadn't been a mother to her own kids but she could still help Todd, guide him into a world where everyone was dead.
Todd himself was getting stir-crazy being cooped up in the Brotherhood house. He understood that there was some bad shit going on, but if he were going to get the flu surely he would have got it already. But he was still a little frightened of Mystique and she forbade him to go out, which left him sitting in front of the television. The flu was the main story on the news channels and they said that everyone should be feeling better within a week. Todd didn't know if they were fooling anyone.
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Sam was digging.
He could have used his powers to make the holes in the garden but that wouldn't feel right. This was his family. They deserved to have things done right.
Twelve holes He was done. They weren't as deep a he would have liked – he had heard that typically graves were six feet deep – but it was the best he could do. And as long as they were buried, that was the important thing.
He started with Paige. She was the furthest away from the garden and he figured he was going to get tired before long. In the extremities of the sickness she had torn off her skin, revealing some hard metallic substance beneath. But now she was dead, she had shown that skin was beneath the strange stuff and he was glad. Caring for the family had been hard enough without wondering if Paige was a robot.
He wrapped her in the blanket that had been on her bed and carried her out into the garden. She was heavier now, her slight body weighing more than he had envisioned. But he didn't hesitate, carrying her outside and to her grave.
"Goodnight Paige," he said, aware that tears were coursing down his cheeks and dismally aware there would be more to come throughout the day. "I love you little sister."
He placed her body into the hole, unable to look away from her face. This was the last time he would see his baby sister. She had liked music, singing tonelessly in the shower, reading old Garfield books. But everything that he had loved about her was gone now. She would never grow up, never be around to annoy him, never date the school bad boy, never dye her hair some bizarre colour and make his parents scream. She was dead. This was the end.
He sank to his knees beside the grave, knowing that he had eleven more graves to fill with his brothers and sisters and parents and not knowing if would be able to bear it. Paige. His baby sister. He was burying her and it felt so unreal. She was fourteen years old and dead. There was nothing left for her now save the cold ground.
"I'm sorry," he said, resting his hands on the ground and grasping handfuls of earth. "I'm sorry Paige. I'm so sorry. I should have saved you. I should have been able to save you. I'm sorry. I just wish – I wish you were still here. I love you Paige."
Paige, wrapped in her blanket, her eyes closed and her skin cold and white, didn't reply. Lying at the bottom of her grave, she looked more fragile than she ever had done in life.
Sam choked back his sorrow and started shovelling dirt on his baby sister, unable to turn away even as her delicate features were obscured by dirt. He had to do this eleven more times before he was finished. Eleven more outpourings of sorrow and grief before he was done.
Everyone was dead.
He was alone.