Note: Okay, a bit later than I wanted to post this, but it's up now. I suspect posting will be haphazard through the holidays and settle down again after the new year. There's still a ways to go with the story.

Thanks to all for being patient for the next installment and for the comments. I always love to read what you all have to say.

Chapter Twelve

Scott had a too much time to think on the drive down to White Plains, and thinking was the last thing he wanted. Rogue's plea -- we need you more than her -- joined Logan's challenge that they were all in trouble. Beneath those accusations lay the poisonous truth of his failures. He'd failed the team and the school when he let grief over Jean give The Eater access to his soul. And since then, he'd failed to even notice the rising threats from Magneto and this damned cure. His whole focus had been saving Jean.

In the front seat of the Bentley, Hank and Ororo chatted about present dangers and future fears in that false-friendly way they'd had with each other since Hank left to work in government. The tone grated on Scott's ears almost as much as the pessimism that lurked beneath their words. He knew too well if they gave in to despair the fight was over before it started.

Scott tried staring at the back of Ororo's head. She twitched after a few moments and brushed her hand against her hair as if trying to dislodge a bug, but she didn't connect the tickle with Scott's optic blasts the way Logan had. Trying the same with Hank yielded the same result. After a few miles, he turned to the passing scenery instead.

Green gave way to gray and brown as they approached the city, but Scott wasn't really paying attention to the transition from country to city. Rogue's words -- We need you -- plagued him, and with them the look she'd given him at that moment. In his mind, he replayed the feel of her cheek against his chest, the turning of her head so her hair brushed his skin, and the widening of her eyes as she looked up at him. We need you. More than Jean needs you.

She meant the team. Like Logan, she'd been warning him of Ororo's indecisiveness and the whole group's lack of direction. She'd been pleading for a leader. Scott pressed his hands against his eyes until he felt the beat of his power against his fingertips.

Familiar, strong, the pulse of the blasts calmed his mind. He'd never been able to explain how he felt about his mutation, not even to Jean, not even to the professor. Everyone expected him to hate it, or fear it. The truth was, he liked it.

The blasts were proof he had control. Even before he came to Xavier's, in those months he when was alone and blind, he'd controlled his life. He hadn't destroyed city blocks, after all. He hadn't killed people. He could have -- by accident, in anger, out of fear, or to warn off danger. But he didn't. He'd always managed to hold true to what he wanted to be despite this explosive, uncontrollable force inside. He'd even managed to break Stryker's conditioning before it was too late, though that had been a struggle.

All he had to remember was to keep fighting until he won a way through. There was a way to beat The Eater, and Magneto, and deal with the cure. Despite his folded state and Ororo's inability to lead without him they could still win. Anything could be conquered with determination

More than a block from the White Plains clinic a police barricade stopped them. Ororo and Hank got out to argue with the police. Scott twisted in the back seat until he found the angle where the doors of the Bentley appeared to come apart. Then, just like he could with the doors at the mansion, he slipped through the cracks and headed toward the clinic on his own. Being invisible had its advantages. The police couldn't stop what they couldn't see.

The oily, clinging stench of the fire, hit him while he was still on the sidewalk. All scents had been dulled since he entered this folded state, but the clinic reeked full force on Scott's plane of existence. The building was an open wound, raw with a silent, palpable pain. It was the throb of psychic distress, a feeling all too familiar to Scott since Jean's death.

That stopped him. Anything could be conquered with determination, except death. Against death there was no victory. He'd known that with Jean, and the realization was what threw him into grief. Now he faced the same hard truth. If Rogue had been in the clinic when it exploded, she was beyond any effort. That thought made his stomach churn.

Scott picked his way carefully over the sparkle of shattered window glass, past mounds that had once been desks, chairs, tables. The general layout of the clinic remained visible despite the chaos. It had been one big room divided into treatment cubicles in the back by rolling screens. The patients had waited in a row of folding chairs to the left. The administrators oversaw everything from desks to the right.

Simple, efficient, but transitory, Scott thought. No one intended this clinic to be open for long. Either they knew all the mutants who wanted cures would arrive in the first few weeks, or there were different administration plans for after the volunteer lines dried up.

He hadn't gone far before he found the first body lying partly hidden beneath a half-melted desk. The few places were the skin was still pink provided the only real hint that the figure had once been living. Otherwise, it looked like a melted doll. Scott knelt closer, fighting his gag reflex. He or she had been a worker. The remnants of a smock and deformed plastic badge made that clear. Not Rogue. He breathed a little easier.

