Chapter 10

The Awakening

Lunar-Ninja- Well, despite your murderous intentions, I've gotten this chappie up. Working around the manacles. Do you have any idea how hard it is to type in chains? Thanks for the word 'baka' by the way. Actually beginning to get on quite well with Rainbou who helped beta! ;)

Becca T- You asked for it, here it is. Hehehe

Entropy- (waves hand airily) Nah, quite over the first degree acid burns and getting kinda used to this pretty opera mask... :)

Pacphys- thanks both for the review and the helpful translation of 'baka'! Oh I don't know- it's kinda fun to royally cheese off Leo. I'll sort him out at some point. :)

Jessiy Landroz- Uh, I hope so too! Hope this one helps!

Also thanks to those who reviewed Tarnished Star, cuz I really wasn't sure what sort of reception that'd get!

Funerals. He hated the word. Leo sat and tried not to think about why he was there. He wasn't alone- though he might as well have been for all the notice he took of those around him. He was still wrapped in that sheet of ice, so carefully built around fragile soul, and looking or talking to others might break it. He couldn't let it break- it was holding him together inside. Once the protective shield of ice was gone he would shatter too. So he didn't look around. Didn't feel.

Donnie sat with him too in the courtyard, watching subdued recruits being shouted around a field by a large man wearing a sergeants stripes. He looked at his brother and sighed. Dammit, Leo! No-one is expecting you to be so strong you lose your humanity too! Only you. Raph had joined them. He hadn't spoken to Leo at all. Perhaps he couldn't forgive him for not telling him. For putting April in that awful position. Don sighed again. He couldn't really blame either of them. And anyway, both were blaming themselves enough. Idiots.

The funerals had been earlier. Five funerals. His fists clenched as he remembered the damn political telling them that there wouldn't be an official military funeral for the…the victims. Oh, he'd made a very pretty speech but it was all 'wind and bluster, signifying nothing'. The top and shot of it was that they just wanted to sweep it all under the rug- the failed experiment- and forget it ever happened. Raph had hissed some very uncomplimentary words at the man- in Japanese- including the word baka which would usually have earned him a clonk on the head from his Sensei. However, in this case Don had felt Master Splinter tacitly agreed with him. Small private funerals. Three of the mutants had had no families- no-one outside his place to care if they lived or died, it seemed. So they would be buried here. As would the only other one who'd had family come. He remembered the events of earlier with both tears and a smile or two. Mikey and the others had made more friends then they'd realised…

"Hi…" He felt stupid saying that but he felt he had to say something. The white-haired woman was sitting on a bench outside the room where the…bodies…lay. She was crying, he thought. Not that he could blame her.

"You too..?" she whispered, with a hint of both bitterness and a question in her tone. He sighed and sat down. The tears, never far away, bubbled dangerously near the surface again.

"Storm…" she introduced herself. "My…my ward…Si…" Here, the tears returned.

"I'm sorry…" he whispered back past the lump in his throat. "…My brother, too." He shook his head. "I don't understand…"

"Have you looked outside the gates?" she asked. "They seem to…understand…or at least, they think they do."

"Outside? No, we arrived early this morning- there were a few people, yeah, but not many."

"Protesters. Anti-protesters. Random lunatics. Placards."

"Wish they'd leave us alone. The..the last thing we need is some bloody three ring circus!"

"You heard about the funerals?" she asked suddenly." He nodded, the movement tightly controlled in his anger. "Yeah." he said curtly. "We heard."

"They stopped the…the autopsies…for the same reason." she stated angrily, now staring dry-eyed at the opposite wall. Donnie shuddered.

"Yeah well, that may be the only good thing to come out of this… this bureaucratic crap!" he said. She shrugged. "Perhaps."

They'd decided to have his funeral there as well. With the others. All the rest were staying together so… At first it seemed there would be only a token military presence; as well as the people standing beside the coffins, ready to lower them into the ground was an embarrassed young newbie in the company of a bored looking older man. It was shameful, Donnie seethed. They may not have wanted mutants there in the first place, but this! This was insulting. He realised with a sense like a bucket of cold water down his spine that they didn't care beyond public appearance. They weren't even that important to them. Splinter walked up to the older man. Don could tell that he too was furious. But still he talked in a calm, controlled voice.

"I am sorry. But myself and my family would like privacy to bury my son. As, I am sure, would the family of Siren Rhodes and the other recruits."

The man opened his mouth to reply but before he could there was a yell from not too afar away.

"ATTENT-SHUN! RIGHT- turn! Johnson! Your other right! Now march!" A tall man commanded the attention of all there as he marched into the area followed by a parade of young men and women in dress blues. The recruits?

"HALT!" The NCO walked up to the two families and saluted before ripping off a textbook salute to the previously bored, now shocked and blustering individual.

"Permission for the recruits to attend?" he asked Splinter and Storm kindly, ignoring the surprised posturing of the other man. Splinter looked at the recruits and then at Storm and those with her; other family, he assumed. She nodded and he turned back.

"Permission granted- and thank you." he replied formally.

