"The Dividing Line"
Chapter Seven: "The Grandest Accusation"
Rogue's consciousness, after what seemed to all assembled like an eternity of weeping, slipped and she went limp in Scott's arms. Taking his cue, Charles moved his wheelchair over to them. Once by their side, he reached into his jacket's side pocket to retrieve a small, black, circular object. He reached down and placed it onto Rogue's forehead. A small clink and the device clung to her skin. Its center started to blink red.
"What's that?" Scott asked, "The fuck did you just do!?"
"It's a neuro-suppressor that Hank was kind enough to reverse engineer from the ones X23 had left behind. Without the explosive charge, of course. And before you ask, Scott, yes, there is one for every one of us, including myself, at the Institute."
Scott clenched his teeth to keep himself from talking.
"But for now, we must get out of the Academy."
"Why? So we can go back to being your guinea pigs?"
"This is hardly the time, Scott." Charles said, "We're not safe here. Emma Frost can recover any second-"
Scott cast a glance in her direction and chuckled.
"I doubt that."
"Either case, we need to go."
"Tell me why, and I'll go without a word. Hell, you can strap me to a table and vivisect me for all I care."
Charles sighed. Temper, temper.
"Emma Frost is responsible for what just transpired, for reasons that would take too much time to explain here, time we do not have."
Kitty, still holding her nose and the sleeves of her pink sweater stained with blood, came over, followed closely by Kurt, whose tail was swishing back and forth nervously.
"Kitty!" Kurt gasped, seeing the spike running through her forearm, "What... are you okay?"
"Dvv I lvvk ovky!?"
"I can take care of that."
"Hvv?"
Kurt wrapped his fingers around the spike. He closed his eyes and ported, taking it with him. Kitty screamed into her sweater's sleeve. When Kurt returned, he saw that she was bleeding steadily. Kitty held her arm up, and close to her chest. Kurt put one arm around her and held her close.
Jean was the last to join them, dragging her feet and eye-contacting the ground. She was silent.
"Kurt, would it be possible for you to teleport us all?" Charles asked.
Kurt scratched his head.
"Maybe. I've never tried it with zhis many people before."
"Well, try." Scott said, "Get us outta here."
"Alright, everybody, hold on!" Kurt said, turning around and presenting his tail.
Scott kept one arm wrapped around Rogue and grabbed the tail. The others reached out and got a hold of it also. Kurt took a few deep breaths, clenched his teeth, and BAMF.
It took three consecutive 'ports to get them to the helipad by the basketball court. One of the X-Jets was waiting for them... one of the X-Jets and a motorcycle right in front of it, with a burly man in a cowboy hat leaning against it, smoking a cigar.
"Logan..?" Scott could manage.
"Hey there, Slim." Logan's eyes drifted to the unconscious Rogue, held up only by Scott's support, "Ah, hell. Everything went ta shit while I was gone, didn't it?"
"Nnn a hnnd bskt." Kitty managed.
"How did you find us?" Charles asked.
"I was comin' ta check up on these two," Logan said, cocking his head towards Scott and Rogue, "On the way, I saw the storm. Figgered it'd be nothing good. When I got to the campus entrance, it was gone. I picked up the scent of the jet fuel and thought I'd wait here. Somebody was gonna come back for this thing sometime."
"Zhat is all vell and good, can we go nov?" Kurt asked.
"After you." Logan said.
Charles and Kurt went in first and immediately moved to the cockpit and began to warm up the jet. Kitty stumbled in, followed by Scott, who was dragging along an unconscious Rogue. Logan and his precious bike got in last. The side hatch closed behind Logan and the sound of the engines spooling up filled the interior of the jet. Before long, they were rising into the air. Charles waited until the jet rotated to find its course, and when they started to fly out, he gave Kurt the controls. Charles sighed as he turned his wheelchair around. This wasn't going to be easy.
Back in the passenger section, Logan was bandaging up Kitty's arm, unable to do anything about her nose. Charles saw that her nose would need some work done to resemble what it used to be like. A little ways from them, Jean was sitting, looking out the window. Charles sensed that she just wanted to be left to her thoughts, so he passed her by.
In the back, Scott was cradling Rogue in his arms. Upon seeing Charles approach, his head darted up. Charles thought that for a second, he could see his visors pulse with red.
"Talk." Scott said.
"Scott, please, be civil. This is not my fault."
"None of this would have happened if it wasn't for your stupid experiments." Scott said, "None of it. So, no. It is your fault."
"In a larger sense, perhaps it is." Charles said, "But the shortcomings of my conduct notwithstanding, the current situation isn't my doing."
"You said it was Emma Frost."
"I shoulda known..." Logan said, "Got a bit blindsided."
"What?" Scott asked.
"I got you on the track, remember? Got you face time with her?"
"What has that got to do with anything?"
"Well, she had this... reputation. That she'd never do nothin', unless she got something out of it. But I figured that was just green-eyed beasts flappin' jaws. She's done me a shitload of favors and never asked for nothin' in return."
"Ah." Charles said, "But of course. Adamantium can easily cut through diamond, and your mind is inaccessible to all but the most focused telepathy. She wouldn't dare."
"'suppose that's true."
"What did Emma Frost get out of admitting me and Rogue?" Scott asked.
"Access to Rogue." Charles said, "Which brings me to something that at first will appear entirely unrelated."
"Nobody, including myself, is supposed to know about this, but I had an identical twin sister. Cassandra." Charles said, "I wasn't even aware of her existence until a strange spell sent me into my unconscious mind, to discover some things that would be impossible to remember, were I not a telepath. There, I discovered that I had shared my mother's womb with another entity, identical to me in every respect but her sex... well, that, and her inclinations."
Scott raised an eyebrow.
