"I Can Be Anyone"
by Dex
All recognizable characters and settings belong to Marvel; I am using them without permission but mean no harm and am making no profit. The plot and original characters, however belong to me. Any and all feedback is appreciated at dexfsympatico.ca. Redistribution of this tale for profit is illegal. Please do not archive this story without contacting me first to obtain my permission.
Takes place immediately before the events in New X-Men #142
Shaw turned it into a real club. Amazing. Five years ago this place was where the powerbrokers of the world would meet to carve up third world countries and indulge in a bit of after dinner genocide. Now, he has a lunch special and house wines to deal with. I can't feel all that badly for the bastard. If you ask anyone in the know, they get that mingled sympathy/thank-god-it-wasn't-me look in their eyes. They'll tut and shake their heads and say stupid things like "Poor Sebastian. The inquiry was obviously biased," and actually believe it. In their world, any inquiry that can't be bought outright is biased.
It's a wonder that he was able to hang on to as much as he did, what with the IRS dogging him harder than Willie Nelson. They seized the companies, the stocks, the properties, everything. Only a few double blind trusts and some Swiss accounts survived, and provided the means for the Black King to become a mutant club owner. It's got to burn like acid in his gut, losing the ability to manipulate governments and ending up hoping that the public finds his club worth patronizing. Broken down to this level, he seems almost... human.
Isn't that ironic?
"Mr.Summers."
"Shaw."
"How delightful to see you again."
"This is the first time I've been here since you reopened." Shaw brushed some imaginary lint from his sleeve, a smile on his lips.
"But we're old friends."
"I wouldn't say that, Shaw." For the first time, Shaw noticed that I was wearing my visor. His smile flickered and then spread. "I wouldn't say it at all."
"Really?" His face went feral, a carnivore sensing weakness. I guess running a club in Manhattan, among a thousand others and no more secure then they hadn't offered him a chance to exercise his powers recently. Maybe he was looking for a fight. Maybe I was provoking him. Maybe I didn't care. "I see that you are visiting without your esteemed wife. Do you know there is a cult in Thailand that worships her as a god?"
"Shaw." Warningly. I'm supposed to be a good guy.
"Fertility god, if you can imagine."
"Shaw." Up to threateningly. Take the hint, Shaw.
"She wasn't really worth that title, at least when I had her. Dry and lifeless. I had to spit on him palm first and rub– " The next moments were a bit of a blur, with his throat in my hands and my thumbs pressed down on his larynx.
"Mr. Summers!" Shaw's viper voice pierced through the rage, choked but triumphant. "Will it be a fight? Your concussive blasts against my ability to absorb kinetic energy?" He wanted a fight. The idea that beating up one of his former enemies would give him the slightest taste of his old life. For once, Shaw was actually acting on bad intelligence. Obviously, he hadn't gotten any news about me in a while.
"Shaw, I know your powers. Do you really know mine? I'm considering about thirty thousand pounds of pressure per square inch applied to a point about a tenth of an inch on the centre of your forehead. Do you really want to test your ability to absorb that?" His arrogance wasn't surprising. After all he had killed me once. A long saber, right through my chest in the middle of a duel. Was he still made of sterner stuff?
"Ah..." His face fell. "It's a pleasure to see you again."
"A bottle of Dom Perignon, and a quiet table."
"I'll see what I can do about that." Shaw flinched. Charles was right. It's a new world order and it's left him behind.
"You do that. Oh..." I stopped him as he tried to leave. "Make sure she's red-headed."
"My girls can be anyone, Mister Summers." Shaw said, a trifle resentfully.
"I hope so."
I did.
Life is a funny thing. One day, you're head over heels in love with the most perfect woman on the planet. The next, you're locked inside the skull of a creature who makes Hitler look like a well adjusted corner grocer. You would think I'd be able to handle it. After all, I have killed him a number of times.
"Your champagne, sir." The waiter twisted off the cork and poured the first glass with a flourish. "Would monsieur care to sniff the cork?" The waiter said, an edge of contempt in his servile tone. Trying to make himself superior over the people he was now forced to serve. Must be one of the old staff.
"No. Go away." My visor flared, reflected in his suddenly frightened eyes. He dropped the cork in his pocket. Another minute and I've had made him eat it.
"Of course. Mistress Crimson will be on the stage very soon, sir." He scuttled off into the depths of the bar and I found Asia in my drink.
Emma Frost. The woman least likely. What was there in the diamond that mattered? It wasn't sex, even though it could easily have been. Her luscious body, pliant and erotic. Emma had used her psionic abilities to make herself more desirable to men, as if it was needed. She used them to hide what she thought marred perfection. She had a smattering of freckles on her back. A small scar on her inner thigh. Her slightly crooked left incisor. Those were her most attractive features; eyes drawn to the flaw and made more endearing for it. God knows, I wanted her. I still do.
