The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive
Barely Legal Since 2000
Author's Chapter Notes:
Sorry about the delay. I needed to think this one through properly.
18: Three little words
Her contact, it seemed, wasn't coming. Mystique shoved down the exasperation, and gave the motherly looking waitress – Greta, her nametag said - a wan smile as she paid the cheque.
“Looks like I've been stood up. And I thought he was a keeper,” she sighed, drawing out the sympathy. You never knew who might be useful, Erik had told her once. Bind them to you, however you can.
“Don't worry, dear – a girl like you is going to find plenty of men to treat you right. Don't waste your time on those who don't,” Greta clucked, warm blue eyes meeting Raven's own as she handed over the change.
Amen to that, Mystique thought sadly. She'd been forced to learn that lesson over and over again. Forty years ago, she'd wanted the guy who treated her right, but he hadn't wanted her. So she'd chosen the other guy, and look at the sorry mess that had left them in. Brotherhood against X-men, mutant supremacy against the fight for acceptance … so much horror, all down to one, shameful truth, she thought sadly.
All of it – personal armies, students, crimes, plots, pitched battles – it was all about them, really. About Raven loves Charles and Charles loves Erik and Erik doesn't know how to love but can only come when she wears Charles' face. Forty years of hurt, and frustrated lust, and misdirected love. That's why it was up to her. To change the game. To release them from this goddamned dance.
Determination pushed her chin up and helped her return the woman's sympathetic smile. “No more timewasters,” she agreed, and then amazed herself by bending to kiss the older woman's cheek. “Thank you for caring.”
Her heart was feeling lighter as she left the coffee shop. More human. Perhaps if Charles could be persuaded to meet with Erik, perhaps if they could end this impasse ….
The gurgling scream was full of terror, but it soon stopped. Raven looked back, and recoiled in horror. Greta still stood at the counter, but her mouth was frozen in the scream. Her head wobbled, then, and lurched drunkenly sideways, as if to display the gaping wound at the base of her neck. She was listing to one side, as if her backbone was being held up by memory alone, and Raven knew then that the woman – that kind, motherly woman – would be dead before she hit the floor.
“Greta,” her nametag had said. Greta deserved more than that, she thought numbly, looking about wildly for the offender.
A man stood at the counter, swigging idly at a cup of coffee. Her next customer. He looked like a salesman, plain shirt, bright tie, shiny black shoes, but one arm ended in a strange, crab-like claw. Raven watched, agog, as he put his coffee down to rummage in his pocket for spare change, and threw a handful of coins into the tip jar.
“Great coffee, Greta – see you tomorrow,” he said cheerfully, before walking out of the store, nodding politely as he passed Raven, frozen in the doorway.
“Have a nice day, now,” he said, and she knew, then, that something was seriously wrong. Because his eyes were kind, and warm, not the eyes of a killer. And he had no fucking clue what he had just done.
She backed out of the doorway, succumbing to her sense of self-preservation even as Greta's blue curls turned black with her own blood. It wasn't until she was halfway up the street – walking quickly, but not running, not fleeing – she realised that the police had never come, or an ambulance. And that Greta wasn't the only innocent that had died today.
Because they were dying everywhere she looked. At the hands of mutants.
She had killed humans in her time. Some had needed killing, and some had simply been in the way. But as she watched an elfin, blue-freckled child push her doting mother into traffic, then look about in confusion, something inside of her broke. Who could be capable of this mass, unthinking slaughter? Who could actually engineer something like this? Only two names came to mind, and she couldn't believe it of either of them, but the banshee wailing inside her head kept shrieking them anyway. The gaping hole in her heart began to implode, collapsing in on itself until it felt like a stone in her chest. It didn't change things. Nothing could.
It just made it more urgent.
*
Logan woke to the chirruping of his mobile phone. The fuck? Warm, delicious woman on his chest versus annoying chirping thing. He ran his hands over the contours of her ass, then up her side to cup one glorious, plump breast before succumbing to the inevitable. He would crush the damn thing.
Who actually had this number, he wondered as he lifted cushions and sorted through the pile of newspapers on the table. Xavier? Wouldn't he use the brain phone? Rogue? Sure wasn't her, he grinned, watching her hand reach out for him even as she slumbered on. Mystique, he realised, hands stilling in the search. Fuck.
And of course, it revealed itself to him then, and it was a text message, so he couldn't ignore it.
DO IT NOW.
Fuck.
*
“Professor!”
She'd seen him come in, of course – the Prof was hard to miss, what with the snazzy silver wheels – but she hadn't actually been watching him. It'd been a Seriously Good Bit in her book, and even her donuts had been neglected as the Duke finally woke up to himself and realised his mousy little secretary was The One. Jubilee had been pumped up on sugar and happy hormones, all set for the big happily-ever-after, when the Professor fell out of his wheelchair. Screaming.
Holy shit.
“Professor!” She knelt by him on the floor, and yelled for someone – anyone – to come because she could not be here, alone, with the Professor having some sort of fit that had left him unconscious for fuck sake. He couldn't be unconscious …. what did you do for someone who wasn't conscious?
Jubilee grabbed the pitcher of water that stood on the bench behind her and flung it in his face. Miraculously, he seemed to rouse for a moment, muttering and convulsing before his eyes slid slowly open.
“Killing … they're killing. Start the war ...” His face contorted with sheer horror, and that expression, on his face, was too much to bear. Jubilee began to scream. No words, just shock and despair, an incoherent plea for help.
When she came back to herself, she was in her own bed, head heavy with sedation. Someone else was there too, she realised eventually, turning her head and forcing her eyes to focus. Storm. Head lolling in sleep, snoring lightly.
“Storm?” Was that her own voice, so terrified and little?
Brown eyes snapped open, and for a moment, she didn't look scared. Jubilee's heart leapt, then smashed into pieces as reality filtered back in, and Storm's expression grew taut and haunted.
“Jubilee! What happened? Did the Professor say anything, before he ...”
Before he what, Jubilee wondered. Surely he had come round by now, enough to tell them it was all a false alarm and that he had overreacted, and please God, there wasn't a war. Not a war …
“He's OK, right? I coudn't really understand what he was saying, so he'll have to explain it himself.”
Jubilee saw the pity creep into Storm's eyes, and turned her head to avoid it. No. This couldn't be happening.
“No, sweetie. He's ...” her voice cracked. It was worse. Worse than unconscious? “He's in a coma. Jean has tried connecting with him, but .. his mind is not … not OK. Not like it normally is.” Storm had slumped as if the truth had snapped her backbone, but after a moment she sat straight again. Jubilee knew what was coming next.
“Tell me what he said, Jubilee. We need to know.”
“Something about killing. They're killing, he said. But not who. And, he … he ….” her voice just disappeared, unable to say it. The thing they feared most, the thing in the back of every mutant's mind, every moment of every day.
But the Professor had said it. She couldn't doubt him. Not even in this.
“He said 'start the war'. He told us to start the war,” she insisted, finally daring to glance at Storm's face. The Weather Goddess was white with shock, and shaking. But Storm had been Xavier's second in command for years, and she had been a small, frightened, abused child long before that.
She didn't even bother to ask another question, Jubilee realised numbly. Simply picked up the silly pink phone on the bedside table, and tapped in the number for the sitroom.
“Get both teams ready. Equip as many of the older students as you can, see if we can't get a third team and fourth team up. Put the evac plan into action for the rest.” Her voice wavered, but it didn't relent. “We're going to war.”
*
Chapter End Notes:
Let me know I haven't sent everyone running for the hills, scarred for life!