Memories

Lost and Alone

Disclaimer: What do you think?

If you want to use Tora, or any of my other characters, PM me.

Curt jerked upright. Something was wrong. No. Wait. Something was right. Something that had been wrong for too long had been righted, some fundamental balance had been restored to the universe. And that could only mean one thing! Maman was back!

Curt leapt out of his spun hammock, Poison curling and writhing to become clothes as he ran past the signed photo of himself, Uncle Peter and M.J. Wait? M.J? He hadn't had a photo of Mary Jane Watson. Watson-Parker his brain supplied helpfully.

He stumbled to the floor, memories rushing in to fill places they had not been before.

The trip to Coney Island. Getting irritated with the shooting gallery, and discreetly firing off a little ball of webbing.

M.J. offering him a bit part in her latest drama. It was so fun to be one of the kidnappers.

Pretending to be Spider-Man and posing for a photo with the pair of them. Uncle Peter had discreetly slipped him a ten dollar bill with a wink.

Bringing the entire Young Avengers into their apartment to crash out after their base was destroyed. Uncle Peter panicking, M.J. just laughing and bringing out a jug of lemonade.

M.J. standing nervously on the edge of a building, preparing to the civilian in "Save-the-Falling-Civilian-by-Web-Slinging"-101.

Standing with Uncle Peter in a jewellery store, gazing in equal hopelessness at the array of sparkling gems in front of them. Why did some idiot come up with Valentine's Day?

This hadn't happened! None of it had! But obviously, it had at the same time. He inhaled deeply. Rachel hadn't taught him meditation just to get him to stop running around. It was also a helpful method for chronokinetics.

He sank deeply into the flow of time. Gently reaching out, he found it. A gleaming silver thread, glowing brighter than a star in the timeline. It was woven through a tear, like a perfectly executed patching of a garment. Something had torn through time and Dragon had fixed it. But when? He'd have sensed the light before now. Which meant that it was recent. Which meant that…

MAMAN!

Curt leapt up and was about to run out the door when someone knocked. He warily opened it and found Jubilee standing there looking nervous. She was wearing a huge floppy hat and outsized sunglasses, to go with her full-length coat and gloves. The only skin on display was a little around her mouth and Curt knew from experience that all she'd have to do would be pull up her scarf and she'd be fully covered.

"Are you okay?"

"Are you going out?"

She gently looped her arm through his.

"We're going for a walk. You've been in that room for eighteen hours. You need some light."

"I don't photosynthesise."

She grinned, then suddenly became pensive.

"You know you can talk to me about this? Don't you?"

He nodded.

"It's just… It's just hard… Right now…"

"I miss her too."

Curt looked up.

"I… I keep expecting her to tell me to go and clean my room. Or to take Eva for a walk. Or to do my homework. She's never going to tell me off for scoffing my food too fast again."

"We've thought she was dead before."

Curt just lowered his head.

"It's different this time. I know it is. She's not going to come back, even if she could."

"Why not?"

Curt gulped and found himself slipping down the wall. Jubes crouched down beside her.

"The…The last thing I said to her… Before she wasn't her anymore… It was that I hated her… I hated her! I said that to her! The last thing I ever said to her was that I hated her!"

He felt cold leather touch his face.

"She knew you didn't mean it. She knew you couldn't mean it."

Curt was crying now, hating the fact he was doing this in public, that he had to do this.

"I… I thought she might be back… I felt her… So bright and warm and distant. I… How did you cope, Jubes? When your family died?"

She shrugged.

"I had to. I lived rough I was only able to cry after the X-Men took me in. Crying helped though. Crying helped."

Curt let her pull him up and steer him back into his room.

"I… I thought she was back… I thought I had Maman back…"

Jubes divested herself of the layers, leaving her in her customary jeans and shirt. Her hands –cold, dead hands, she obviously hadn't fed for a while- rested on his and he felt her hug him close.

"It'll always hurt. But she wouldn't want you to be kicking yourself. Not for the rest of your life. She loved you enough to let you go. She'd rather die than hurt you, so she did what she had to."

Curt buried his head in his hands.

"I know. What did I ever do to deserve her as my mother? I'm a mess-up. I goof around and I blow stuff up with Tommy. My best mate is a former convict. I'm not exactly perfect son material."

