DISCLAIMER: I do not own any of this.
(TitansRule and rogue-scholar07, thank you for your reviews, I am glad you enjoyed this^^ Bloodypassion, it is all happening for a reason and I just hope you like it. Anon goddess, most faithful of muses, thank you for bein an ever-present inspiration, this wouldn't be possible without your comments and your good humour :) LadyMageLuna, glad you find it so. Laceylou76, honey, I hope you like this and I hope you let me know because this is going to be hard on your sense of romance!! To all of you, thank you for being so lovely and reviewing and you all inspire me so much there aren't words for it. I truly hope you'll all let me kow what you think of this!)
~Scarlet Letter ~
Overkill.
Freddy didn't pretend to understand half of the things that went on in his house. He didn't need to either; mostly everyone just assumed that he got what he got and if he had questions he'd ask them. And mostly, he asked Wanda when he had any questions. But he didn't like to ask Wanda personal questions. Not for fear of her being angry with him, Wanda was seldom more than annoyed when it came to Fred, but for fear she might be upset or that it could trigger unwanted throwbacks from her forced-forgotten past. He didn't want that. He remembered very clearly the terror she had had them all living in when she came out of that asylum to live with them. He remembered still more clearly how frightened she herself had been, terrified of losing control of her powers, terrified of being found and dragged back to that horrible place she had described to him as being 'hell in hospital form – cold and white and full of pain'. And he didn't want her to go back, either. He was quite frankly astonished that she had been put in there in the first place because he knew that if he had ever had a little sister like Wanda it wouldn't have mattered what her powers were like or what she did, he would have tried to help her anyway.
The way Pietro had told it, their father had been too busy and so occupied with the idea of mutant superiority that he hadn't been willing to take the time to devote himself to helping his daughter develop her powers and instead they had – prematurely manifested as they were – grown to the point where she herself was incapable of controlling them at all, any emotion or impulse she experienced causing a direct reaction in the form of her powers acting up. He had shown Freddy a picture of the twins together at the tender age of five, Pietro's face a curious innocent he hadn't thought had ever been part of his personality at all, and the dark-haired litle girl that was Wanda, her arms around her brother's neck, laughing at something. He had said that all he had wanted was for them to be a family, for their father to accept her and help her, but while Pietro's powers were easily controlled and manifested in early puberty, Wanda's were volatile and infinitely destructive, and when Magneto hadn't been able to make use of her for them, he had tired of the distraction of his daughter and disposed of her.
Thrown her in the mad house and thereby condemning her to a lifetime of drug-stimulated daily cycles and isolation. He had told Pietro he was sending Wanda off to school so she would be safe and wouldn't be a target for his enemies, Magneto's fragile, dangerous daughter, and only when he was twelve did Pietro learn the truth overhearing his father speaking to a bald man in a wheelchair who came to see them, asking his father why he had not sent her to him so that she could be helped while there was still a chance for her to have a normal happy life. Magneto had brushed him off with a cold 'She was a liability - I had to make sure she was incapacitated' and had ordered the bald man out. Pietro had caught him at the door, asking where his sister really was and the man had put the image in his mind of his sister, older now, strapped into something white that trapped her arms around her, crying in a white-painted concrete room, and Pietro had known. His father had lied to him all along and if he could lock away Wanda he could do the same to him. No one would ever find him, no one would ever ask what had happened. And from that day on he had lived in fear of his father.
He had always wondered if she had blamed him, and since she wasted no time in attempting to bring the house down over their heads the moment she steppen in the front door, he had had his answer. Fred knew how much it had hurt him. He had seen the way from the day of Wanda's arrival Pietro had tried to ingratiate himself with her, tried to mend the hurt and the rift between them, but she had been too angry and too focused on the person who had sentenced her to a life of misery – her father. Her entire being was focused on bringing him down, to the point where he actually considered her a threat to his lifelong mission of establishing mutants as the rulers of the earth. Fred had always thought that was a tad comical. Wanda was a threat to anyone and everyone who wronged her. She was the most powerful mutant he had ever met and he was just glad she liked him. Not to mention that her powers were nigh unlimited in their variations and she was capable of almost anything if she tried hard enough. Magneto might control metal – Wanda controlled everything. If Fred had been Magneto he'd have been scared shitless of her, that much was certain. But Bucket-Head had been labouring under the delusion that he could win, that he was somehow capable of getting one over on her in battle however ludicrous that was, and at the very last he had been forced to acknowledge that he couldn't battle her directly and had instead lured her to his hideout and altered her memories so that she did not remember what he had done to her. She had returned confused and unfocused, Toad unable to explain what had happened to her in full, and Fred had been afraid that something terrible had befallen her. It had.