"Many of the recruits were deeply affected by this…and we will get to the bottom of it. They had friends here. I am sorry for your loss." he added. He then sighed. "Excuse me, sir."

"You can't do this…you had direct orders…" squeaked the little official.

Fields loomed above him, despising every petty little bureaucrat that had tried to bury these fine brave young people figuratively as well as literally.

"Watch me boyo." he hissed. Not military propriety exactly, but he felt it was necessary. "Now, get out of here. You're not fit to be here" He turned without another word.

"If I may." he asked, bowing courteously to Splinter, before turning to face the treeline.

"MALONE! HENRY! KELLY! DARBY! JACKSON! JACKBY! DANIELS! HOLLOWAY! REJOIN RANKS!"

From various different points around the small graveyard the owners of the names came slinking out. Donnie couldn't help but smile slightly- eight people had become friends enough with his brother's team to risk serious trouble and disobey direct orders to come to the funerals.

They gave them a proper military send-off. The Last Post was played and the coffins lowered…

And the silent watchers breathed easier as the family turned away from empty graves, safe under the illusion that it was all over.

Donnie shook his head. He had a…blank spot there.. The coffins must have been lowered, yes? Yeah...of course they had. So why couldn't he remember it happening? He frowned- no, he was just imagining things…after all, it had been and long and horrible day yesterday.

He found Storm and her friends- a man with dark hair and a visor, a quiet but imposing man in a wheelchair, a small woman with red hair and another woman with eyes red from tears and a stripe of white through her dark hair. He thought there was one more too- a big man that stayed away from the others, walking around alone and mainly scowling at people, but he never met him. They didn't say much to each other- there wasn't really much to say- and both parties left that day.
She looked at the others. One looked away, still unsure of what they were about to do. Her husband, ever loyal to her, kept eye-contact though she could feel his doubts too. Only the small woman stared right back at her with no traces of self- doubt or confusion in her eyes- and she was the master of illusions. She turned away from them, back to the wrapped up bundles on the floor. Two days. And five…people…she couldn't bring herself to say 'bodies'- it would make it seem so much the more impossible. No-one had ever tried to do this before and she knew the price could be horrific. But it was a price she was willing to pay if demanded.

It was her fault.

She went to the smallest first and sat cross-legged. She heard footsteps retreating quickly and her face twisted into a small mockery of a smile. She wasn't surprised. The seer had been most reluctant despite-or perhaps because of- what she knew. Then a pair of footsteps slowly behind her. A hand rested itself on her shoulder- then a smaller one on her other shoulder. She smiled gratefully at the two and then turned back to the task at hand. The battle.

She lowered herself into a trance and kept her hands on the sheet in front of her. She would have to follow this one- the pale blonde woman- into death and bring her back.

Dark. It was dark. Rushing water…that which ancient humans had called the Styx- the river over which the souls of the dead went. Sailing would take a day or two, there was still time.

"Where are you?" she whispered. "Glacier? Ganymede Robertson…I've come to take you home. To bring you back. Glacier- your time isn't yet." A misty wraith of a figure. A face appeared, swathed in swirling blonde-white hair. Serene.

"There is no time here…" She began to fade but the woman moved forward to grab her- so slow! It was like moving through molasses.

"Come back Glacier! For the others! Please!" She managed to latch onto the wispy… cloth? Not cloth, not here- but the memory of cloth, and the eyes of the wraith opened in surprise and…fear?.

"NO! No, don't make me remember! No…" she trailed off as the events leading up to her death flashed through her mind.

"It's not too late- you still have a task in life- back there! You can see the gateway, come with me.! She pulled the image with her own mind, feeing her strength waver but the memory of Ganymede Robertson followed her, looking confused.

She struggled, but not wholeheartedly as she reached the gate. The woman stopped and turned to her.

"I can't drag you through wholly unwilling. I won't. Some part of you must want to go back. Will you come?"

"What's there for me? I have no family, nothing to bring me back…" she whispered with her head low.

"You do have a family, Glacier- one that would do anything for you as you would for them. They'll need you. Come with me…"

The wraith stumbled a step ahead, becoming more and more substantial as she fell forward, back through the tunnel.

Reality again. She leaned forward, her hair crystalled with ice and breathed again. The cloth in front of her moved slightly.

"Glacier?" She pulled at the cloth and the half-frozen face was revealed, eyes wide in terror and lips moving in denial. She was too weak to move her limbs but her head twitched from side to side, and her hair made clinking sounds as the ice shattered.

"Glacier! Ganymede! It's okay- you're safe! You're safe!"

The eyes that were turned to her seemed to suggest otherwise as they silently demanded to know why she had done this to her. Accusing, pleading, before closing in exhaustion.

"I'll get her warm. Are you alright, love?"

"Ye…s, yes… I need…a moment"

He wanted to ask was she certain about this- because he sure as hell wasn't. But he knew the greater battles ahead meant that she could not afford to have anything but unwavering support from him. Or she too, could be lost.

"I'll get her warm", the mistress of illusions said quietly, with unreadable eyes. "Stay with her."

He nodded as wearily, his wife rose to kneel beside the man with dark hair whose power meant he could turn to steel.