Nearby, rested a young patient. Her body was covered with small horns the size of Scott's thumb. He supposed the desire for beauty brought this girl to the clinic. But why had Rogue chosen this course? What did she think was so wrong with her? He considered the brief time they'd spent together in his room. Rogue had been agitated, and he'd ignored the fact. If he'd been less focused on Jean, if he'd asked her more questions, would she have stayed safe at the mansion? He remembered her words -- We need you more than we need her.

We need you. Had she meant I need you? Had he been too absorbed in his own goals -- in Jean -- to notice? He had to force his jaw muscles to relax. His teeth were grinding. Don't think anymore, just look. Prove she's not here.

Gruesome as the search was, he had to check every body. He had to know. Most were too burned for easy identification, but there were always telltale signs if he studied closely -- a bit of cloth that could have been a coat or scarf, a strand of hair protected from the flames. He knew Rogue's green coat, the long scarf she wore. He suspected the metallic strands in her long hair would leave traces as well. Each corpse was a stranger. Rogue wasn't here.

That realization relieved a good deal of his tension. He squatted amid the debris, covered his face with his hands. The unshielded blasts beat against his palms. She wasn't gone, wasn't lost like Jean. He couldn't look at why that knowledge made him tremble. He simply allowed his body shake loose the unwanted emotions.

Behind him, he heard Ororo's voice as she and Hank entered the building. Scott straightened and had begun brushing fine soot off his trousers when movement startled him. A figure, unnaturally pale against the shadows at the back of the room, crept from behind a ruined screen. It was the girl he'd seen lying dead by the first worker's corpse. The horns lining her arms below ragged T-shirt sleeves shimmered like opal. She stared right at him.

She was dead, wasn't she? He didn't believe in ghosts, but who knew what passed for reality in the plane where he was now trapped? And, beyond that, he didn't know what her mutant powers had been.

"Don't hurt me, demon." Her voice trembled.

She saw him? Scott took a few steps closer, still wary. "I'm not a demon. Just a man."

"Your eyes."

Scott instantly diverted his gaze and narrowed his eyes. "Does it hurt you?"

"No." She still sounded frightened but hadn't run. "I can't feel anymore. But, they aren't human."

"Mutant, like you." He looked at her again. This time she didn't flinch.

"Not like me. Your eyes just glow. You aren't ugly."

"You're not ugly," he said out of habit rather than honesty. The horns distorted the shape of her limbs. Smaller spikes pulled her cheeks so taut that her lips stretched back from her gums. She was ugly, but Scott didn't like that she was so sad about it.

"Don't lie."

"Are you a telepath too?" To be hideous and know every time someone recoiled inwardly would be its own particular hell.

"Don't have to be." She clenched her teeth and looked at him with more courage. "I wasn't supposed to be like this forever. They were supposed to make it go away. But, they were so slow, and now I'm dead and have to go to heaven ugly."

Scott had no idea how to comfort the girl, or whether she even wanted comfort. He could only think how glad he was to not be encountering Rogue in this way. "You know you are dead?"

"Everyone knows when they are dead." She reached out and touched his shoulder. Her hand felt solid enough yet didn't have the extreme weight he'd come to associate with real matter. Like him, she had little or no mass. "You're right. No demon but also not dead. Why are you here?"

He didn't want to ask, didn't want his prior conclusions contradicted. Still, if she had information, he had to know. "I'm looking for someone, a young woman with a metallic white streak in her hair. She would have been wearing a long, green coat."

"Everyone else who died went on. We aren't supposed to stay in this place. I've been fighting the pull because I hoped the ugliness would vanish after all." He rubbed the hard ridges along her arms. "I don't remember anyone like you describe."

"She wasn't here." Scott had to believe that was true. He hadn't found Rogue among the corpses. The dead girl hadn't seen her. "She went somewhere else."

"I hope you find her." She looked ready to say more, but then her eyes focused over Scott's shoulder.

"If Rogue's here we'll not find her alone." Hank McCoy's voice sounded very close. Scott turned to see Hank knelling next to one of the bodies. "We'll have to check the hospitals later."

Hospitals? Scott hadn't thought of injury. He felt as if a fist suddenly squeezed his lungs. Now. We have to go now. The source of that panic was another emotion he didn't want to explore.

Ororo stepped closer and put her hands on her hips. "We'd best go get Bobby Drake out of jail then. Do you think you can get the authorities to release him?"