She was not herself. She was prone to fits of depression, she was unsure as of how to conduct herself in relation to them and so she took on the role of their sister, just as she accepted her role as Pietro's, coping with things the only way she could, by pretending they were normal. She hadn't been provided with memories of her living arrangements and so believed she simply lived with her brother and he had then filled out the blanks for her by telling her that they lived with a bunch of his good friends and rented rooms. They did, incidentally, but only to Pyro at the moment and Fred doubted they'd want to bring in anyone else just now. She hadn't been told of her father's vendetta against the human race or hers against him, she didn't remember anything about the Acolytes and believed them to be just another independent mutant terrorist unit. Xavier's Institue she knew for what it was, her memories of having been their enemy were warped, however, and she struck up easy friendships with them all after the battle against Apocalypse. Fred didn't like that much but he conceded that she needed more people in her life to fill the gaping holes for her, distract her. Hopefully enough distraction would lead to there being enough of a base for the false memories to take proper root instead of being an ongoing illusion, but he feared they wouldn't be enough. He also had a niggling worry that someone, someday would say too much to her and trigger the repressed issues and that she would regress into the angry girl she had been when she arrived and that the sweet, caring sister-figure he had come to love so much would be swallowed up in the rage and the anger that had once been all-consuming for her.
And now there was Pyro. He seemed somehow able to circumvent her moods, her bad sides, the little things that aggravated her and made her powers flash to the fore as they had once done every time she felt anything at all. Fred didn't know how he did it, but she reacted to the Australian as though she really were just a normal girl, and while he was glad that they had someone around who was able to calm her down where they couldn't, he worried for her. It wasn't like her to take to someone like that, in fact, it wasn't like her to take to anyone at all without being told by her 'brothers' that it was alright. Pietro didn't want her anywhere near Pyro and yet she defied him, insisting he was alright. That in itself ws strange. She also, despite her happy 'memories' of life with her father and brother, expressed an intense desire to stay away from him, claiming that she didn't want to get in his way, which Fred found had evolved to the point where when pressed by Pietro to visit Magneto she would respond with violence. And it was only getting worse.
He stood outside her door indecisively, on the one hand wanting to knock and ask if he could talk to her, ask if she was alright, and on the other hand he didn't want to fan the flames or tip the balance. He decided to knock, but there was no reply. He pressed his eye to the keyhole but could see nothing but darkness and he knocked again.
"Wanda? Are you in there?" he called, no reply forthcoming, and he grew concerned. He knew she should be in there. It took her more than ten minutes to get dressed and groomed when she'd been in the shower, there was nowhere else she could be because he knew for a fact that Kitty was in the bathroom now, he'd passed her on the way from Pietro's room.
"Wanda!" he called again, getting anxious, and a voice from behind adressed him in a scratchy sort of undertone that was vaguely reminiscent of the ones generally favoured for people who'd lost the plot and were contemplating mass murder in horror films.
"What ya need her for?" He turned around and found himself face to face with Pyro who was looking honestly a little concerned himself, albeit not in the conventional way. Fred reminded himself to ask Remy exactly what the hell was wrong with the guy at a later time, noting that while Wanda had always been forthright and obvious in her aberrations, this guy was apparently prone to fits of relative normalcy that tempered with the crazy every once in a while and made it a little difficult to relate to him. He was as likely to be nice as to be creepy, it seemed. Or totally whacked out.
