Chapter 2: What Is This Place?
Billy had finally stopped crying into Lorna's shoulder, simply because he was too tired. She watched him carefully as he leaned back in his seat, his eyes closed. She knew he wasn't actually going to sleep, but there wasn't much that she could say.
But she also wanted to find Alex and find out what was being done to find Magda, so very quietly, very gently, she promised she would be back and slipped out of the room to do just that.
And Billy was glad for it, honestly. He needed the silence to think. Process. Come up with something, because the way things were… he wasn't going to just let it happen.
He got slowly to his feet, the beginnings of an idea forming in his mind. He could undo it. There were rules about magic — always a price — and bringing Tommy back would require more than he could give. His sanity. Or another life. Or something worse. That much he had learned from his mom. But maybe he could tweak things. Just a little. Just enough.
I wish Tommy had five more minutes before he flatlined.
That was all he'd need. As long as his brother was alive, it wouldn't be a resurrection. A healing, he could do. Or a temporary stay of execution. Freeze him. Something. He just needed that small piece to fall into place. He didn't know what Hank and Tyler were doing now, but he also knew that Tyler couldn't heal anyone who wasn't breathing… maybe Billy could give him more to work with...
He hadn't yet said the words, but the moment he opened his mouth to come up with a spell, everything seemed to slow. The muffled sounds of the X-Men outside the door scrambling to go after their missing teammates stopped entirely. Even his heartbeat and breathing stopped.
The world went brilliant white, and then he saw his old friend, David. Wearing Patriot's uniform, and speaking in an unearthly, ghostly hiss, David extended his hand. "Prepare."
Billy frowned at that and looked over his shoulder. "I don't have time—" He caught himself, realizing that was stupid, since everything had stopped. "I already know what I'm going to do."
David tipped his head to the side. "Change?"
Billy nodded. "Just five minutes."
David's head remained tipped to the side, and he studied Billy before he slowly shook his head. "Consequences."
"Yeah, I know, but—"
David extended his hand once more. "Prepare. Accept."
"I can't accept it," Billy argued.
"Choose," came the unearthly rattle, his hand still held out. But when Billy hesitated, so did David. He put his hand down, tipped his head to the other side, and then held out the opposite hand. "Change. Observe."
"You won't stop me?"
David shook his head. "Consequences," he said simply before he seized Billy's hand with both of his — and an instant later, Billy found himself on an island, of all places.
He glanced around, totally taken off-guard, before he looked up at the sky. "This is not what 'not stopping me' looks like!" he shouted heavenward before he made his way down the beach, performing a quick spell to change his clothes so he looked much more like everyone else. This place was surprisingly ritzy.
"When I figure out where I am…" he muttered under his breath before he saw a blond further inland and jogged over to where she was. "Sorry, can I ask directions?" he asked, looking every bit the apologetic, lost tourist. "I have no idea where I am. Is this, what, the Bahamas? My… my friend sort of … ditched me."
The guy laughed at him and walked past, sure to bump Billy's shoulder hard — and pick his pocket in the process.
Billy let out all his breath in frustration when he realized what had happened — but the guy was already gone. Now he was lost and out any way to get himself out. Or buy food. Or anything else for that matter.
He muttered under his breath as he went through another few spells, finally locating himself somewhere in the Caribbean, but his magic felt... off. Like the spell knew where he was but still couldn't quite finish the job.
He tried a few more people, but none of them would help him out. Most of them thought he was drunk. And just when he was really starting to get mad, David showed up again.
"What's the big idea, stranding me here?" he demanded when he saw his old friend.
"Change."
"Well, I haven't done anything except get a whole lot of rude looks, stares, shoves — and someone picked my pocket," Billy grumbled, arms crossed over his chest. "So if your plan was to make me the victim of credit card fraud, congratulations."
David shook his head slowly and held out his hand. "Consequences," he said, and the world went white again for an instant before Billy found himself exactly where he had been before David showed up. Only… there wasn't a mansion. At all.
It was clearly the mansion grounds. The forest was still the same. Everything else looked the same. It even looked like it was the same time of day. But instead of a mansion, there was a simple white monument. It was smooth marble, and it looked so out of place that Billy found himself drawn to it out of curiosity more than anything else before he realized that it wasn't just a white stone. There were words carved into it — names - and he only made it through maybe three before the understanding hit him and he couldn't read anymore as his vision blurred with tears.
"David!" he shouted, spinning around in place, desperately hoping to see the blue-clad ghost somewhere. "What did you do?"
"Well, I can honestly say this is a first for me," said a vaguely familiar voice, and Billy spun to see that one of the junior X-Men — Jana, the one who could read abilities — was standing there in a uniform that looked distressingly familiar. "Most mutants don't announce themselves like that when they come here," she added, not moving a muscle as a group of soldiers appeared out of the woods, guns drawn.