Scott had nearly forgotten Drake was part of this. Of course, they needed to get the Iceman first. He might even have more information for them. Scott watched Ororo and Hank head for the exit. He knew he had to hurry if he was going to keep his ride. But, he couldn't just leave the girl.

He turned back. The horned girl had already vanished.

-----

The Mutant Outreach Shelter -- the place looked as starkly functional as its name. Marie followed Irene into the converted warehouse silently. No one on the bus had talked for the last half-hour or so. Maybe the others were trying to store up their courage for when the clinic reopened, or maybe they were all just tired. At the door, a young man took her name and handed her a blanket. That was about it for a welcome.

The warehouse had been divided into a maze of cells, each large enough for a pair of cots and a chest. Some of the walls were frame and drywall. Others were formed by office-style partitions. Long florescent lights hung from the rafters on chains, adding to the inhospitable atmosphere. At least I don't have to stay more than a night or two, Marie thought. She pitied those who made this a permanent home.

"It's dry and the administrators toss out anyone who steals," Irene said as they reached her tiny niche. The room didn't have a door, only a blanket hung on a clothesline to cover the opening. The walls here were cinder block.

"It could be worse." And I thought Logan's trailer looked crappy. That trip through the Canadian countryside seemed a lifetime ago. Had she even been the same person back then? Marie didn't think so. She managed a weak smile as she arranged her blanket on the cot opposite Irene's, then took off her long coat. "You were going to tell me what you saw in my future."

"Don't be so eager. It's not pretty." The woman pulled off her jacket and hat revealing stick-thin arms. Her collarbone protruded like a ledge from her chest above the scoop neck of her sweater. Marie wondered if it was deprivation or self-loathing that made Irene starve herself so. She grew more eager to extract herself from this situation by the minute.

"I didn't think it was going to be pretty. But, if you tell me my future I can figure out if I'm doing what's right or not."

"About taking the cure?" Irene reached across the narrow space between the cots and took Marie's hands. Her dark eyes narrowed and took on an fierceness that made Marie uneasy. "It's right. It's right for all of us."

"Nothing is right for everyone."

"The cure is. It's salvation from an otherwise inevitable Armageddon."

Marie stared at the bony fingers clutching hers. Irene's nails were chewed to the quick, the fingertips too pink and raw. Those fingers pressed into her own hands, and Marie was grateful for the barrier of her gloves between her skin and Irene's. The woman was a zealot. She couldn't have anything of value to say. Still, was it smart to run from an insane woman when you had no safe place of escape? Better to stay in the shelter where other people were less than a shout away.

"You think I'm insane," Irene said without malice. "I'm not. I've seen the coming holocaust over and over for years. Every time I touch a mutant, I see it."

"Is that what you saw when you touched me?"

"No." Irene looked confused about that. "It's been changing. Eighteen months ago I was certain it couldn't be stopped. I even thought I could pinpoint the day when it was going to begin. Then, the visions shifted. The atrocities were pushed back and there seemed to be a slim hope of avoiding them altogether. I didn't understand until they announced the cure. Now it makes sense. If there are no mutants left, we can't burn the world."

Marie picked her way through that slowly, as if it were a minefield. Irene being insane did not mean her power wasn't real, and accurate. "So, the future can be changed. Whatever you see, it's not guaranteed to happen."

"People are too selfish to make the sacrifices needed to change the future." Irene released Marie's hands and covered her own face. "I see and see and even when it changes it doesn't go away. We put off the day it begins. Where it starts varies. But, it never goes away."

Go. Run. Marie wanted to obey those inward commands, but she stayed on the cot. Insane or not, Irene might be seeing the real future? Shouldn't she learn as much detail as she could about the end of the world so she had a better chance of stopping it? Or at least so she could tell those who could stop it? "What's coming? Tell me. I want to know."

"Fire, earthquakes, floods." The woman moaned a little as if the words hurt to say. "Chaos. Murder without cause or explanation. It's like we all go crazy one day and decide the only thing that matters is pain and death."

"Mutants do this?" Marie thought about Storm, and Logan, and the other good people she knew at the school. They were not going to suddenly participate in that sort of destruction. "What about the ones who don't want to kill?"

"There are none." Irene fastened that fanatic's stare on her again. "None."

"You said your vision for me didn't include that sort of insanity," Marie pointed out. "So it isn't every mutant. It can't be."

"You don't understand. I'm not explaining properly. The truth is in the visions I've gotten from the mutants I do see destroying the world. They know it's all mutants. They show me that truth."