"I got worried. I know she should be in there an' she's not answering," he explained, watching the other guy for signs of anything out of the ordinary and giving up when the Aussie shrugged and said,
"Might be downstairs. It's breakfast time. If ya worried break the door down an' deal with the consequences later," and left him there with a smile that didn't reach his eyes. Fred made a noise of discontent. And opened the door. It wasn't locked and he thought to himself that that wasn't normal, she always locked the door when she was getting dressed because she was spooked that Toad might try something. Not that Toad had the guts to do that, he knew full well what would happen to him if she told the guys he'd done anything like that.
Peering into the darkness of her room, he decided that it was hopeless without light, but flicking the switch did nothing and he grew yet more concerned. Opening the door wide to let the hall light into her room, he stepped back and looked in instead. He eyes, red-rimmed and lacking all reason stared back at him from the corner of her room.
"Wanda..?" She didn't blink but he could see the blue sparks travelling up her arms, illuminating her well enough for him to see that she was only partly dressed, in black trousers and her bra, and that her arms were covered in vertical marks that glistened in the blue light from her powers.
"Wanda, are you okay..?" he asked carefully, and she closed her eyes, shaking her head, taking a shaky step forward. He remained where he was, frozen in fear and concern. Something was wrong. Very, very wrong. Her arms curved up around herself and she looked up at him again.
"Freddy..." She took another step forward, and he noticed that things were floating around her room as the sparks turned to crackles and the blue light glowed and pulsed around her. "They lied to me, Freddy..."
"Wanda, who lied to you? You know we'll get'em for you!"
"No... I will..."
~*************************************************************~
They'd been having a very romantic moment in the kitchen when they were interrupted by St, John trying to sneak past the door. Or rather, he was walking unnaturally quietly past the door and Remy noticed and snapped his head up to glare at him.
"Answers, mon ami, y' owe me," he said flatly, and the Australia froze in his tracks.
"Remy, ya gotta let me go, mate," he replied, looking over Rogue's head at the Cajun in a way that implied this was more serious than she had thought.
"Running away again, eh?"
"What would you know about it?" the Aussie snapped back, and Rogue felt herself pressing against Remy without knowing quite why she felt the need to. He secured his arm around her waist firmly and kept his eyes trained on Pyro.
"Y' can' do dis t' y'self, mon ami, y' have t' at least try t' deal wit' dis," he said quietly, reasonably, and the gleam in Pyro's blue eyes suddenly looked unhealthy. His hands were in his pockets.
"I'll do as I bloody well please and there ain' a thing ya can do about it. I told ya, I don't wanna be you. I don' wan' any o' this."
"Dis ain' de way out, Johnny, it's another cage an' y' know it," Remy sounded calm but the red of his eyes was burning into the other man and Rogue felt caught in the middle, knowing that whatever silent struggle was going on between them wouldn't be kept contained for long.
"Ya don' know a damned thing about cages Remy – the rest of us ain' as great at gettin' out of them as you are. The least ya could do was let a bloke pick his own," Pyro said harshly, and she felt Remy stiffen, close as they were.
"Y' wanna go back to dat shit again? Y' wanna fuck tings up f' y'self wit'out even givin' it a chance? Y' can' be dat fuckin' insane mon ami, merde, I thought y'd learned by now!"
"I am not insane." His eyes told Rogue a very different story and she felt a compelling need suddenly to know where Wanda was.
"Fuck dat. Fuck you," Remy growled, "Y' can' even admit it – what were y' gonna do when y' had t'? When dey found out? Y' can burn de whole worl', Johnny but y' can' get away from it an' y' won' deal wit' it an' it's gonna kill y' if y' don' learn dat. Y' can' fight y'self, mon ami. Y' can' do it alone!"
"I'm not alone. I've never been alone. If I'm alone then who's talking?"
"F' fuck's sake Johnny y' know y' not well, why can' y' jus' accept it?" Pyro smiled, a bitter, horrific facsimile of a smile that twisted his features into something almost demonic.
"Because you're all liars and we're the only ones who know," he said eerily. Rogue had a sickening feeling the other part of 'we' was not a person at all.
"Remy," she said shakily, "Where's Wanda..?" Pyro turned his attention to her and smiled, a different smile this time, not as twisted, the sort of expression one might take when dealing with a child.
"Sounds like a game, don't it Sheila? 'Where's Wanda?' Freddy was asking the same question earlier... Pyro doesn't know, we can't play games like that, can we Remy?"