"She whispered to our mother that she would have a daughter, that she would love her daughter more than her useless son, constantly vying for her favor, trying to convince her through subconscious suggestion that her son was worthless. Can you imagine how cruel that is? A mother loves her children equally, and for one of them try and twist her will to..." Charles sighed, "Anyway. Cassandra was... malevolent. Through my connection with her, I could sense her diabolical thoughts, her monstrous intents. I couldn't do something as vile as killing her, so I did what I thought was necessary to contain her – I absorbed her into myself and made myself an only child, born from twins."
Scott didn't know if he should be disgusted or just curious.
"I thought that Cassandra's existence had ended then. I was wrong. She had remained in my mind, festering, nurturing my worst thoughts, my pitfalls. I have recently become aware that some of my actions, though stemming from my own choices, intents and needs, might not have always been my own."
"What does that have to do with any of this?"
"Do you remember the night when Rogue found the Xavier Files?"
"I'll never forget."
"Not the point. Didn't you ever wonder how she knew where they were, let alone how to access them?"
"Wasn't there a passcode or somethin'?" Logan asked.
"Known only to myself, yes." Charles replied.
"Maybe one of the times she touched you-" Scott began.
"She's never come to skin-to-skin contact with me, Scott. Never."
Scott took a deep breath.
"So you're saying that it was Cassandra who did this?"
"There is more to this than any of us know." Charles said, "Half an hour ago, Emma Frost began the process with me, and reached into Rogue's mind. But after we gained acccess to her subconscious, she broke the connection and reached into my mind, searching, frantically, for something. I lost control. I severed the connection, but that was after we had allowed the echoes to bubble to the surface... I cannot be absolutely certain, of course, but if I were to guess, I would say that Emma Frost was looking for Cassandra."
"What would she do with her?"
"I don't know. But whatever it is, it can't be good."
Scott took a moment to process all of this. As his mind worked it into his conscious thoughts, a question emerged. Charles turned his wheelchair around to return to the cockpit, but he was stopped by Scott asking the question.
"What about the dreams?"
Charles turned.
"Dreams?" he asked.
"Yeah, the recurring dreams everybody and their mother's been having." Scott said, "You know, the same stupid dream where everyone just sits down and has a nice conversation about mutations, powers, everything else under the sun?"
"Oh, those." Charles said, rubbing his temples, "Yes, I am responsible for those."
"Was there any point at which you thought fucking with our heads might have been a bad idea, or just so incredibly immoral? Or was it always that you being a telepath gave you the right?"
"Kid's got a point, Chuck." Logan said, "His choice of words is fuckin' terrible, but he's got a point."
"I vuddn't shay thaht." Kitty said, "Maybhe he hnhas a ghnnd ennxplanatnn?"
"Well?" Logan said.
"The dreams are a psychodrama." Charles said, "They are for your benefit."
"And how's that?" Logan asked.
"The people appearing the opposite of the dreamer are avatars. By design, these avatars are people that the dreamer trusts, loves and cares for. The intent of this is for the dreamers to make an attempt at coming to terms with their mutation. I found that even the most well-adjusted mutants are somewhat at odds with what they are, so I simply implanted the suggestion that maybe it should be discussed at a subconscious level."
"So they're sort of an... unconscious crash-course as to how we can suck it up and deal with it."
"Scott, I understand your animosity, and I understand your reasons for it, but you shouldn't ask questions only to take issue with the answers, regardless of what they are."
"Look at her." Scott snarled, cocking his head down to point at Rogue, "Just look. This is what you allowed to happen. This is what you did on your spare time. This is your scientific endeavor! The culmination of your efforts is right here, professor."
"I will help her however I can."
"I'm only agreeing with this because there is nobody else. I don't trust you. I don't think I ever will, again."
"I will just have to earn your trust, then." Charles said.
Logan chuckled.
In the end, he had kept coming back because Charlie Xavier had a tendency to off on one or four every once in a while, but when cornered, he didn't weasel out. Whatever it was, was whatever it was, and that was that.
His smile faded when Rogue turned slightly and let out a soft murmur. He didn't know if the others had heard, but he had.
Let go...
Logan went to his bike and found his knapsack. He dug into it, sifting through what would become laundry once they got back to the mansion, and found what he was looking for. He went up to Charles, who was supervising a very adept Nightcrawler.
"Chuck, been meanin' to give this to you."
Charles' eyes grew wide with surprise. Held in Logan's hand was a dark grey disk drive, the one Scott had taken out of Cerebro. The Xavier Files.
"This is..."
"Had a little run-in with one of your old college buddies." Logan said as Charles took the disk, "You'll remember him. Tall, dark and insane. Goes by the name of Essex."
Charles' face contorted into an expression of pure shock.
"Essex? Nathaniel Essex?"
"That's the one. After what went down, I figured, the best place for that there disk is with you."
"There aren't words to express how thankful I am for this."
"Don't thank me, Charles. I still think what you did, Cassandra or no, was low. It was low. If you experiment on your own kind without their consent, how will you say no when the rest of them propose the same thing? How different are you from them Weapon X fucks? You won't be able to. So, here's lookin at you, Chuck."
"I don't expect you to be unaffected by this." Charles said.
"Better not. I'll be stayin', by the way. As an instructor. The Institute's the only thing close to a home that I've known, and the kids need someone to stare 'em down at times. Knock 'em down a few notches."
Charles couldn't help but smile.
Scott, cradling Rogue in his arms, found himself absent-mindedly stroking her hair with latex fingers. She was sleeping, Scott would even say soundly, but that didn't keep her lips from moving ever-so slightly, shaping words that, in the oppressive hum of the whooshing air, Scott found hard to hear. Looking at her limp, defenseless form, he understood once again why he was there.
Two rows over, Jean was crying, silently.