Disclaimer: Not making any money from this. Excerpts below are from my other works 'Overload' and 'Fugitive Motel'.
Slaves to the Cause: Scene 10The X-Men and Indie disembarked the X-Jet, ready to make camp for the remainder of the night. Professionally interested, Dell Tucker ran her eyes over the exterior of the X-Jet, noticing without difficulty a few modifications that had been made since she had last seen it. Then she turned her steel grey eyes on the two X-Men who had brought the jet to the UK. She had met a few of Xavier's team in the past, but not these two. Both were physical, fit men. Wolverine she found to be a little wild, feral maybe. Despite this there was honesty to him that she couldn't find offence with. Stalwart, she decided, a scrapper, but trustworthy.
Gambit was a different subject. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end as she felt him judging her too. It wasn't a pleasant experience. He looked her over a little too intimately, avoiding the challenge in her eyes. Stifle didn't like not being able to work people out. Yet she couldn't say meeting him was entirely unpleasant either. Certainly getting to know him was going to prove…interesting.
"The weather is supposed to close in tonight." Stifle informed them all as they dropped the camping equipment to the uneven ground. "I suggest we camp out here for now, then make a move early tomorrow morning use the cloud cover as best we can."
"Sounds like a plan." Logan agreed, "Blaze can you fix us up with some home comforts?"
"No probs." Blaze agreed, kicking a few clumps of mostly dry heather into a pile and commanding it to burst into flickering warm flames. The X-Men set about putting their small domed tents up in a semi-circle around it. Indigo helped Blaze with hers, making it absolutely clear as he threw in the two sleeping bags where he would be spending the night. After that Wolverine handed out ration packs of mostly inedible dried food. The mutants all took camping stools and made themselves at home around the campfire that sat on, but didn't burn up its bed of heather.
By the campfire Blaze and Indigo were deeply intent on each other. Gambit was sat a way away just as he had been on the jet, shuffling cards and keeping a wary eye on the couple. Stifle felt increasingly uncomfortable in the silence that fell on them. She distrusted Indigo at the best of times. He was not honourable or heroic. If it didn't suit him to let the X-Men do what they must, take Blaze and head back to save the day in the States, he wouldn't let her go. He was dangerous, especially to Blaze. Stifle cleared her throat and turned to the X-Man who seemed to be thinking along the same lines she was.
"There's something Logan and I noticed on one of the scans on the jet, can I ask you for a second opinion?" It was a strange request. Gambit raised an eyebrow and frowned, but agreed anyway as the look on Stifle's face made him shy away from an argument.
"What?" Remy asked when they reached the inside of the jet and relative privacy. Gambit's red-on-black eyes were unnerving to meet, but Dell would never back away from a challenge. So as Gambit squared up to her, she returned the favour with her adrenaline pumping as she sensed a fight. At least she hoped that was all she was sensing.
"Indigo shouldn't be here, he's dangerous and he's bad news for Blaze." Stifle kept her argument concise.
"It Blaze's choice, she a grown woman." Gambit argued flatly, staring Dell down. "Dat all?"
"You're not listening to me." Stifle pointed out, "What he's doing to her…"
"I know what he doin' to her, I met empaths before." Gambit replied coldly. He didn't move as Dell took a pace towards him, both daring each other to be the first to break eye contact. In the end it was Gambit. He let his eyes fall to wander over her body. She wondered if he knew how uncomfortable she was making her feel. Yet she couldn't help herself, as her calculating eyes slid over him in return and found nothing she didn't like. This is ridiculous, she chastised herself, now really isn't the time for this.
"I thought you X-Men cared about your teammates?" Stifle challenged him. The muscles in Remy's jaw clenched as her comment stung. "Indigo's draining everything Blaze ever felt about anything, and you're willing to just let him?"
"You don't know nothin' 'bout Blaze, you ain't gonna tell me what she need."
"I know she killed her parents." Stifle acknowledged flatly, "I understand she has to live with the guilt and terror everyday. I can see why you'd be tempted to think Indigo would be good for her, giving her respite. Except that it's all a lie. I doubt he cares for her, and he certainly won't help us save the captured X-Men and children."
