Chapter 7: Same Difference

Bastion stared coldly at Daria, but the woman didn't back down. "And what business of it is yours, what the guards do or do not do?" he said coolly. "They're freaks, Daria. Aberrations. They are different from us, and that very difference violates all of Nature's laws."

Daria's chin was set in a firm, stubborn line. "But it's not right, Bastion," she said. "They're torturing her, beating her…abusing her, in ways no one should be abused, mutant or human. She doesn't deserve—"

There was soft thunder in Bastion's voice when he spoke. "Never speak to me of what her kind do and do not deserve," he said. "Humans do not deserve extinction because her kind want to survive. There can only be one dominant species on this planet, Daria, and that will be us humans, by the time I'm done. There will be no more freaks. You and I, and other humans like us, will be safe from her kind." He settled back in his chair, watching the recordings of Jubilee's memories for the umpteenth time. "If it will set your mind at ease, the guards carry out only the orders I give them. They are trying to convince the child that it is in her best interests to talk. No permanent damage will be done, and nothing will be visible."

"Her face is swollen and bruised," Daria said, a note of anger creeping into her voice. "That's not called 'non-visible damage'."

Bastion raised his eyebrow. "I'll be sure and remind my soldiers of that," he said casually. "Return to your duties."

Daria couldn't disobey such a blatant dismissal. She went.

Bastion watched her retreating back, pondering. Daria was getting entirely too familiar, too sympathetic, to Jubilee; he would have to watch her carefully. Or have her reassigned away from Jubilee…

Jubilee lay on the floor of her cell, shaking. Not from cold, though that was part of it. From fear. From guilt. From rage; a soul-deep, cold rage that shocked her because she'd never felt this angry before. Even at her parents' murderers.

The fear was from her continuing captivity, Bastion's constant questioning, his wearing down on her self-control, her spirit, in an effort to get the X-Men. In a way, it was comforting; he hadn't stopped asking her where to find their base, which meant he didn't have them yet. And whenever he got angry or frustrated about her uncooperativeness and beat her, she would go down into darkness with the taste of blood in her mouth and a grim pleasure that he hadn't gotten what he wanted yet. But she was also afraid that he would, eventually, get what he wanted; the drugs he was introducing into her body were playing havoc with her mind. There were huge chunks of time missing from her memory; time she knew she'd lost to those drugs. And the fear that she might have let slip something that could give Bastion the X-Men…that was what she was most afraid of. She had the feeling she might have; after she'd recovered from the drugs completely after one session there'd been an unpleasant smile on his face.

Fear also, about what the drugs were doing to her body. She had a fuzzy recollection of hearing Bastion argue with a doctor about how large a dose she could take, and how soon she could take more. The doctor had said something she couldn't no remember about side effects, and that had worried her once she was aware enough to worry about anything. Her appetite seemed to have diminished, and the jumpsuit she'd been wearing seemed to be getting alarmingly bigger. She was losing weight, weight which she knew she couldn't really afford to lose. While she'd never been anorexically thin, or model-thin, she'd never been fat either, and weight was never something she'd ever worried about. Her first gymnastics instructor had actually complained to her parents that she was a little light. Not a bad thing, in the competing world, but she hadn't been competing yet and her instructor had been of the opinion that being rail-thin meant your body wasn't in peak performance shape.

The upside to that was that the straight jacket had started fitting a bit more loosely. She was afraid to try it while anyone might be watching, but during the long, quiet, lonely hours in her cell when the darkness was absolute, she had tentatively tried to wiggle out of it. She was now sure that she could use her paffs to free herself; but she didn't want to risk it until she was sure she could succeed.

Guilt came from the fact that she might have told him what he wanted to know. Without a clear memory of her time in the interrogation rooms, she couldn't be sure of what she had or hadn't said. The drugs mixed with physical agony had worn at her defenses, and she might well have let something important slip.

It wasn't just physical pain. It was also humiliation and abuse. In an effort to avoid the drugs, she'd stopped eating, and only drank a little when her thirst grew so unbearable she had to drink. So in order to get her to eat, the guards had come to her cell, armed with a thick tube. They shoved it down her throat and forcibly fed her through that tube, shoving food down it until she was full. Several times they'd fed her too much, and she ended up vomiting all over herself when the tube was pulled out and her gag reflex was triggered. They had brought a pressurized hose into her cell, then, and cleaned her and the cell with icy water. She had scrabbled desperately on her knees to avoid the pounding, bruising spray, without much luck. There was nowhere she could go.

The last time she had been dragged back to her cell from the torture room, she'd been spaced out on their drugs and the pain. She realized then that they waited until they saw her moving around again before they came to fetch her for another round. So she played dead; lying on the floor unmoving, breathing shallowly, ignoring the food they shoved in to her once a day, trying to convince them that she was still strung out and wasn't worth bothering. Trying to buy herself more time away from the pain and the drugs, trying to give her body and mind more time to recover.

The door to her cell finally hissed open, but before she could crack open one gritty, tear-crusted eye to see who it was, she heard the klik of heels. Daria! She shut her eyes quickly, willing her body to appear limp as she gathered herself for a desperate bid for freedom, because Daria hadn't closed and locked the door behind her.

"Jubilee…" the soft concern in the other woman's voice almost made her start to cry; she hadn't heard a sympathetic voice in ages. Just curses and taunts. She steeled herself, willing herself to appear asleep. Logan had taught her that. She'd feigned sleep once around him, and he'd known. He'd taught her, then, how to lie perfectly still; how to become instantly alert without the slightest movement betraying that fact; how to control her breathing, how to tense her muscles for fast action without letting whoever was looking at her know she was doing it. She hoped she'd get out of here; she owed him some thanks for teaching her those lessons now… "Jubilee? It's been nearly a week since Bastion took you prisoner." Her eyes fell on the tray of food, untouched, by the child's feet. "If you keep this up much longer, you'll only harm yourself."

Jubilee had to exert every ounce of her self-control to keep from stiffening in shock. A week! It had only been a week! It had felt so much longer than that…she realized that they must have been bringing her food at irregular intervals, to make her think that time was passing faster than it actually had. Yet another means Bastion had been employing to keep her under control. As time went on…as the amount of time she perceived went on, her hopes for rescue would grow dimmer and dimmer until she gave up in hopelessness. Gave up and told Bastion what he wanted to know. A week. Only a week. And she already felt as if she'd been in here for an eternity. Damn, I'm gonna develop claustrophobia like Ro's if I stay here any longer.

Daria sighed and went to one knee beside the still figure, reaching for the tray…and paused. "Jubilee…I know that you can't really hear this, and if you could it probably wouldn't mean much anyway, but…I'm sorry. I'm sorry for everything you've had to go through…and I'm sorry for what Bastion is going to do to your friends with the information he gathered from your mind." Jubilee hadn't given Bastion the location of the X-Men's operating base; but her memories of her friends revealed their interpersonal relationships with each other, their feelings, their vulnerabilities, their weaknesses. The stunningly beautiful African woman named 'Storm'…Bastion had a tiny cell, no bigger than a closet, being prepared for her, because Jubilee had remembered Storm was claustrophobic. Maybe if she could convince Jubilee to cooperate, she herself could convince Bastion that Jubilee had broken and he would give her a little more freedom. Maybe Jubilee could then somehow make her friends' lives here a little better, a little easier…"If you're a little more cooperative, maybe I can—"

"'Maybe you can' what, WITCH!" Jubilee screamed, jumping up from her position on the floor. Daria screamed and stumbled back, and Jubilee took the opportunity to blast her way out of the loosely-buckled straitjacket and attack the other woman. "You'll get me a job like yours, helping that neo-Hitler hunt down innocent people?" Jubilee gathered herself, breathing hard, as she looked down at Daria, cringing terrified against the wall. "Took me a while of pretendin' I was lamed out on your stupid drugs, but now I know…" then she looked at Daria, really looked, and her tone softened. "Hey. Get a grip. I only used enough of my pyrotechnic power to stun you. I didn't do that much damage…did I?"

Daria felt the stirrings deep within her body, and felt what seemed like a billion microscopic things migrate from inside her to the outside. And she abruptly realized that the injections she had been taking, the injections Bastion had insisted everyone take, had been doing something to her body…she was helpless to stop the tiny silvery micro-insectoid form emerging through her skin and flying out toward Jubilee. She'd never had this happen before; she didn't even know what they were, much less how to stop it from hurting the girl she'd already wronged so horribly.

Jubilee flung her hands up in front of her, trying to ward off the tiny specks flying en masse toward her. Surprised, she yelped, "What the—! Daria, wh—what are you? What the hell are you?" and she screamed as the micro-insectoid nanotech defensive system created and implanted in Daria's body by Bastion descended on her. She didn't know what they would do, but she did know she didn't want any of those anywhere near her!

Daria gasped as her entire body seemed to melt into that little silvery cloud of airborne nanites. "Oh…God…what…what's happening to me!"

Jubilee had surrounded herself with a wall of paffs, which were constantly exploding in an effort to keep the nanites away from her. "You have powers too?" she called through the makeshift 'forcefield' she'd created.

Daria was panicked, and that didn't help clear her mind enough to form coherent thought. "I don't…No…what powers?…I've never…"

Jubilee sighed. "Perhaps you didn't know…but you have them." She cautiously lowered her arms a little, to be able to see Daria over them. "When I blasted you…it must have caused you to let go of your powers on reflex." Jubilee'd never seen anyone create metal nanites from their bodies before, so she was guessing the nanites had been put there. But Daria had them under control before I paffed her, so regardless of what the things are made of, Daria does have some sort of psionic control over 'em. And since she does, that must mean she's a mutant.

Daria had no such ability to calmly assess the situation, as Jubilee was doing. "Oh, God, Jubilee! I'm falling apart! I'm a machine and I'm falling apart!"

Jubilee took control of the situation. "No, Daria! Listen to me." She didn't dare approach the woman again, but Daria seemed to be listening to her just fine. "I know lots of people with powers." Hell, almost everyone she knew had something they could do…"I've even seen them let go of their powers like this, in fear, in sickness." Jean's face, on fire with the Phoenix's flame, crossed her mind, but she stamped it down firmly and returned her attention to the problem at hand. "But they end up drawing them back in. I've seen that, too. Every time. It's what Gen X is all about. It just takes concentration. Relax, Daria."

"Relax! How can I—" Daria still sounded panicked. Jubilee felt a sudden surge of pity for her. She'd discovered her own powers at an early age; so her control over them was all she had to develop. How much worse could it be for Daria, who didn't even know she had them till now?

"Relax," she said, reaching out to touch Daria, trying to soothe the other woman. "Relax and draw your powers into you." It took a moment, but Jubilee finally saw those buzzing little metal things shrink back into Daria's body bit by bit, until they were completely gone. Back inside her, where they'd come from. "That's it. All better."

"No." Daria was starting to shake, and Jubilee instinctively reached out to hug her, knowing from personal experience how unsettling that first use of power could be. "No, I'm not better. How can I be? They call you a freak. I hear them…everyone here calls you that. But if that's what you are…then what am I?"

"We aren't freaks, Daria." She patted the other woman's back. "None of us are. Just different. All humans are different from each other; the difference between humans and mutants is the same. Like you and me. Same difference. There's no law in nature that says we can't be different. People make those laws. And they're wrong."

She would have said more, but there was suddenly a piercing pain in her back, and she howled and fell forward. Daria stared at the dart buried between Jubilee's shoulderblades, and met the girl's gaze for one horrified second before Jubilee went limp. She looked past the girl, to the door she'd left open, and was stunned to see two of the First Strike guards standing there, one lowering a tranquilizer gun. She stared numbly at the child as the guards roughly forced her limbs into another straitjacket, then stooped almost mechanically to pick up the tray. Still in shock, she headed almost robotically toward the door. As she headed down the corridors to drop off the untouched tray, one thought filled her mind. She could have escaped…but she stayed to help me and got caught again. And they will hurt her for 'attacking' me when she wakes up…again. How can Bastion do this? He's the same as I am…I saw that on the monitors. He is wrong…I'm sure of it…but there isn't really anything I can do…

End Notes:

We (my coauthor and I) can't thank you all enough for all of your kind thoughts and praise for this little undertaking. It's all appreciated, as it helps us become better writers.

The scene between Daria and Jubilee comes from Gen X #28 and 29, everything else comes from our imaginations. "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's" so we'll have to render credits for the original story idea to the writers at Marvel. The rest of it goes to me, Jaenelle, and also Megalictis, my 'research assistant/coauthor', without whose help this story wouldn't be as good--or as complete--as it is!

There will be an alternate chapter 8 as well; I'm out of time right now but there will be an altchap tomorrow, so by the time you request it, it should be done. If you want it, ask…but remember the rating goes up on the altchaps!