"Curt, Jamie is more than good enough for both of you. But you… They love you precisely because you're imperfect. You're messy and haphazard and you're fun. If you think that your dad was a perfect kid, you'd be wrong. The stories Etana used to tell when she was concussed…"

"I wished I'd properly met her. I only got to speak to her once before she left…"

"She was cool. Even when we dyed her pink, she was okay with it after she made us do a horrendous training session. She even asked if we had something a little more green."

Curt smiled weakly.

"She'd have been a great gran, wouldn't she?"

"Look at Zillah. Tan was a bit like that, only about five times more sarcastic and a bit better at social interactions."

"Was she as clueless as Zil' is for Evan?"

Jubilee went silent.

"What?"

"Look… I only saw Etana and Apocalypse once. And it was freaky, Curt. He was… It was like he was courting her. Only instead of bringing flowers and chocolates, he… He brought out the head of this old dude and tried to hand it over to Etana. Told her that he'd made sure he'd died slowly. Etana went mental. Started screaming at him in some ancient language, then tried to slap him senseless. He grabbed her wrist and started twisting and she was trying to get free and… It was horrible. He wasn't even trying to hurt her, that was the worst part. He wanted her to go with him of her own free will and it freaked her out. It really did."

"Zil's scared of Evan. She just doesn't like to show it."

"Well, duh. She's probably the only student who has even the slightest idea of what Apocalypse was capable of. She grew up hearing warnings about him. And then there's Evan, who looks like Apocalypse and who keeps staring at her when he thinks she isn't looking."

"He means well."

Jubilee sighed and hugged him tighter.

"Etana wasn't good at being subtle either. Zillah's going to be blunt, that's how she is."

"Like Maman."

Jubilee smiled softly, thinking of Tora's quiet sarcasm.

"Yeah. Like your mom."

"She knew how to heal him. She loved him deeply. Why was she never tempted to turn him?"

"She didn't want him to live like that. Even when all that was physically left was the symbiote, taking the form of a body long turned to dust, he was still Curt. Poison would never let its host, its friend, die."

"They were the purest of the relationships between symbiote and a carrier."

"Poison was born with Curt. They eventually forgot that they were once two different entities."

Logan looked around the storage locker in confusion. He'd found the key in Tora's stuff, the twelve miserable boxes that had made up all her personal possessions. Twelve boxes! Yes, she not been much of a hoarder, except where the kids were concerned. The key to the storage locker implied there was more, that Tora had left more than just a few books and photos. He hadn't expected an office.

It had a lived-in feel, a rug thrown haphazardly over the floor, a lamp on the desk by the pad and the laptop-tablet. An armchair by a portable heater and a bookcase.

He slowly sat in the desk chair and turned on the laptop. It came up with one of those touchscreen passwords, where you had to make a shape. Feeling vaguely hopeful he tried a blocky variation of the X-Men sign, two diagonals enclosed. No luck. He tried approximations of letters and words and pictures and then the laptop locked him out, asking for a written password and that was easy, because it was going to be a compilation of dates and numbers. But that didn't work and he swore.

"Try "Epsilon". It… It just…"

Logan turned to see Eva standing by the door.

"Epsilon?"

"Long story. I'll tell it at some point."

Epsilon worked. Logan entered the first directory and was confused to find the names of a number of X-Men in files. He clicked on Tora's own name.

Real Name: Marie Howlett (n.b. Is it legally Howlett or still Circen?)

Known as: Tora Logan

Alias: Dragon

Powers: See file on Dragon Song

Position: Grey Queen

Movement: Winter

Weakness: Can only be destroyed of own accord. Must be emotionally manipulated into suicide.

There was more, pages and pages of stuff and annotations on her. Some were sensible, others were completely confusing. Such as her 'Position' and 'Movement' sections. Logan could make no sense of them. Eventually he gave up and opened his own.

Real Name: James Howlett (middle name appears to be John)

Known as: Logan

Alias: Wolverine, Patch, Black Dragon

Powers: Standard feral

Position: Black King (in opposition to Charles? Surely Grey King works better, then in opposition to Scott, but Max is Grey. Why?)