Billy spun on his heel, both hands raised and ready for a fight as he started to float the slightest bit off the ground. "I am so not dressed for the occasion," he muttered as he shook out the sleeves of his suit — but that was as far as he got before a big guy just appeared out of nowhere to snap a collar on Billy.
Instantly, he dropped back to the ground, and he didn't even get a good look at the guy who had surprised him before he was gone again — no blue smoke, though, so it wasn't Nightcrawler. Not that it was much consolation as the small contingent of soldiers closed in around him and very quickly and roughly got him restrained to drag him over to Jana.
"C'mon, Jana," he said, eyes wide and pleading, and she paused for just a moment.
"Telepath, then?" she asked thoughtfully before she placed a hand on his cheek and closed her eyes. Both eyebrows shot up as she scanned him, and when she opened her eyes again, she was already nodding at the soldiers on either side of Billy. "Reality-bender with the potential for cosmic-level changes to the fabric of the universe." She looked like she could hardly believe it as she took him in. "We'll take him."
"That … is going to be difficult to harness," the teleporter said with a wicked sort of smirk. "Not that they're not up for a challenge."
"He's powerless in a collar or dampener," Jana said with a wave. "It's their job to figure it out from there."
"Oh, I'm not arguing with you there," he said with a grin. "But I sure would like to see how they're gonna do it." He gave the guards a nod to haul the new acquisition off as he shook his head. "Man. How long do you think they're still going to come here like it's some kind of pilgrimage for stupid kids? The X-Men." He chuckled. "What a joke that turned out to be."
By that point, Billy was fairly alarmed and very nearly terrified — though he was still so thrown by everything that confusion topped the list of emotions more than anything else as the soldiers dragged him off toward a waiting truck. This isn't right, he kept thinking, over and over. What happened?
The soldiers tossed Billy into the back of the truck, and a few moments later, the engine rumbled the floor beneath his feet, and it lurched forward. And that more than anything else was enough to overrule the confusion as panic pushed to the forefront of his mind. He didn't know what was going on. But he sure knew that any truck that Weapon X soldiers put him in was absolutely not a truck he wanted to be in. At all.
He had no idea what to do about it, though, in a collar in the back of a reinforced truck. So really, all he could do was panic…. right up until there was a familiar bamf sound that had him halfway melting in relief when he saw the telltale blue smoke. But the Nightcrawler that appeared in the midst of all that smoke was very different from the one he knew — battle-scarred, with three long slashes across one side of his face, white scar tissue against blue fur.
A moment later, both of them were out of the truck in the forest outside the mansion grounds again, and Billy let out a huge breath of relief. "Kurt, what's going on?" he asked.
"What on earth possessed you to come back there?" Kurt snapped with a growl.
Billy blinked at him, surprised, and held up both hands. "I — this — look, I was just in Bermuda, I think? And then I was here. I don't know what's happening," he insisted.
Kurt shook his head and removed a small device from his pocket that shorted out something in the collar. "I can't get it off — but at least the tracker is dead. We can talk about this when we're safe."
None of that was helping Billy understand in the least what was happening, but he just nodded. "I'll follow you," he said — since, clearly, he had no concept of where to go.
"No, you won't," Kurt said, looking at him as if he'd lost his mind. "There is only one way to get there — and even with my demons, it will take several 'ports."
Billy blinked at Kurt. "I… don't know where we're going," he admitted. "So maybe if you just… told me what to do? I'll do that."
"No," he replied before he reached out and tapped the collar. "You're not doing anything yet."
"So… what, then? Just wait here for Jana to get back with her soldiers?" Billy grumbled, his arms crossed.
Kurt narrowed his eyes at him, and a moment later, at least half a dozen little dark blue bamfs appeared around Kurt, who simply reached out and rested his hand on Billy's shoulder. "Don't flinch now."
The first teleport had them high enough in the air that Billy couldn't find a landmark below them for the half a second that he realized where they were. The second was into the middle of a cloud, and the third landed them in some kind of metal complex — which he quickly realized was floating miles above Earth.
"Welcome to Avalon — the second," Kurt said, though the introduction lacked all the usual flair.
Billy stared around at the floating city, his eyes wide as he tried his best to take it all in at once. "Woah."
"Where have you been hiding all this time?" Kurt asked, a frown on his face that looked as if it simply never eased up.
"Like I said, I don't know," Billy told him honestly. "None of this — I mean, the mansion, the X-Men ... it was all here, and then it was gone."
"That doesn't make sense. Are you trying to say you've been time travelling?" Kurt asked. "I can't imagine what outcome is much worse than this one."
