Memories

True Fear

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Logan knew he'd lived too long. Done too much. Never stopped to think about life as it was. How lucky he'd been…

Too late now. He'd been back to prehistory, and now lived in a post-apocalyptic future where humanity had been wiped out. And he was going to die by Phoenix Force. He'd never see Tora again…

When he'd arrived, he'd searched desperately. If anyone could survive, it would be her. When he found the body impaled on the spike, rotten flesh hanging off metal bones, long tangled strands of hair dangling down, he'd almost been able to believe it was some other woman with an adamantium skeleton. But no one could fake the scratches in the metal over the right eye, four parallel marks. Parker had still been with him then, before Logan had retreated into an old shop to fight robots and all Parker had done was touch his shoulder and say in one of the most serious voices Logan had ever heard the Wallcrawler use, "I'm sorry Logan. I'm sorry". But words were useless. Tora was dead here, dead and never knew what had happened to her husband. She'd died alone. He'd found the details following his disappearance. She'd searched desperately. Been the one who tried to prove that they weren't dead. Xixy had left, Curt had followed him. So at least his kid was out there in the stars, living out there in space, never looking back to Earth. He raised the gun and fired.

And when he was coiled in the darkness, it was three voices he heard calling him towards peace. His mother, Etana…and Tora. Then he was pulled back to life, launched through even more crazy adventures, learnt in a small way what the insanity Tora had to put up with was and then arrived back as she was just beginning to start panicking and he hugged her close, still remembering the smell of rotten flesh in the breeze. Because she may be distant and lost in this world, but lost was a damn sight better than dead. And if she died… he didn't want to think about this…

"How sad."

"Yes, well, I did have fun later on when Mojo tried that stuff on me."

"Oh, what did you do?"

"Left the game then had him arrested for violations of the Temporal Restrictive Act of the Supreme United Council of Planetary Bodies."

"I thought that didn't come into effect for centuries afterwards? Tora was the main pusher of the Act and she wasn't allow in the Supreme Council until Earth had a place."

"It was a Temporal law."

"Aaahhh…"

She was clutching her head in agony.

"Tora?"

She looked at Emma, her eyes unfocussed and silvery.

"We… We have to stop her…"

"Who?"

"Sin…Skadi… She is reborn and she will bring Fear."

"Tora?"

"The Serpent is coming. Fear the Serpent."

"Oh… Oh my…"

Tora's eyes focussed.

"What did I say this time?"

"Tora, I've realised… You know that prophecy warning thing?"

"Yes?"

"I've just realised…"

"Yes?"

"We will not let conflict tear us apart. That was the whole SHRA fiasco. We will fight ourselves, man-to-man, that was trying to protect Hope. Utopia will rise, self-explanatory. The darkness will come? You keep going on about the Chaos War. That must be the 'darkness'. Fear the Serpent. You just said that. Fear the Serpent. If this is something on par with the other things, then we need to be ready."

Tora froze.

"Then something is going to happen that will split the X-Men in two."

"What?"

"The next thing is 'United we will survive. We must stand together'. That suggests that we are going to be broken in half."

"After that?"

"Then… Then we're all going to die."

"What?"

"When all is lost, Dragon shall rise higher than ever before."

"Oh…"

And then Tora staggered, clutching her head and screaming in agony. When she looked up, her whole face had changed, becoming thin, wan and inhuman.

"He has returned! The God of Fear shall walk among us and one of us shall fall! A god or something greater! The Captain must make the choice! His friend or another!"

And then she fell, her eyes no longer gleaming, the colour sliding back into her face. And Emma trembled deep down, because what was so terrible it made the Dragon itself tremble with fear?

"Well, it wasn't so much fear as complete, abject terror."

"Yes, well, the Serpent was rather terrifying."

"Excuse me, you didn't seem afraid when you attacked him head-on and almost died."

Tora could barely move. Well, there was a lesson right there. No matter if you were able to beat the Juggernaut normally, one should never attack a Juggernaut possessed by an angry and vengeful Norse spirit. It resulted in being battered and –amazingly- a broken rib cage. She lay on the rubble, waiting for the metal to knit back together –a slow, tedious and painful process- as well as having her lungs heal from the punctures. She jerked her legs, resetting them correctly. Then she lay back and hoped her stupid healing factor would stupid speed up before she had to use stupid Dragon to save the stupid X-Men from stupid Kuurth and she really had to stop thinking everything was stupid stupid and maybe she had managed to get some stupid brain damage as well because her stupid thought processes were like stupid treacle and she really just wanted a stupid coffee with about twelve stupid sugars and three times the usual stupid caffeine content. And stupid double cream instead of stupid skimmed milk. And her stupid chest hurt and the stupid people were watching not running like they should and she really was feeling rather woozy…

And just before she stupid blacked out, she felt Dragon rise to the surface. Oh well. Might as well let the stupid reptile deal with this.

I am not a stupid reptile.

Go 'way. Stupid cosmic entity.

"I think she missed the point."

"She deliberately missed the point Death. Really, I despair at times…"

"You're one to talk."

Hope was so afraid. And then Tora, who had been lying twitching on a broken building, rose up, her eyes spitting silver and she wasn't afraid anymore. Because she'd only ever seen this happen three times in her life and each time, everything turned out alright.

Tora's hands –only they weren't Tora's anymore, because Tora was sitting in the backseat- were outstretched and waves shot towards the monster that wore Cain Marko's body and she was screaming curses in two very different languages, Askani and something old, something terrible. Something that Hope remembered a Tora teaching her.

"This is a tongue so old, Galan feared it before he became Galactus, and to this day, he still fears those who speak it. Learn it, and he will always listen to you. Because the part of him that is still Galan lives in abject terror of the beings who wield the power of the Beforetimes."

"And that includes you?"

"It includes Dragon. I can't actually speak it. Not fluently at any rate. Now, this language was…it was the first language from the universe Galan was born in. But it happened to be the language the cosmic entities spoke. And that resulted in it gaining power when it was brought to this multiverse."

"What sort of power?"

"The sort of power gods dream of having…"

The words shot out, infused with power and Kuurth faltered, cowered and then screamed in agony as the words burnt and tore into the spell that bound the spirit to the hammer. And Dragon- Dragon, not Tora- bore down on him, her face unrecognisable as it warped to fit a being that was more than human.

Are you afraid, Little Child? Are you scared of me?

There was something terrifying in that voice. So soft and gentle, like the lap of water on the windows of a sinking car. Hope was torn between helping Dragon and running for her life. In the end, helping won through, but only just. There was some primal part of her that was absolutely terrified of this Dragon-in-Tora's-body. Maybe it was the wrongness of it, maybe it was just the sheer power. So when Hope actually fought, she made sure there was quite a bit of distance between her and Dragon. You know… just in case…

"Is it bad I can feel lots and lots of rather conflicting emotions from Hope right now?"

"No, that's totally normal human stuff Death."

"Good. I was beginning to get a bit worried about you. You seem to be feeling a lot of emotion and I can't name most of them…"

Phoenix laughed.

"No, she's just really, really weird and emotional. Watch out, she's going to start crying soon. Not at death but probably when Jubilee got fed up of waiting for Curt to propose after they had been dating for almost ten years."

"How do you know about that?"

"I'm sorry, you told me so often when I came back it got frankly boring."