22: Shatter
Gil Pryor flicked up the window shade to watch the mansion unfold below him, its elegant sprawl seemingly unchanged. When Xavier found him, he had been sleeping beside dumpsters, staking out the few restaurants that were generous enough not to scare away the hungry scavengers. Only three or four of the kids in his band would sleep in any one place – any more and the tolerance would turn to fear – but they would meet up to pool their spoils, and everyone got fed. Mostly.
The human kids – and the ones like him that could pass – would be the ones to beg for scraps, or hit up the diners for spare change. The others had learnt to stay hidden after they'd lost Taya, with her blue hair and eyes like black opal, and Jeremiah, who must have bared his fangs to the wrong person. And Mama, of course.
Mama had cried with relief the day he was born. Her fingers, she said, had inspected every inch of him, singing hosannas over his pale, perfectly normal skin. He told her the rosettes were beautiful, the way they slid along her cheekbones and then tumbled over her shoulders and back in rich swirls of black and yellow. But she had shaken her head, and explained about hate. He didn't really understand, though, until the day he had come home from school to find her blood spread across the bed, her body twisted and broken.
He was only six, but he'd already discovered how to control the fear. He needed to collate the facts, sort them, find the patterns. What did he know, he asked himself as he lay in the dark, snuggled to her back, oblivious of the blood soaking into his skin. It couldn't have been a robbery – they had nothing to steal – and he'd never known his father, so that ruled out something like the nightly brawls that raged in the squalid apartments all around them. A customer? Mama only brought men home when they really needed the money, but the rent had been due that week and the tips had been down at the diner, so – possible. Or it could have been one of the neighbours who spat foul words as they scurried past. “Trash.” “Freak.” “Mutie.” And the throwaway line that chilled him now. “The only good mutie is a dead mutie.”
Two days, and he'd finally realised there were no answers, no understanding to be had, no matter how many hours he lay there calculating. His belly had begun to cramp with hunger, and then the body began to stink. So he left the apartment, door wide open, and walked out into the street. That night, he joined the motherless legion - smart, sly, fierce kids who knew how to beg, and find food, and the best places to sleep. Six years later, when the Professor found him, it was his genius keeping dozens of bellies full, and organising the lookouts and guards to keep them safe.
He'd wanted to bring them all, when the messiah had appeared in the gloom behind Luigi's that day. Xavier had been kind – his friends were always welcome to visit the Mansion, he said – but the school was for mutants only, and they'd feel uncomfortable there, the humans. He still remembered Chloe's eyes, huge with fear, as he left her side to join the other mutants. He had never said the words aloud before – never admit it, Mama had said. Never even think it. Be human.
But Xavier had asked him, straight out, and it was a test he wasn't willing to fail.
“Yes, I am a mutant,” he said, and it felt like a betrayal. But this man, who spoke softly and reeked of money, smiled as if he was proud, and called it a gift. He spoke of training, and helping others, and using his abilities to help change the world.
Charles Xavier had given him his pride, and his education, but most of all, he had shared his home, Gil thought, as they descended into the basketball court. This place, this magnificent old pile, meant nearly as much to him as the old man did. On the streets, they had moved every few nights, avoiding the authorities, dodging the predators, constantly on alert. Here, he had learned to sleep deeply, and eat slowly, and laugh out loud. Already, the sense of 'home' and 'safe' was helping to force back the desperate fear that had been riding him since news of the first attack.
He dragged the feeling deep inside himself as he stepped out into the lower levels, then headed down the familiar halls towards Professor Xavier's office. He walked faster to catch up with Ororo, who was much less scary than the three other X-men, currently engaged in a pitched battle of not-talking and murderous glares.
He didn't bother to disguise the small huff of contentment as they moved past the achingly familiar zones of his childhood – dining room, rec room, library, tv room – enroute to the Professor's office. Ororo turned to smile at him, as if he had suddenly slotted back into her memory, and was welcome here.
“It's good to come home, isn't it?” she offered. “We'll go over things in the Professor's office, and hopefully he'll be up to seeing you. He wasn't well when we left to pick you up, but … I'm sure he's fine now. I just need to check with Jean first.”
“Fine. We need to ...”
His train of thought evaporated as they turned the corner to find a hallway filled with people.
Unfriendly looking people. Brotherhood, the X-men called them. “The Lensherr faction,” was the term he preferred to use in his reports. He remembered their crimes from his time here as a child, and had always refused to let them appropriate any sort of legitimacy to speak on behalf of mutants.
Magneto looked older, he realised with surprise, the supervillain of his youth grey now, and gaunt, if still distinguished in his flowing cape and metal helmet. “I was hoping to meet with Charles,” he drawled, “but he seems not to be available.”
Ororo's voice dripped ice. “Professor Xavier is unwell. And I am sure he would have nothing to say to you, Magneto. Leave. Now.”
“That is where you are mistaken, Miss Munroe. Charles and I prefer to navigate crises with a modicum of courtesy and a level of consultation. This, you cannot deny, is a crisis.”
“Where's the courtesy in invading our home?” Suddenly, she was Storm, Gil realised, the air about her crackling with threat, and a magnificent hauteur that reminded him this woman had once been worshipped as a deity.
“Think of it less as an invasion, and more as a recruitment drive. This is no longer about choosing sides, my friends. The humans have chosen for us – they have criminalised us, every last one, and the time for platitudes and appeasement is gone. We are fighting for survival now, and we must fight as one,” Magneto said.
He sounded so pleased with himself, so damn pompous, that Gil couldn't do it, at first. This ... this criminal, this blistering pomposity couldn't possibly be right. