Chapter 3: Normal?

Several hours later…

Nathaniel and Lenneth sat on the floor of their combined cell, him with his back against the wall and her with her head in his lap. He was absently curling her long white hair through his fingers.

"You stopped darkening it," he asked with a faint smile in his voice.

"It was a bit of vanity I felt was unnecessary with my life as a widow," she replied, turning her eyes to take in his face more fully. "What did they do to you?"

"Apparently," he began with his clinical lecturing tone. "When they neutralized my powers, my appearance reverted to what you currently see before you. The human I once was. You no longer find me handsome?"

"You will always be the very picture of a god to me, no matter what your look. Though, I must admit to finding something dashing about your powder white face and eyes the color of rubies," Lenneth admitted. "Tell me how you survived and what happened to our son," she asked.

"Nicholas died, I'm afraid, Lenneth. I was captured and placed in prison as a war criminal. But I could not be tried until the war was officially over."

"Until the peace treaty was signed," she said with a note of defeat.

"Yes."

"So I signed our death warrants?"

"Yes, my love, you did." He leaned down and kissed on the forehead, a piece of his carefully pulled back hair sliding across her face. She certainly did not miss the inherent mockery in the way he said, 'my love'. It had always been a joke between them. She knew full well that his work was his love. She was just his wife.

"Nathan," she turned her face from his. "I was a fool. I believed that what I was doing was right."

"Is it true that you called for an evacuation following your surrender?"

"I didn't trust them to keep their word…" she let the sentence hang between them. He let his mouth quirk up at the edges.

"Then you are certainly no fool." He smoothed her hair away from her face and around her ear. "Besides if you had not come, I certainly would have gone mad alone in that cage. Your company is certainly better than that of my guards."

"Even given my previous indiscretions," she had never gotten a chance to ask for his forgiveness, his disappearance had simply been too sudden.

"I never considered them such, especially not when they furthered my ends. However, that man, Bryan, is asking for me to rip out his throat."

"Bryant, Nathan," Lenneth quietly corrected. "I take it that he's been rubbing your nose in it?"

"Yes, but I had to remind him," the look on his face was a devil's grin.

"Of what," she asked, curious.

"I had you first. I had you last. And you never showered after leaving me."

"I suppose that twisted his knickers a bit."

"I enjoyed the look on his face immensely."

"You can be a very evil man, Nathaniel Essex."

"No more so than my wife," he countered.

"According to the report that Morph is sending in, Madame Essex is alive and being held in a former military facility an hour or so outside of Washington D.C. Also, you won't believe what else he says, Master Essex is alive as well and has been transferred to the same facility," summarized Jean from a sheet of paper.

"Master Essex," said Kurt in disbelief. "Alive, after all this time?" It was apparent from his tone that while he found this news quite interesting, it was also somewhat distasteful. Perhaps he thought it would have been better if they had simply been rid of the powerful mutant leader.

"According to Morph and you know he wouldn't be kidding about something this important. Or someone who has caused him that much pain."

"Well, if they are both in a single place, it should not be so hard to get someone to go in after them. But when?"

"We don't have a whole lot of time. They're going to be tried as war criminals and then executed."

"So we must move quickly. Was Morph able to provide any more information?"

"He sent us maps of the facility and its surrounding area. I was already checking for possible spots to land the Blackbird."

"Good. A team of three: Katherine Pryde, Remy LeBeau, and… I only hope I can convince her."

"Who?"

"My mother, Raven Darkholme."

"Oh," was Jean's somewhat stunned reply. "She and Madame Essex are certainly not the best of friends."

"I know, but I pray that she can see past that."

"We can only hope."

Nathaniel Essex looked down at the woman who had fallen asleep beside him, his mouth once again curling into something of a smile. He brushed the edges of her lips with his fingertips, admiring the fact that her body showed no signs of the experiments had done on her so many years ago. It fascinated him, her ability to heal, her complete control over seemingly every aspect of her body. Control he had helped her achieve. His smile lit up, that body intrigued him so. His physical needs were few and far between but she would do anything to satisfy him.

And a few things to try him. The memory of her making the apparently quite unthought out decision to sleep with young Remy Lebeau came easily to mind. He shoved it away, letting his eyes wander over that unmarked skin, skin he had split and pulled back on many an occasion to ease his displeasure over some project that didn't go as he had wished. "Perhaps I should have regrets for what I do to you," he mused aloud, his eyes betraying that he felt absolutely no regret of any kind for anything he had ever done to her.

