The Jean Grey School, Westchester, New York
The Present
Jack Grey was seated halfway up the cold metal bleachers next to the playing field. Below him, students were running back and forth across the damp grass. The day still held some of its morning chill. In the distance, a faint mist clung to the trees, painting the landscape in grays and blues. Flashes of yellow sunlight danced on the lake's surface. Jack watched a pair of red finches flit overhead. In his hands, he had a length of string, tied into a loop. He was playing a game of cat's cradle, pulling shapes from the string, seeming to tie it together in complicated patterns, only to have it unfurl back into its original shape.
Occasionally, he would look up at the students. It seemed to him that each of them was their own tiny star, with beams of light shining from within. Some students shone more brightly than others, some shone light far into the distance, some glowed. Jackie looked back at his string game. So many possibilities, so much potential, so much light. He saw how their lights crossed over one another, intertwined, or went off on their own.
A slight figure approached from his left, the East. The sun dazzled Jack's sensitive eyes. The figure sat beside him on the bleacher.
"A new student," the figure said. It was a young girl.
It wasn't a question, so Jack let the statement hang in the air.
"Only just arrived," the girl continued. "But from where, or perhaps when?"
"No where. Every when," Jack said, but it was The Witness who spoke through him now.
He felt the girl's stare on the side of his face. Jack removed his glasses and turned to look at her. She was slight, blond, with red eyes. Her face was coldly beautiful. When Jack met the full force of the girl's gaze, he saw her eyes widen. She recognized his features, but not the person.
"Who are you?" she asked. She spoke not with Alice's voice, but Sinister's.
The Witness had been waiting a long time to answer this question. He had a monologue prepared. He pulled a thread and suddenly, there was silence. Children stood like statues frozen on the lawn. Birds hung in the air, mid-flight. The wind ceased to blow. Jack gave a half-grin. "I go by many names...," he began.
"I am named for my grandfather, who is kind and looks to the future. And my great-grandfather, who was cruel and looked only to the past. I have my mother's last name, which is neither white nor black, but somewhere in between."
"I have the name of a child and the name of a man. I have the name I call myself...and the name many have called me...that I do not refute and claim as well, as it's the surname of the man who raised me."
"Some called me a miracle. When my heart failed at four years of age, and science and medicine couldn't save me, a healer woman put her hands on me and brought me back t'life. And some would call me an abomination, because without your meddling, how could I exist?"
Sinister's face rarely expressed emotion. But it was possible there might be fear there.
The Witness continued. "It's more than a little sick, you putting a bit of yourself in every clone...like some kind of...maker's mark."
"When you looked at me, eleven years ago in the basement of that hospital, you called me by your son's name, the name of the very First Man...Adam. And while you had a hand in creating me, and a piece of you is in me, you did not make me. You are not God."
At the mention of their earliest encounter in the operating theater of Charity Hospital, Sinister's demeanor shifted. "I'll destroy you," Sinister said with barely restrained fury.
"You've already tried**," The Witness hissed, "and don't think I didn't see that comin'!" He held a ring before him, taken from the velvet pouch in his back pocket. There were three diamonds in the setting, past, present, future. "You can't destroy what has no beginning and no end...And if you ever harm my mother or my father again...I will end your works...then, here, forever...and make your existence one of such misery that you will wish I'd just killed you!"
"You do not have that kind of power," Sinister scoffed.
"Have it. Don't use it. I take my responsibilities very seriously," The Witness replied. "So I stick to the shadows, the sidelines, and keep my head low. But I'd make an excuse for you."
"I suppose it is you who believes himself a god."
"Heh, not hardly. Just another poor sinner."
The Witness turned his palm upwards and the ring hung frozen in the air for a moment, spinning slowly in a circle, then faster and faster before it vanished in a flash of light.
"Where did it go?" The Witness asked lightly, in a sort of playful musing tone. "How did it get there? But that's impossible! It just goes round and round again. Let us pray. Glory be to the Father, to the Son, and the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end."
Sinister's eyes seemed to reappraise the boy that sat beside him.
"Look at me now, Nathaniel Essex," The Witness said. "What would you call me?"
"You are insane," Sinister said finally. "A lunatic."
Jack twisted the threads of his string around his fingers. He held the game up to Sinister. "Put your pinky fingers here," he said, "and pull these two threads."
"I do not play games," Sinister said.
"You want out of this time bubble, don't you?" Jack said, smiling.
Alice reached out two fingers and pulled as instructed. The criss-crossed pattern in Jack's hands transformed into a pair of X's. He looked at the girl's face through the crossing threads, then released the knot of his cat's cradle and the bubble popped. Time came rushing back in to fill the void, a sudden cacophony of sound and action. Finding herself free, Alice slipped away into a fold in space; a flash of light and the figure was gone.
From across the field, Jack could see Jean and Remy exiting the rear entrance of the school. He could look at his parents and see them as they were and how they would be. He saw Jean as a little girl, bouncing in the backseat of a car, singing along to the music on the radio with her father. He saw Remy, being pushed along on a bicycle by Jean-Luc. Jean and her friend Annie swinging on swings, her red hair flying like a banner. Remy's knee bandaged by his Tante Mattie. He saw Jean and Remy meet as X-Men. Come, and go. Reunite, separate, team up, disband. He saw Jean on their sitting room floor, losing to him at a game of Memory. Playing games of pretend and drawing on sketch pads. He saw Remy at his hospital bedside, reading him a book; he could do all the voices. He saw them seated at the dinner table with his adoptive grandparents, who were leading them in saying Grace. Jack saw Jean and Remy as the adults they were now, somewhat nervous and unsure to find themselves together here in the present and all that entailed with the people around them. He saw them in old age...he saw them die. They shared a common thread, and unfortunately, that one led to Sinister. It tied them together and maybe would rip them apart. Maybe their lights would stay tightly bound, cross again and again, like his cat's cradle, maybe they would bounce off in different directions. Anyway, it wasn't for him to decide.
Jean and Remy stood on the rear patio searching for Jack for a moment, holding hands and scanning the sports field. Jack waved. Once they spotted him on the bleachers, they waved back. He put his glasses back on. The light from them was too bright. It was like staring into the sun.
**X-Men Vol. 2 #200. The Witness is gunned down by the Marauders.
Glory Be, Catholic prayer.
Glory Be to the Father, to The Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
Next time: Last chapter...the end and the beginning.