The mutant with the power to defeat death looked at the last with trepidation. This one would perhaps be the hardest. She had found the others easily enough but never someone so different from her in shape and appearance. If his thought processes were different, he might be impossible to find. Glacier had been the easiest- her relative 'normality' as well as her gender made her the closest to herself. The bird-woman had been harder but again, the fact that she was the same sex as the healer made her not impossible. But the final body was that of one who had not even started off human, as well as being male just to top it off. She swallowed and her husband knelt down beside her.

"Must you do this? Can't you be content with doing what no-one else has ever done? Can't you be satisfied at four?" She was too weary to even raise her head, eyes flat and dull as she spoke.

"I won't abandon this one. He's their leader and they'll need him. At the beginning, he was the one who brought them together. He's the…the glue that holds them as a team. I need to do this."

"Why are you doing this? I know you feel guilty, I do too…but why?"

She shook her head again, momentarily glancing at the door through which the seer had gone. He followed her gaze and sighed.

"You know."

He shook his head, terrified for her but only said in defeat.

"I know…"

"Please…stay with me?"

He put his arms around her and she threw herself into the last- and greatest- battle of all.

You are not welcome here, little one. came a voice from behind her and she turned slowly to face it. If it had felt like moving through molasses earlier, it felt like…glue and treacle now.

"Please…it is just one more…it has to be completed." she whispered.

Why little human? Why must you invade the lands of the dead and disturb their rest?

"Because, it's not their time." she answered.

Why do you think so? Who are you to decide whose time it is? A hand reached out and clasped her chin gently, bringing her face up to meet that of the…person there.

"Who are you?" she asked.

I am the Gatekeeper. Cerberus, if you like.

"But…wasn't he a huge…dog, guarding the gates of Hell?" The creature laughed.

You see what you want to see, little human. And storytellers rarely get anything right.

"Please, will you let me pass? This is the last time I'll enter these gates. It is my fault that these people are dead, and I must bring them back. And they still have a task in that world, else…else I would not pull them out of here."

He looked at her, deep into her eyes and sighed, sadly.

It shall be as you have said. It is the last time you shall pass between these gates. Go… little not-human.

He vanished, leaving her to wonder what she had done.

She came back out of the trance and fell to the floor, unable to move.

"Chrysta!" cried someone, from a distance. She felt someone near her and heard a gasp. She opened her eyes but everything looked different.

"What happened to you, Chrysta? Your…hair and…"

"Her eyes…" whispered someone else.

She could feel her strength returning and struggled to get up. Hands scrabbled to help her but she couldn't feel them. They floated through her as if they had no substance. Or as if she had no substance. She looked at her hair. It was pure white. Her hands came up to feel her face.

"A mirror…please, a mirror." she whispered. Footsteps retreated and returned. She held up the polished glass to her face.

"Where…where am I?" she asked. She had no reflection.

"We shouldn't have done this!" cried her husband in self-recrimination, still unable to touch her. He spun to face the seer who had returned and looked sadly at them.

"You! This is your fault! You…you knew, didn't you?" he finished, eyes narrowing. He turned away, feeling sick at what they'd done, his eyes drawn back to her.

She was ethereal, not quite solid anymore. Her hair, which before had been dark and of a medium length, now swirled in a non-existent wind, white and feathery. Her skin was pale and her eyes… like the ice that had coated her when she returned five times from that place.

"It is her punishment for daring to do what no human should." came a voice from behind them. The one who'd run away at the beginning. The mind-reader, the seer. She was having a vision. "You told him "This is the last time I'll enter these gates." It has been granted. As your reward. As your punishment. You are Sidhe. Immortal. You have no place here but none there now either."

"What…what must I do?" she asked, ghostly tears on her cheeks as she looked desperately at her former friend. And at her husband who she couldn't touch.

"I cannot tell you. Only you can decide what you will do with your immortality. Go. Leave this place. Enter the world and make your decisions."

The witch sank to the floor and with a terrible scream, the faerie that had once been Chrysta, a mutant who had defeatd death five times,rose up into the air and disappeared, banished to roam the earth until the end of the world, leaving behind five confused, terrified souls, trapped back in their bodies.

The last, who hadn't woken up during the exchange, now stirred. White eyes opened wide in fear as the memories flashed through his mind, woken by the banshee screech.

Talking, laughing, crash, explosions, painfearscreamsPAIN!

Like his team, Michelangelo Hamato was back.

Confused yet? Don' t worry, that was the last of the really weird chapters, I think. Bear with me! And please review, even if it's just to go 'huh?'

Notes for the terminally confused:

(Janet) Holloway, (Kate) Darby and (Leah) Jackson were the three women that Siren and Glacier joined up with after Siren was attacked.

Daniels was the young guy sent for help when Malone was attacked. He met up with Mikey and Steel on his way to Fields' office.

Kelly was the guy that Mikey was training against and part of the gang before they split up to go to the bus/train stations when on leave.

Cerberus- Greek guardian of the gates of hell. For the purposes of this sfic, he guards the River and the Gates to the Afterlife.

Styx- Greek again. One of the rivers over which the souls of the dead had to pass.