"Oh Gawd... Y'all have completely lost it," she said, realisation dawning on her.
"Lost what? You can't lose something you don't have and I don't have anything therefore how is it that I have lost something?" He wasn't speaking normally, his voice was rushed and the words tripped over each other, coagulating into one or two words where there originally were perhaps four or five in succession and she couldn't hold back a flinch.
"Remy, what the hell - ?" He shook his head imperceptibly and muttered,
"Psychotic episode – either sometin' bad happened or he ain' been takin' his pills an' I don' know which is worse. He ain' jus' hearin' us, chere, an' what he is hearin' ain' good. It ain' ever good." She looked into Remy's eyes and saw the gravity of the situation there.
"Let him go," she pleaded under her breath, "let him go, I gotta find Wanda – "
"Can' let him loose on de worl' like dis, chere, he ain' righ' an' he don' know what he's doin'," Remy answered quickly, moving her so that she stood behind him, her hands clasping his sleeve tightly.
"Johnny-boy, y' sure y' won' stick aroun' here wit' me f' a while? I only jus' got back after all," he said reasonably, and Pyro shook his head, looking for all the world suddenly like a toddler caught doing something naughty.
"Nope!" And he was gone.
"Merde! Rogue, find Wanda, I'll catch him!" Remy yelled over his shoulder, tearing after him, and Rogue nodded and forced herself to run too, up the stairs to Wanda's room, but Freddy was standing in the doorway, talking...
"Wanda, don' be mad, please, it's okay, we'll help you, you'll be okay – "
"They're coming for me Freddy, you can't let them take me back, I won't go back again. And you lied to me too. You all lied to me. I hate liars." Wanda's voice, flat and hard and the way it had been once before, before she'd been tampered with, before the false memories... Rogue's breath choked her, the implications too horrible to contemplate, and she prayed that Freddy was alright, would be alright...
"No, Wanda, I didn't lie to you... We didn't want that to happen to you but we didn't know what to do – how to fix it for you and make you better – we were trying to help you, I'm sorry!"
"I know you've never hurt me Freddy, I know you wouldn't do that. You're the only one, the only one..." Wanda's voice broke, Rogue could hear it, and she saw Fred move slightly, move his arms, heard Wanda sobbing.
"You have to help me Freddy, help me get them, all of them, for doing this to me – tell me if it's real, I don't know what's real anymore, all the nightmares..."
"It's okay, I'll help you, we'll all help you..."
"Not them!" Wanda's voice was a ragged shred of it's former self and Rogue's heart pounded in her ears as she tried to figure out what to do, should she move, should she stay? What had triggered this, how much did Wanda remember?
"We have to tell Rogue and Kitty, they'll help, they're your friends – "
"No!"
"Please, Wanda, they'll help, I promise, and me and Lance and Todd too – "
"Not them!"
"But we want to – we want to fix this for you so you can be happy again..." Fred sounded so upset, so desperate. Rogue's hands were clasped over her mouth, holding back the sobs as she tried to decide on a course of action, tried to find a way out of all this – if Wanda didn't trust them –
BOOM! The explosion rocked the house and she stumbled forward, turning to find the source of it and remembered that she had let Remy chase outside after a madman alone... The rippling blue wave of energy that crackled through her, through everything, made her scream in shock and fear and she looked back and saw Fred backing away from Wanda who was advancing on him, radiating power, hair flying around her face, crying,
"You were all lying to me, all of you! All lying to me, you let them do this to me, you didn't tell me the truth and I trusted you, I loved you and you betrayed me! You all betrayed me! LIARS!" Wanda's feet weren't touching the ground and the raw power pouring off her, out of her, cracked and sparked with sinsister purpose as she raised her arms and shrieked.