Marie pulled her legs up onto the cot and curled away from Irene. She wanted to get the cure and go home. She wanted to start living a normal, if boring, life and forget about saving the world. But, if what Irene told her was true, she had an obligation to try to stop it. Didn't she? "I should go back."

"No. No, you shouldn't." Irene crawled into the cot with her, crowding her against the cinderblock wall. "You have to take the cure along with the rest of us here. Don't you see? Mutants use their powers to destroy the world. The only way to stop it is for none of us to have those powers."

"And what about those of us who would stop the destruction? If we're taking the cure, we're fulfilling your visions rather than stopping them."

"It's not like that, Marie." Irene grabbed her shoulders, sharp fingers pressing into her flesh through all the protective layers of cloth. "You think you are going to be a hero, but you won't. I saw what will happen. In my vision, you hadn't taken the cure."

-----

I got it already, Bobby thought as the Mutant Affairs Secretary guided him out of the police station. I'm an irresponsible idiot. You can stop lecturing me.

"Sometimes the choices others make seem so egregious to us that we feel we simply must take action, but --"

"You brought the Bentley?"

McCoy blinked in surprise. "The tank was full."

Thank god for cars. They were great conversation turners. Still, McCoy squeezed his shoulder, and Bobby took that to mean the lecture was only delayed, not forgotten. He suspected that the ride back to Westchester would be more torturous than the hours he'd just spent in jail.

Storm sat behind the wheel. She folded her cell phone as she turned. "None of the hospitals have Rogue as a patient."

"Then, given our findings at the clinic, we have to assume she never went there at all." McCoy held the rear door for Bobby. "Where was she going?"

So, my whole effort was pointless, he thought as he crawled into the car. All he'd managed to do was get his name linked with Magneto's terrorists. Meanwhile, Rogue had thoroughly slipped away from him, probably still fuming about the stupidity with Kitty. He felt like a fool and worse.

"I asked, what made you think Rogue was going to White Plains?" McCoy repeated himself twice before Bobby realized the question was pointed at him.

"Peter just said she took off. She's never been happy about not being able to control her powers and she was interested in the cure. I made an assumption, that's all."

"No reason to believe she's in danger then." McCoy dismissed Rogue without even using any big words. Bobby would have liked to punch him, but there was probably some law against hitting cabinet members. Instead, he slouched into the leather upholstery, and rubbed his wrists.

The car's interior smelled burnt and when Bobby ran a finger over the glassy surface of the center console, he felt grit. The tip came up black. The smell he could attribute to Storm and McCoy's visit to the bombed clinic, but neither of them had been sitting in back to shake the black dust over everything.

"We need to concentrate on Magneto and what danger he might pose to the school," McCoy continued.

Bobby wanted to argue, but there was no point. Besides, the soot scattered across the seat beside him was really strange. The pattern suggested someone was actually sitting there.

"You don't think he'd attack us, do you?" Storm asked.

Bobby started to stretch his hand across to the other seat when he noticed that the center console was now clear. It had been coated with black a moment earlier, his finger streak clearly visible. Now, the dust had all pushed to one side. That couldn't be the movement of the car. The Bentley road too smoothly. Something else had moved the fine coating of soot.

"I think we have to be ready for Magneto to do anything," McCoy answered.

"Guys?" Bobby stared at the console. Another layer of soot appeared on the surface. And this a series of small puffs cleared a pattern of dots in the coating.

"What is it?" Storm sounded irritated. But, then she'd sounded that way a lot recently.

"I don't think I'm alone back here."

-----

Marie wanted to run. She wanted to throw Irene across the cubicle, or scream in her face. Caged, that's how she felt. Trapped. Irene pressed too close, both bodily and with her fanatical beliefs. It was all too much like being chained to Magneto's machine. Marie felt her whole body begin to tremble.

From all around the shelter, she heard the muffled sounds of despair -- soft, choked cries and rasped, desperate laughter. Everyone here was running scared. They admitted their terror and cried, or tried to hide in fake amusement. And I'm fitting right in, Marie thought as she flinched farther from Irene's intrusion. I'm running from everything including a skinny woman I could probably collapse with one punch. Escape, fear, failure, when did those things come to define me?

Back at home, only a few years ago, she'd been a different person. Other girls, if they imagined a vacation, thought about shopping in Paris or sunning on a beach in Cancun. She'd dreamed hitchhiking alone across Canada. She'd been fearless, bold. But, adventure had brought her too close to death. That brave girl had died, twisted in the plot of a madman on Liberty Island.

"Don't you want to know what I saw in your future?" Irene coaxed.