"If you did that, you'd not be the man I married," she muttered sleepily. "Hush, Nathan, and regret nothing." She kissed him under the chin. "I knew when I said 'I do' to you that I was marrying a man who would sacrifice it all, including himself to his ambitions. And that was one of the things that made you everything I wanted." Lazily, she unbuttoned his shirt with one hand. Caressing his collarbone, she remarked,

"I miss your white skin. But I suppose this will do for now. Do you think you have the same stamina without your enhancements?"

"We," he said drawing her face to his. "Will find out soon enough." He kissed her mouth fully. Breaking away, she nibbled at his neck, all too aware of the video cameras embedded in the walls around the room.

Ambassador Nicholas Bryant couldn't get over how beautiful Lady Essex was with hair the color of summer clouds, or the way her lips curled into an oh as she clawed into her husband's back. She had never been so truly animalistic with him that he could remember. He had watched the tape of their late night lovemaking seven times, each time wishing it was him that she was biting.

The lady was away in the shower when Bryant approached Essex who was drinking his morning tea and reading the Times.

"She's quite the pistol," said Bryant, a lame attempt to begin a conversation with the prisoner. All he got was a mildly amused, yet utterly disdainful look from the cell occupant. "You know, if I decided to look the other way, every guard in this facility could easily have their way with her."

"Assuming Lenneth would allow it. It isn't as if she's a defenseless debutante. She's kills quite well, I understand, and quite painfully." Essex's conversational tone made that particular piece of information much more chilling. The fact that he didn't even look up from his paper when he said it; only heightened the fact that to him it was nothing of consequence. Bryant was quickly having to reevaluate what he understood about these two.

"Why don't you be honest, Mr. Bryant," said Essex folding up his paper with a couple of slight crinkles. "You watched us last night and it reminded you of what you were missing at home with your own darling wife. Now perhaps you would like for my wife to give you one last good roll in the hay as the Americans so quaintly put it." He laid the discarded paper on the floor. "You're talking to the wrong Essex," Nathaniel picked up his teacup. "If she's interested," he sipped his tea. "She very well might. But as you have nothing to offer, I severely doubt it."

Both men looked down the hallway as the lady in question walked toward them, flanked by two well-armed guards. Though fully dressed it was obvious that she was a woman who stole men's hearts and then broke them, viciously. The guards opened the cell door for her, let her in, locked it back, acknowledged Bryant with a salute, and left. Leaving Bryant looking at the two prisoners with eyes reminiscent of the painting where the man is screaming at the onlooker.

"Darling," Lenneth Essex greeted her husband with what looked like a cold kiss.

"Mr. Bryant has chosen to join us for breakfast." Nathan ran his fingers through her still wet hair. "He has a proposal for you, I believe. He attempted to discuss it with me, but you know how little I have to do with whom you give your favors to."

"I can think of one Master Nur who would call you a liar, Lord Essex," she returned with what sounded like a chuckle. "But that is a story for another time." She dragged her fingertips across her lover's face as she turned to look at Bryant. Arching one delicate eyebrow at him, she asked,

"And exactly what kind of proposition were you discussing with my husband?"

"I was just making conversation. You were the only thing that we happened to have in common."

"Oh really," she walked up to the bars and half turned so that he was looking at her profile, her hair drawing his eyes down to the front of her shirt, open enough to reveal her chest. "Was that all?"

Bryant swallowed audibly. She simply smiled at his discomfort.

"So much the pity," she stuck her lower lip out in a pout.

Nathan held his teacup up in front of his face, though it wasn't completely large enough to cover his amusement at his wife's performance.

"Are you sure he had a proposal for me, Nathan," her own amusement crept into her voice so subtly a listener would have had to be listening for it to hear it.

"It appears I am guilty of misunderstanding our jailer, my love. You will forgive?"

"Of course," she followed it up with a perfectly vapid, girlish giggle that caused certain parts to jiggle. "Anything for you, lover boy." An exaggerated wink and blown kiss made the whole thing so perfect that Sinister nearly laughed at her antics in front of her victim. But he managed to keep his composure waiting for Mr. Bryant to tire of being the ass of his wife's joke. It didn't take long for the Ambassador to walk away, attempting, unsuccessfully, to hide the physical reaction that Lenneth inspired in him.

"Well," she turned back to her husband. "That was a right gas, wasn't it, Nathan?" She sat down across from him and picked up the discarded paper.

"Indeed it was," he continued drinking his tea despite the snide laughter he was keeping in check. "Perhaps you should have given him what he wanted, he could have died happy." The condescension with which he made that remark would have been obvious even to the undereducated louts responsible for watching over the jailed couple.

"Honestly, I would prefer for him to just die," Lenneth's opened the paper with a snap.