The pain that exploded in Rogue's head was indescribable. The hatred, the loneliness, the confusion, the rage, the melée of torrid emotions and broken pieces of memories expanded in her mind until she felt every needle, every twist of metal against her skin, every sear and biting touch of cold, ice cold in her flesh, the agony so overwhelming she felt it tearing at her soul, and it wouldn't stop, it wouldn't stop – she was so young and so afraid and her brother wasn't coming back to save her, wasn't coming back, they didn't love her, no one loved her, no one loved her, they all had to die, all of them, especially him, all of them –
~*************************************************************~
Picking herself off the floor, she wiped her eyes but the tears wouldn't stop and her fingers came away smeared with something else. Blood, thick and partially blackened, already congealing in cakes and she blanched, horrified. She looked around her but the world was still and deathly quiet and all she could see was Fred's enormous body lying prone next to –
"Wanda!" staggering over to her she threw herself down next to the other Goth, turning her, cradling her head in her lap as she tried to wipe away the tears that blurred her vision – if she couldn't see she couldn't help, but it all hurt so much, it hurt, it hurt... Wanda's eyes were closed, her skin drained of all colour and her veins standing out against it a sick, pale blue. Her lips were crimson, as always, but they were sticky and black flecked them in places. She tried to speak to her but she was just crying, sobbing raggedly with the pain, the searing agony of being betrayed, being left, even though she knew now that they weren't her emotions, her memories, shattering against each other in her head.
"Wanda, Wanda, please..."
The Scarlet Witch lay, limp and unmoving over her friend's lap, no rise and fall of her chest indicating that she still breathed, no flutter of lashes over pale cheeks in dreams, nothing to say she still lived at all. Rogue shuddered, unable to stop weeping, unable to do anything except hope and pray that someone was coming to help them, anyone, help us, help us... She felt her conciousness slipping and struggled to hold onto it but it seemed her mind was slick with the agony of betrayal that wasn't hers, shoudn't ever have been anyone's and the pain, all-encompassing pain, just as her fingers were slick with blood, and she fell, falling into nothing where demons lurked, waiting for her, like they always waited for her, except not for her, they weren't hers...
~*************************************************************~
Professor Xavier had known many mutants in his time. He had trained some of the most powerful sentient beings on the face of the earth – was one himself, even – and had come into close contact with some of the most deadly of them all. He had known all kinds of pain, emotional, physical, allowed himself to feel the pain of others on occasion when the situation called for it and heard the call of those in need so often he sometimes had to block them out to have a moment's peace. The only weapon he had in the face of adversity was his mind, and luckily that was no small thing to have on your side, his being one of the most capable minds he knew of in existence. And so when he first felt the projection,he had not been ready for the intensity of it, the sheer crushing force of the emotions, the fears crashing in on him, and he had lost control. He had not been able to contain it, the force being too much, the pain itself being too much for anyone to bear all at once. He had given in, his last thought that he hoped to God it was not affecting anyone else – anyone without the extra-sensory perception he and Jean for example were capable of. Waking, he knew he had been wrong. The aftermath of it lingered, clinging to everything, and reaching out with his mind, painful as it was, he saw that it had affected everyone. Absolutely everyone.
Logan staggered into his office, clutching his head, trails of drying blood leading from his ears and nose and he looked at Charles with a wild expression, an animal in agony, desperate for escape.
"The mansion – all the kids – everyone – " he struggled to say, "Three hours down – everyone, Charles..."
"I know..." He mentally commanded the television set to turn itself on and was unsurprised but alarmed nonetheless to see every channel covering a live send of the President adressing the nation. " - believe that the world-wide phenomenon was caused by mutant behaviour must not be allowed to flourish; we have yet to ascertain the cause of this shocking incident and we ask the nation to remain calm and to put aside your fears and trust in your government to find the answers. For those who are still suffering from side-effects, we advise strongly that you contact a medical professional as soon as possible and remain in a state of rest throughout the remainder of the day. To those families who have suffered casualties among the weak and elderly, we offer our sincerest condolences. My people, we promise you: we will find the cause of this."
"Charles..." Logan's voice brought him back, the screen clicked off, and he tried to focus on the man in front of him. Logan was recovering faster than them, the mental trauma wearing off much quicker, and he was awaiting orders. In times like these, his military side kicked in and he was efficient and clear-headed. It was what had made him such a valuable soldier. It was what made him such an important ally.
"Wanda, we need... Wanda..." Charles managed, and Logan nodded, leaving immediately. Charles laid his head back on the head-rest of his mansion-bound wheelchair and closed his eyes, willing the psychic torture to end. He prayed that they would not be too late.