But she's not Jean.
No one is Jean. Not cosmic entities or carefully designed clones. There is only a single creature, a fire that burns through all the imitations. She is the Alpha and the Omega. That terrifies me. She isn't God, but she could be. How do you relate to that? It's safer to relate to a lustful woman dressed in tawdry clothes. I hate to admit it, but there are times that my wife frightens me.
It is God we worship because of fear. Why should my marriage be any different?
It's hard to love a god.
"Mister Summers. Have you considered a choice for a evening? Your mind is humming with ideas."
"Suddenly a telepath, Shaw?"
"The Hellfire Club pioneered cross-mutation treatments. Exponential evolution. Besides, a little telepathy goes a long way." Shaw smiled. "I get the impression Emma is adapting well to her role as an X-Man?"
"In a manner of speaking."
"And her exponential development? I'm told hers manifested as a large diamond. How typically gaudy of her." He sneered. "I believe, truly, that Emma never became anything beyond a rich man's daughter. So eager to please a male authority figure. I suspect if I made her call me 'Daddy' in bed, France would have heard her climax."
"Shaw–"
"I suppose you knew that already. Oh come now, Mister Summers. Everyone else knew that it was just a matter of time." Shaw buffed his nails on his jacket sleeve. "To think. Eight years ago, that moron Wyngarde was leading Jean Grey up those stairs, ensuring unlimited power for the Hellfire Club."
"Shaw, I came here to drink, not talk about the bad old days, which, incidently, make me want to break parts of you as they become available. Don't you have customers?"
"None are quite as much fun as you, Mister Summers. Enjoy your drink. I'll stop by later." The man had style. Ethics of a jackal, but style none the less. I suppose in a strange way I envy him a little. It's not good and evil in his world. It's what's right and wrong for him. To have that kind of freedom is something I can't even conceive of.
I got close, years ago. Four glorious months, hauling nets on a fishing boat. Feeling my hands grow hard, crack and bleed from the rough lines. Plunging them back into the salt water, wet to the collar and reeking of fish guts. Sharing a bunk area the size of a dining room table with three people sleeping in shifts. Hard backbreaking work for twelve, fourteen hours a day, getting the catch in. I was happy.
There were no responsibilities past the immediate standing orders of the boat. The freedom to be Slim, the tall guy with the funny sunglasses, who couldn't play Spades worth a damn but sharked a dozen pool halls down the coast. Making love to the short-haired blonde who liked to fight back, liked her sex to be enthusiastically physical. Nudges from Paolo and Diggs and Ray, because the boss needed a man and they approved of you.
All thrown away for the X-Men.
I had a little airline that I could have made work, with a beautiful son and a gorgeous woman that I thought I loved because of how she wasn't Jean. Lazy days in Alaska, making slow love in front of a giant fireplace. Having a family dinner with my grandparents. Buying birthday presents in tiny little shops, worrying about maxing out the credit cards and fuel prices.
All given up for Jean.
A son who became a messiah. A father who became a space corsair. A brother who can't decide between hero, villain, madman or saint. A life that's been lived under someone else's rules. Damn, it burns.
I couldn't even have a normal affair. It was a telepathic romp; a dark connection to a woman I should have hated, and now think that I could love.
But I love Jean. That hasn't changed. That will never change. You're supposed to love God in an indirect way, not the body beside you in the night. You can't touch God, not in that way. But there she is, was. And not. The Phoenix burns its nest as it leaves. Is that Jean Grey on the pyre?
I'd have died for her. I've killed for her. I'd sacrifice my soul to save hers. But I can't worship her, and inside, she frightens me. Her powers could crack the planet in half, and we're supposed to be partners?
You can't share a god's life. Not when you're flawed. Weak. Human. Like me.
You can't touch a god. You can't argue, or admit. You can't be tender, because beneath it all is that shattering weakness and every time she looks at you, you can tell that she knows.
You can love her as a worshipper. You can cower like a penitent. You can reject her like an atheist. In the end, to her, it really doesn't matter. You don't matter, because you are only now, and she is eternal.
So, you drink and try to club your thoughts to death with booze and girls and utter despair. Everything looks better from the bottom.
"I'm Crimson." The voice in my head, a tickling in the hypothalamus.
"So you are."
"Picture what you want in your head, sir. Just the image is enough."
An image. How about an icon? Or an idol? Shaw would appreciate it. Crafted from his own dark madness and thirst for power.
Black leather, a corset like armor. A whip, coiled and promising pain. Hair redder than the end of days, a tongue of fire and lust. A god fallen, chained in sin. That was the only glimmer of my Jean; defeated, befouled, humbled, flawed.
Human.
FIN