"A lot seems to have happened since our last meeting, Wisteria. This being only our second session, how have you managed to get in so much trouble?" Xavier seemed to have a hint of amusement in his voice as he spoke lightly, but his eyes betrayed the same concern he had had when he first questioned her about the accident. Her ribs were taped, but healing quickly. The cast on her arm was a hindrance that was almost unbearable. Not that she had gotten much training done in the past few days since her return from the hospital. Her every move was watched more carefully than before...sometimes by those that she thought she had killed long ago.
"Trouble has a knack for finding me." She replied smoothly, keeping the same neutral expression she always held around him. Psychics. Could a promise be trusted by one? Xavier had said that he would not read her mind unless under the most of extreme circumstances, but those eyes were so piercing...she felt them going through her.
"May I see the progress you have made in your notebook?"
"Doesn't that breach our agreement that you won't read it unless I want you to?" Wisteria said skeptically, her black tapered eyebrow lifting subtly.
He chuckled. "Not if you show me where you are. My eyes are failing, as is true of all old men, and your handwriting is so narrow, from what I've seen of it. I doubt I could read it from this distance." He waited as she held up the notebook, one of the fifty page sections gone. He nodded. "Quite a bit. At this rate, you won't be in here long."
"I plan on it."
He tilted his head to the side questioningly, fingertips pressed together in an interrogative manner. "Why do you still mistrust us, Wisteria?"
"What reason have you given me to trust you?"
He smiled, but there was a frown in his eyes. "We've provided shelter for you, free room and board, taken care of you in your times of need, and we want to help you through whatever ordeal you are suffering. We want you to be one of us, Wisteria. What will that take?"
Wisteria considered for a moment, staring at the reflection off the wood of Xavier's desk. "What do I want?..." Her eyes lifted, emeralds boring into him. "What I want, Professor, is a moment free from motives. That will not happen until all of my motives are completed."
Xavier kept his expression as calm as possible. "What are your motives?"
"Vengeance."
It was hard for him not to fight the alarm at the simply put statement. "Against whom?"
Wisteria smiled wickedly. "That's for me to know."
The morning air was quiet, still, cool to the touch. Wisteria savored it as she continued to examine the riddle she had presented to herself some time back...who was Magnus? What was his quarrel with this Charles? She smirked and turned over the hourglass. It didn't matter at the moment. She had more pressing business to attend to.
Three weeks after her escape, she had found the first of her targets in a long list of evils that must be destroyed. The guard in mind had disappeared nearly a year since the beginning of her sentence. And she had found him. A quiet, suburban house in the country, far from the bustle of New York City. Richard Turner. 34, a wife and two children, one child a girl of eight and another a baby boy of two sweet years. Their kitchen was a homemaker's paradise. Beautiful. This wife of his, Eleanor, must be something of a perfectionist. She would find out soon enough, would she not?
The hourglass was turned over yet again. It coincided with an alarm clock up the stairs. The blaring sounds would have woken Wisteria in an instant, and yet one, two, three sounds speed by, and still no footsteps on the stairs...apparently they were still wrapped up in whatever night they had had before. She really didn't need to know...she had arrived only as dawn broke.
Finally she heard footsteps on the stairs and two sleepy voices speaking quietly. As the loving couple came around the bend, wrapped in each others arms, and sharing a fulfilling kiss, Wisteria pulled a face and waited for them to turn. Which they did, gawking at the fact that a green skinned girl was sitting quietly in their kitchen. She flashed them a sweet smile. "Good morning. I apologize for anything I may be interrupting, but I couldn't decide what was a decent time to drop by." She turned the hourglass over again. The sand slipped through the narrow glass tunnel. Finally Richard found his voice.
"If you don't leave immeadiately, I will--"
"Call the police, Richard?" She laughed in a low tone. "Oh, please. Do. We can both be sitting in a jail cell tonight."
Eleanor looked up innocently into her husband's face, fear etched in her features. "What's going on?"
"Oh, so you haven't told her?" Wisteria began shaking her head in a mocking manner. "Secrets in this relationship." She propped her boots up onto the table, leaning back in the hardwood chair and intertwining her fingers, acting as if this was her home, instead of theirs. "Please, be seated."
They seemed shocked, but maybe they could see the determination in her eyes. Maybe they could see that she wasn't leaving, that there was something to be accomplished here. Something dangerous. They sat after a moment or two, and Richard looked at her with a look of fear and recognition. She smiled sweetly, and suddenly there was a gasp from both occupants as vines strong and thick wound around both of their chairs and their bodies, tieing them to the chair. "I want your full attention. And don't worry about the little ones. They will stay asleep for quite a few more hours..."
"What did you do to them?" Eleanor gasped, her eyes a mixture of fear and anger. Richard's face darkened.
"Calm down, Mom. They will be alright. It's only a sedative." Wisteria stood and paced slowly toward the kitchen, opening the refridgerator and pulling out a bottle of champagne. Good thing they had one. It was perfect for the occasion. "In fact, it would be worse for them if they were here to witness this conversation. They're only kids, after all."