Billy bit his lip as he thought it over. "I don't know. Possibly. I was just going to go back a few minutes to save Tommy, and then my reality-shaping old friend showed up, took me to an island, and I was only gone ten minutes, I swear. I come back and there's a monument where a mansion should be, Jana's on Weapon X, there's a second Avalon…!"
Kurt looked him over carefully. "Your grandfather will be pleased to find you alive," he said flatly.
"And Tommy?" Billy asked. It was a selfish question, he knew, but he couldn't help but ask.
"Unless you brought him with you, he's been gone for some time," Kurt said, leading the way through the winding corridors.
"Oh." Billy's expression fell, and he closed his eyes for a moment.
"There aren't many mutants left that aren't under the employ of Weapon X," Kurt told him.
"Yeah, I … I saw the monument, but I only saw a few names," Billy admitted. "Looked like … a lot, though," he added quietly. He wasn't sure what was worse: the memory of the monument, the fact that he'd only seen a few names, or the fact that he wasn't entirely sure that he had processed it enough to be upset on seeing Cyclops, Storm, and Jubilee before he'd been unable to keep reading. "This ... this isn't right."
"Since when was that ever a deciding factor in how the world works?" Kurt asked bitterly.
Billy looked surprised Kurt's way. He'd never heard something like that from him before. "Since… aren't you the one who's always saying have a little faith?"
"Not anymore," he replied.
Billy stared at him openly, hanging back a few steps before he rushed to catch up. "What happened? Last I saw, I mean, sure, it sucked. That's why I was going to go back and fix it. But the mansion was still standing. Everyone was rallying to get people back from the raid. Erik was furious…"
"The school was shut down and the mansion raided after that damned bill passed — the one with the provisions to allow the government control of 'dangerous mutants'. We never got the chance to go after them."
Billy stopped outright and stared at Kurt. "That's ... that's not right. We ... that thing was defeated four years ago."
"No. It wasn't. It passed. By a wide margin."
"But…" Billy stared at him. "No… that's… that's not what happened."
Kurt turned slowly to glare at him. "It is. And I watched, trying to get the children out, after they killed Scott for trying to reason with them when they refused to believe that the ferals were gone. After that, almost everyone at the school was killed for getting in their way — even noncombatants like Annie."
Billy's head was starting to hurt. Or spin. Or both. He stopped and leaned against a wall to steady himself. "But… I remember it. Four years of it. The... the Hellfire Club. And the Purple Man! And ... and Kamala just had a baby just yesterday! Kate was showing me pictures."
"NO," Kurt nearly snarled, one finger pointed Billy's way with a look of barely restrained rage on his features. "Don't …"
Billy looked totally taken aback. "I'm sorry!" he said quickly, holding both hands up. "What — I'm sorry. That's just — that's what I was doing yesterday. Or today. Or… I'm sorry."
Kurt's tail was switching behind him, but he seemed to gather himself for a moment before continuing on his way. He led Billy down to a large pair of double doors that looked as if they were rarely used — and by the way they squeaked just slightly at the hinges, he was pretty sure that was the case. On the other side, sitting in a chair and looking down on Earth, sat his grandfather, thoughtful and clearly weighing everything out that had to have been troubling him those long, miserable four years of God only knows what.
"It seems there was a problem in one of the continuums," Kurt said. "Look who's come to look for something brighter."
When Erik turned to face them, he looked positively stunned, but Billy, on the other hand, looked halfway sheepish as he waved with the tops of his fingers. "Hey. Uh. I think I'm lost."
"I believe that you are," Erik replied though he frowned at the collar on his neck, and in an instant it had simply disassembled itself.
"He was poking around the old grounds," Kurt explained before he moved to take a seat near Erik, looking weary and worn. "Almost as if he wanted to be captured."
"Hey." Billy turned Kurt's way. "I already told you. I don't know how I got there. Or here. Or what's going on for that matter. I wasn't trying to do anything. I just… am!"
"Yes, I'm sure a reality bender has no choice in where he goes," Kurt said dryly.
"I didn't choose the destination," Billy insisted. "My old friend David showed up, dropped me off, and disappeared. All I know is he said something about consequences, and the next thing I know, the whole mansion is gone, people are dead, and nothing makes sense."
"You should find your way back to your own time or timeline — and quickly," Erik advised.
"Gladly," Billy said with a nod. "This place… this is really horrible." He rubbed his forehead as he sank into a seat. "I just ... don't… actually… know how to go back. I don't know if it's alternate reality. Or dimension. Or timeline. Or … some kind of crazy spell."
"Then I wish your mother were still around to assist you," Erik said with a more tired look than Kurt had.
Billy looked between the two of them. "Maybe I can fix this. Or… help somehow," he offered. "At least until I know what's going on."
"How do you plan to do that?" Kurt asked. "You're not fit to fight."