Movement: Pluto, the Renewer (why? Why ominous when about new hope?)

Weakness: Too easily manipulated due to emotional feelings for myself.

He continued to read, getting more and more confused. The file contained everything, down to his preference of toothpaste and which side of the bed he slept on. It was disturbing that all this was kept on him. He spotted Emma's and opened that.

Real Name: Emma Grace Frost

Known As: Emma Frost

Alias: White Queen, Black Queen, Emma Frost

Powers: Telepathy, telekinesis (mild, near non-existent), diamond form (can be damaged by adamantium)

Position: White Queen (the only one that seems to make sense)

Movement: Autumn (why? The regality destroyed then rebuilt?)

Weakness: Both overconfident and crippled with self-doubt. Not that hard to emotionally compromise

They continued, dissections of all their teammates. And then Logan came to a file marked with a question mark and opened it.

Real Name: Phoenix/Jean Grey/Hope Summers (I need clarification on this)

Known as: Hope? Jean? Phoenix?

Alias: Phoenix

Powers: See Phoenix Force

Position: Red Queen (in direct conflict to myself. Why?)

Movement: Summer (the threat of the storm?)

Weakness: Mental instability.

Notes: Why can't I find details on this? Is Hope a reincarnation of Jean or are they both aspects/avatars/vessels of the Phoenix? Were they both created by the Phoenix before birth as the perfect avatar? "Jean is the only house I live in". How does Hope's obvious connection to the Phoenix Force fit in? Jean and the Phoenix are fully bonded, there is no Jean nor Phoenix, there is only the Phoenix-Jean. If Phoenix and Jean are the same, then what is Hope?

The ravings of a madwoman, or something more? Her files were exhaustive, clinical notes on how to fight and kill even their closest friends. The details shocked him at times, but then wasn't she the confidant. She had always tried to remain above the politics of the team, calmly stating that "someone needs to be the mediator" and as such, she'd been the secret-keeper. If she so chose, she could have brought the whole team crashing down with a few choice words.

He turned off the computer, realising that if he read any further, he'd end up holding the power that Tora had. And that wasn't good. Tora had the self-control to keep quiet. Logan was liable to drag it up in one of his fights. That was how they'd fought. Logan would yell and Tora would be icily polite and reasonable, goading him further into his rage until he'd snap. That was how they worked, that was how they managed. They balanced one another, both being too stubborn to back down properly. They'd worked because they were opposites. What was it she'd said, all those years ago?

They were lying on the sofa, at the back of the rec room, his fingers tangled in her hair. Then her head tilted back and she was looking up at him.

"We work, don't we?"

"Sure we do. Why, what brought this on?"

"I was thinking. You're all fire and heat and burning. Surely you'd be better suited to the Phoenix. Not boring old Dragon."

He laughed then leant in to brush lips.

"That's why we work, darlin'. We keep each other in balance."

She grinned, her whole face lighting up.

"Fire and water, yang and yin, sun and moon."

He considered for a moment then realised that she'd insulted herself again.

"No. Not the moon. You don't reflect light. You produce it."

She reached up to touch his face.

"You're always so harsh on yourself. You created me. Without you, I would not be who I am today."

"You'd be a lot happier."

"Why? Because of what happened to me? If I wasn't taken, I'd have never met you. Maybe I'd be safer, but I'd only be half. For what is yin without its yang?"

He closed his eyes. Why couldn't she be here, with him, right now? Why couldn't she explain what these cryptic comments meant? Why had she written these things in the first place? Why? Why? Why?

All he seemed to get now were questions.

"She kept files on how to kill her friends?"

"Any of the sensible people did. Anyway, that was her NEST server."

"NEST?"

"Oh yes. You never knew about them. A group of women who agreed to share information and skills, as well as work together –all in complete secrecy of course. They did sometimes work in the field together, but word never got out. They were very, very good at what they did."

"Does NEST mean anything?"

"An acronym for the names of the members. They only had access to certain parts of the files, but it was enough."

"And who were the mysterious members?"

"I'll show you the founding at some point."

"Now."

"Greedy, greedy."

A.N. Don't expect any regular updates until the end of May. I have a few chapters written ahead, but I'm not writing any more until all my exams are over.