Richard started to reply with a classic plea line. "Please, whatever you want, money--"
"I don't want your money, Richard. After all that time we spent together--" Memories flashed before her of his face in a sea of guards, all exploiting her. "--you seem to know very little of my wants and needs."
"I've never met you be--"
"Don't deny our connection, Richard. How much would that hurt me?" She turned and smiled again. "You...um...did tell her about us, didn't you?" Wisteria examined Eleanor's face. "Obviously not. Well, I had better break the ice."
She fingered the cork on the champagne bottle and turned her back on them, not even seeing the kitchen around her, the smile faded from her face. She wasn't even sure if she was speaking loud enough for them to hear. "You disappeared a year before my prison break, Richard. Don't worry, you were replaced. In more than one number.
"Perhaps I should back up for the benefit of your beautiful wife.
"You see, Eleanor, I was the lust meat for your wonderful husband, during what I'm sure was a job you knew nothing of. He worked for a so called benefecial group, "educating" mutants...but I didn't realize the "sex ed" was part of the program. I guess I didn't read the fine print on that kidnapee contract.
"He left about a year and three weeks ago, but you have to realize, I'm only estimating. They didn't give me any other calender besides the usual stimulating daily beatings. Oh, and the times we had together...I guess I don't remember much of the fun of them. Half the time I was partly unconcious, or drugged, or in two much pain for it to be much fun for me...but it must have been, because the actions were repeated often." She turned around to examine the shocked face of the formerly happy wife. "I'm sorry...did I make some startling revelations?" Wisteria shrugged.
"It happens."
Richard seemed to be struggling for his voice. "I quit that job. I realized I couldn't continue it. I'm sorry for your pain, but that's no longer who I am."
"Oh, but that's where you're wrong." Wisteria sighed. "You can't change who you are inside. You can never get rid of that part of you, Richard. That's who you became...just like you turned me into this. You took away something from me. Something important. And, yes, the rape was only a small point of what I'm talking about.
"And since you took something from me, you owe me."
His face was ashen." So what are you going to do?"
She turned and smiled. "I'm going to send you to a higher judge than me." A giant thorn impaled him from behind, and Eleanor screamed as blood trickled down the hole that now showed in his throat. Wisteria thought that the lump she now felt at the trickle of blood would be a sense of overwhelming pleasure at the death of someone who had caused her so much pain, but all she felt was heightened anger, heightened pain, more bloodlust. She pushed the emotions back behind a facade of an emotionless face and popped the cork on the bottle, watching the fix come out of the champagne and filling two glasses. "Now it's time to celebrate."
Eleanor, who before looked flushed and just at fainting's door, smirked. "Absolutely." Wisteria's eyebrow lifted in surprise, but not as much as her eyes widened when Eleanor's skin began to turn a blue color, and the nightgown she was wearing changed into a flowing black skirt with a skull belt and black midriff top. Red hair flowed from the previous blonde, and the woman that she had known to be called Mystique the other night smiled and reached for the glass. Wisteria turned, startled as she heard a slow clapping from behind her, and saw Magnus enter the open kitchen door.
"Bravo..." He said smoothly. "An excellent preformance."
Wisteria had barely begun to step out of the doorway, feeling as though she would rather be anywhere else on the face of the earth...sans one place to where she vowed she would never go again. Xavier had stopped drilling her over her feelings for vengeance after that conversation, but she could still feel it etched into his face, concern for her, for her mental psyche...she was not insane. But she couldn't think of what had made her bring that up. Hadn't she promised herself she would never bring that up?
She was almost out of his office, and he was bidding her goodbye, when she had to stop in the doorway, staring at a chair in the living room where she could see the top of a bloody head, and a thorn piercing the back of the chair where his throat would be. A voice filled the room and mingled with the Professor's.
"I'll see you again next wee--"
"Is this what justice is?"
Wisteria backed up and thought about slamming Xavier's door behind her, but didn't. She was suddenly aware her hands were covered with blood. Fresh blood. There was blood caked dry under her fingernails.
"Wisteria? Is there something else you nedded to talk about? I'm always here if you--"
I can't be seeing this. I can't be seeing this. These people are dead, my hands are clean, it was done in justice, they deserved to die. They asked for it.
Wisteria's breath was laboring and she could tell Xavier had come closer to her, having stopped in mid sentence as he was trying to console her. "Wisteria?" She had closed her eyes, trying to concentrate on her breathing and not on all that she was seeing in front of her, flickering visions that couldn't be real. Yet even when she closed her eyes, the whispers were still there.
MP0013.
"Emotions are a weakness that will kill you in battle once you are sent out to destroy the most evil of your kind. Your race is evil, it must be destroyed, and you are one of the priveledged one who must put the mutants down. To do this, rid yourself of emotions."
"You know right from wrong, Ari. Always do the right thing. Now that you're young and later when you're old."
"The lie of right and wrong has been instilled in you, mutant, but it, like everything else, will be taken away."
I am Arianne Devon.
"You'll be a biological robot."
I've got to break this.
"Terminate them."
Dead eyes mean nothing.
"Your fault."
My fault. Can't be mine...
.:.Wisteria? Can you hear me? Can you...?.:.
As the voices became too much, she thought she heard the Professor's. Then she fainted.