No. I don't. Marie wanted to forget failure and fear. She wanted to go back to her parents and live a safe, happy life. And yet, if Irene's vision of the future was true, there was no safe, happy life for anyone, was there? "Tell me."

Irene was shorter than Marie, and a good deal thinner. Still, she took an a motherly pose, leaning her back against the cider blocks and draping an arm around Marie, stroking her hair. "You will be outside in a forest, at night. The air will be cool but not cold. Early fall, perhaps."

"So a near future?" Marie fought the pressure of Irene's hand against the side of her skull that was forcing her head to the woman's shoulder.

"Probably only a few months away. You still have your powers. You made a mistake and didn't take the cure." The pressure eased, as Irene gave up trying to pull Marie's head down. She continued to stroke her hair.

"How do you know that?"

"I see visions from inside the other person's head. So, I know you will be thinking your powers make you a target. You fear being killed because of them. You also hate that the powers or useless to save anyone, most of all the one you love. Also, you are wearing your long gloves, your scarf -- your armor."

"So that's it? I'm afraid and I still have my powers?" It sounded particularly convenient for Irene's argument that the vision showed her afraid because she apparently didn't take the cure.

"Oh, no." Irene patted her shoulder. "Much more."

Marie shifted out of the precog's grasp. She didn't want the comfort Irene offered. It trapped her, obligated her. "I don't like to be touched."

"You're afraid to be touched. But, you want it. You long for it. You miss your lover."

"I think I've heard enough." Marie did not want Irene knowing her secrets -- how she touched herself, how she wanted it to be real so much that invented someone who could touch her.

"You will leave him," Irene said. "When you run into the woods, you will be abandoning him. You know you've doomed him to become a monster. I saw that pain in you, too."

"Abandon who?" Marie paused.

"The man you love."

I don't love anyone, Marie thought. Unless Irene meant Bobby. He was, technically, still her boyfriend. "Bobby?"

"I suppose. All I know is that you will sit in this forest before a campfire thinking how hollow you feel inside. Your mind cries because you love him and will never see him again. And you will never be able to explain to him why you ran away with another man."

This time, Marie just stared at her. If she kept her powers, she would abandon someone she loved to run off into the woods with another man? That vision made no sense at all.

"Him I see clearly because he's with you. A big man with dark, wild hair. He smokes cigars."

"That's Logan," Marie blurted. "Why am I running away with Logan?"

"Because if you don't, you'll die. Neither of you can fight what drove you out of your home."

-----

It had taken Scott several tries before he could focus his blasts between his fingers with enough precision to write a crude message in the soot that covered the Bentley's backseat console. Once Bobby noticed, however, things had developed rapidly. Scott had run out of dirt to push around all too quickly, but by then Ororo and Hank had accepted his presence was real.

Once they arrived at the mansion, Hank worked out an improved communication system. He set up a metal sheet with a small hole in the center for Scott to focus his blasts through. On the other side, they clipped a pressure sensitive plate that moved slowly, right to left and then down, like paper in a printer. It was slow going, but with a bit of timed blinking, Scott could type out a message in Morse code.

He could finally get people working on a solution to the many challenges they faced. Hank was now in contact with the government, preparing for a coordinated effort should it come to battle. Ororo orchestrated the students in a search of every Internet site where they might find hints of how and where Magneto was recruiting his army. Peter had called already every cure clinic within a day's travel of Westchester, looking for Rogue, and learned they were all closed following the terrorist attack.

Scott decided he could finally stop giving orders long enough to rest his eyes. He sank into a chair and surveyed his efforts. They'd yet to uncover any useful information about Magneto, but the buzz of activity soothed. He allowed his eyelids to drift closed. He was back in command, doing his job. No longer helpless.

He should be happy, or at least satisfied. And yet, he couldn't help feeling he should have continued the search for Rogue personally.

There were a hundred reasons why he couldn't do that, all very rational, very logical. And that mattered, didn't it? The power beat against his eyelids, a steady throb in rhythm with his heart. Why had he never noticed that particular synergy before?

All around him people worked because he'd managed to give them direction when no one else would. Or could. He'd failed these people badly when he forgot them for Jean. But, he'd learned that lesson. And lessons learned had to stay learned. Didn't they? Hell, even Rogue would tell him they need you. She would want him to do his job.

Besides, she'd chosen to go. She had a right to cure herself if that's what she really wanted. There was no reason to believe she was in danger, or wanted to come home.

He was doing the right thing. He still felt he was failing her.