"Hey. I'm an Avenger," Billy said, thrusting his chin out. "I can hold my own."
"There are no more Avengers," Kurt said low.
Billy fell silent at that and stared at him. "What… what even happened?" he asked. "This is all because of that stupid bill?"
"It was the start of it," Erik said. "Everything else fell in like puzzle pieces after that first step. The line was fuzzy on who or what might be dangerous — until all the 'heroes' were considered as such."
"I just… I guess I don't understand it. Where I come from, that bill was defeated. JJ even got his book deal out of it."
"What book deal?" Kurt asked.
"Well, he and Kate had a deal. She gave him all the information he needed to prove Weapon X was using Logan and K, and he got the rights to publish the story of how it all went down — and how it was discovered. It's actually a really good book," Billy explained.
"But they were never able to find a link, even before …" Kurt let it fall and shook his head. "There was no proof."
Billy bit his lip as he thought it over. He still didn't know where he was or what the game was, so he didn't know how much of the past he could change for them, anyway. "There were videos," he said. "I don't know if that makes any difference now, but they had video records of what they did to Logan and K. That's what tipped the scales where I'm from. The bill was defeated on Valentine's Day."
"It wouldn't make a bit of difference now," Kurt said. "The ferals have been under government control since they got caught."
"All of them?" Billy asked, wide-eyed. "Elin and James too?"
Kurt frowned. "Who's James?"
"Who's…" Billy trailed off. "I guess… I guess you wouldn't know. In my time, he was born just a little after the bill was defeated — on Logan's birthday, actually. He's the cutest kid ever. Likes to jump off of things and make you catch him."
Kurt looked like he'd gotten water thrown in his face. "No … We don't … Elin is here."
"Oh good," Billy said in a rush. "I'm glad to hear that. So you were able to get all the kids out?"
"We got all the kids from the mansion out," Kurt said.
"And what about the Avengers' kids?" he asked. "I ... I don't even know which ones exist in this timeline. Or reality. Or whatever. Gerry, probably. And maybe Zoe? Have you met her yet?"
"They have Gerry," Kurt replied. "I've never heard of Zoe. Who does she belong to?"
"Clint and Natasha," Billy said. "She's adorable."
"Clint has been dead for … well. Since before the bill."
Billy looked like you could have knocked him over with a feather. "What?"
"He and Kate never came back from a mission they were running," Kurt explained very gently, though he had a hard expression on his face. "Wade only barely made it out to tell us what had happened."
Billy stared at Kurt and then at Erik. "I… I'm sorry," he finally said Kurt's way, even though he knew it wouldn't do a thing to help. He'd had enough people tell him the same thing the last few months too. When Kurt's ever-present frown simply deepened, Billy cleared his throat and looked toward Erik. "Is there… someplace I could stay? Just until I figure out how to get back. Or ... where to go back to."
"Yes, of course there is," Kurt replied with only a whisper of the warmth that Billy was so used to hearing from him.
"Then, I guess... I'll follow you," Billy said with a small smile. "Again."
"This time, you won't have nearly as far to go," Kurt assured him as he got to his feet and started to lead the way.
For a while, Billy let Kurt lead him through the new Avalon in silence — he was still processing half of what he'd just learned anyway, so he appreciated the quiet to give him space to think. "So," he finally said as they turned a corner. "You just, what? Wait until someone stupid goes to the mansion? Monument? Thing? And bring them here?"
"I have a few bamfs monitoring several places that seem to draw in those that have convinced themselves that the X-Men are simply in hiding," Kurt replied. "When someone shows up in one of those places, they alert me — and I try to get there before Weapon X does."
"Well… they're not entirely wrong," Billy pointed out. "You and Erik are here."
"We're not X-Men anymore," Kurt clarified.
Billy frowned at that, his brows scrunched up. "Sure you are. You're the last X-Men."
"There are a few others that are alive — but there are no X-Men. No Avengers. Excalibur and the New Mutants — none of them are around. No one like that."
"I just… can't believe it," Billy said, shaking his head. "Not... I mean, I can wrap my head around people being gone ... sort of. But being an Avenger… and X-Man… that means something."
"It means you have a target on your back for extermination if you don't comply." Kurt paused in front of a pair of big double doors not too far from where Erik was set up. "But I really can't talk about this any longer. I have work to be done. If you have more questions, you'll have to ask Wade."
"Right. Yeah. Other idiot kids to save, got it," Billy said with a little nod, his hand on the door. "But ... thanks. Sorry I'm so hopelessly lost. I appreciate the guide."
"You'll either find your way or learn how it is now very quickly," Kurt replied as a bamf showed up, giving him a very insistent look.
Billy recognized the look of urgency and waved him off, stepping through the doors while Kurt teleported off to go save someone else.