"Why should we be willing to help you," Kurt sat, or rather perched, in the chair at the end of the conference table looking at the human ambassador who had just chosen to address him, or rather had addressed Jean, with a missive for assistance from some of the greater minds available to the Mutant Nation.

"You can't say that you're willing to simply stand by and let this plague that one of yours brought down on us go uncontested," the 'ambassador' was a much younger man by the name of Anderson, Ambassador Bryant having been found quite dead amongst the victims of the Grand Side Air Force Base where the Essexes had been kept.

"Why not," said Kurt pretending to be more interested in his tail than the words of his opponent. "After all, was this not exactly what the humans did after they sent their poison to us?"

"I thought you were Christian!"

"I was until they started teaching that I was a true son of the Devil and my mother was his whore. God will forgive me for choosing not to follow any longer a religion that would teach my own daughter to hate the very skin that Gott above gave her!" Kurt slipped back into his native tongue as his ire rose. First they had come while Lenneth lived to demand her life, now they demanded to be saved from her wrath after they took hers.

The Ambassador sat back; apparently stunned by this outburst from a man whom he had always been told was levelheaded, forgiving, and quiet.

Jean reached out and quietly put her hand on Kurt's arm, sending him a soothing thought as his muscles, well-trained and strong, tensed with the urge to leap forward and do some form of serious harm to the human who dared to come into their sanctuary and demand anything of them.

"So you won't help us?"

"We'll help you, but we will set our terms. Give us a few days to consider what we want," Jean spoke up for the first time. She knew that Kurt would agree with her, but was bristling under the audacity of this man's demands. Then she got up, turning away from Anderson and leading Kurt out of the room.


Anderson brushed on hand through his rather unkempt black hair. He had been among the Mutant Nation for a week; that was the first time Jean Grey had spoken during the negotiations. Usually she just sat and said nothing, no doubt, probing the minds of those who sat in looking for some kind of top-secret information. But what was she going to learn, Anderson thought that the Human world was in trouble? That was obvious enough; it wasn't as if the Mutant Nation didn't get the news, just not always in a timely manner. They surely knew about the thousands dead and hundreds infected with the plague called Protocol 22 that was ordered unleashed by Lenneth Essex just hours before her supposed death. They had to know, how could they, they who called themselves friends of the human world stand by and not assist?


Jean walked away from Kurt nearly immediately after they exited the conference room. Kurt stopped, watching for a moment as she walked away before saying across the intervening space.

"You are going to ask him what he wants to do."

"Yes. He knew her better than anyone. Thus he would know better than anyone what kind of weaknesses this thing has. With his help, we find a cure sooner and perhaps bring an end to this war all the sooner."

"What makes you think he will want to help save the humans who took her away from him?"

"Lenneth did this to give us a bargaining chip, that had to be her reasoning. With this in our corner, they can't deny us the right to ask for anything we want. But in order to make it stick, we have to be the ones who come up with the cure." Jean had stopped, her back still to Kurt, afraid to turn around because she knew the lie would be evident in her face. "We have to be the ones to find it first and he's our best way to do it."

"If you think so," agreed Kurt though his doubts were obvious in his voice. He hadn't been out of that room in the months since his return. What truly made Jean think that a bunch of dying homo sapiens was going to move him from his morose state?

"I do. Go play with your little girl, Kurt," she managed to put a smile in her voice. "You know how she hates to be kept waiting." Jean walked away then, her head held artificially high and her back arrow straight.

An entire hall had been devoted to him. And no one entered without his awareness or consent. So it was a good sign that Jean made it past the farthest door.

"Essex," she called to him as she stepped lightly down the hallway. "Where are you?"

"Here," the voice, a low baritone laced with weariness, came from a side door a few feet away. The lights were out, but the light from the hallway made it possible for Jean to make out his legs as he sat in a low chair. "Yes, Mrs. Summers?" He wasn't asking what she wanted, he knew that already. Jean hadn't been making any point of shielding.

"Will you help?"

"My wife created a plague," he said it in a quiet, matter-of-fact, way. "I'm sure wherever she is, she would rather see it rage on until there is nothing left to stand in its way. She'd consider that justice."

"And if bringing it to an end can bring an end to this war, wouldn't she want that as well?"

"Perhaps," he acquiesced. "Tell the Ambassador that I have put one condition on my assistance."

"And what condition is that?"

"I want my property in London returned to me. I don't care whom he has to kill to make it so, but if he wishes for my help, he will do it. Otherwise, I will keep what I know to myself and let what's left of the human race be damned."

"I suppose that isn't much," Jean couldn't help remembering what exactly it was that Essex had done in his London laboratory, or the various other places where he had chosen to set up shop in his history of over a hundred years. The thought brought a shudder to her body. She was the go-between in a bargain between a mad man and a fanatic; there was a comfortable place to be.

"It's nothing compared to what I could ask for." Then he fell silent and it was easily discerned that the conversation was over.

Jean, taking the non-verbal hint, left what had become informally known as the Quiet Man's hall and the quiet man who chose to live there. The same quiet man who took a small vial from his jacket pocket and held it up to the dark room as if studying it.

"I cannot decide, my love, should I make the deviltry you have created worse, or should I truly become the savior of the paltry creatures that make up the human race?" A low chuckle stumbled out from his black lips and his red eyes glowed in the darkness. "Or perhaps I shall be their savior only to gain what I need to continue what I wish. And return you to your rightful place."


Half a world away, on a small island, a woman awoke long hair dragging up from the pillow as she sat up and wrapped her arms around herself, digging her fingers into the thin fabric of her nightgown.

"Where," her voice sounded thick with disuse and rusty with sleep. Her eyes were far from clear. Deep green markings ran from her right eye back into her hair.

"Hush, my Poisyn, and rest. Time will come soon enough for you to truly wake." The man stood at the side of the bed, his face lost in the shadows. Even as she turned to look at him, sleep was already once again overtaking her senses. She landed back on the pillow with a soft thump, asleep once again.

Apocalypse stood over her as she slept, a smile on his face. Soon she would remember nothing of that former life. Soon she would be as War, solely his horseman without past or dividing loyalty. Then he could truly begin his work.

THE END