"Stifle," Gambit interrupted, shaking his head." You tryin', I give you that much Cherie. But you off the mark an' I ain't gonna even try an' explain it." She expected him to turn around and stalk off then, but he didn't. Instead he took a step closer and graced her with a soulless thin smile. She scowled at him, and at the swarm of butterflies in her stomach. "If you jus' jealous, maybe Gambit got the cure, non?"
"If I'm jealous?" Stifle scoffed, raising her chin defiantly. Yet she made no attempt to stop him from leaning in to kiss her, even closing her eyes in readiness. That was when it hit her like a sharp blade in her mind's eye.
# He clung to a memory, maybe his last as a free man. An image of a beautiful redheaded girl, asleep besides him, her breath was deep and slow. Blaze was so young, never younger than when she slept, though her dreams often terrified her. A picture in his troubled mind of his fingers brushing the curls away from her warm brow, her skin had felt so soft, so rewarding under his touch. She muttered something softy as his lips brushed her cheek, though he couldn't tell if it was sweet-nothing or curse. She didn't wake as by the moon he rose and dressed silently. He left her. To save both of them, he gave her up. He could only wish there was another way. #
# Screams. Always screaming. Pain and blood and screaming.
She sat on the outside, looking in. Watching herself screaming, sat in the middle of the floor bleeding and screaming and not stopping. She didn't recognise the people who started to come in. Except for one.
The room was trashed. Not just messy, she was always messy, the redhead. Spontaneous and emotional and messy. But she didn't usually break everything in sight. Not a usual night when the vase of dead flowers she'd neglected to tidy away was suddenly thrown against the opposite wall. Not just dead now, shattered and broken and betrayed. Like her. Books, her precious books, torn pages from spine. Furniture overturned, CD player fractured and split across the floor, CDs in pieces, tiny pieces. The TV was smashed, looked like somebody had tried to put a fist through it. The curtains billowed calmly in the wind of the open window.
There was nobody but the young woman in the room. Nobody else could have done this. She'd done it all to her own things, trashed the place and was screaming.
"Help her………" Gambit could barely whisper, his voice broken and desperate. Nobody moved, all hanging in the doorway in shock. He flipped, shouting above the screaming, "Somebody help her!"#
Stifle gasped and turned away, not knowing how what she had just witnessed was linked entirely, not entirely wanting to. It was a fluke of her powers, that as well as being able to stifle other's mutations, she occasionally caught glimpses of a person's innermost demons. Completely oblivious to the cause of her distraction, Remy caught Stifle's arm and turned her back to him. Yet Dell had the incentive now to push away the physical wants he'd invoked in her. She also had the knowledge to manipulate him to doing what she wanted. Sometimes this aspect of her mutation came in useful. It also had possibly the worst timing.
"Humour me." She told him. "So Blaze has your blessing to stay here with Indie. You think that's what's best for her, fine. I just think Indie might have other ideas. What's to stop him leaving her sleeping in the middle of the night with no intention of ever going back? Could she cope with that? With the emotions all flooding back to fill the void Indigo creates inside of a person? Or would she lose it and hurt or kill herself, with no one to come charging in to help her?"
Gambit looked at Stifle acutely, obviously trying to work out what exactly the woman knew. Stifle folded her arms across her chest and stared right back. "You a telepath or somethin' Chere?" He contested aggressively. "Sneakin' about in my head?"
"I don't do it intentionally." Stifle swore. "I don't see it as telepathy either. Do you think I wanted to know that I was about to pick up Blaze's cast-off? Just tell me, did she slice her wrist open accidentally, or was it deliberate?"
"I…" Remy hesitated. "She say it accidental. I don't t'ink she lie 'bout it."
"I'll bet she's quite accomplished at lying, especially to you." Dell stated quietly. "From what I saw the gash to her left wrist was very neat and very deep. I don't know, but if you don't get through to her somehow, Indie might just finish the work you started when you left her."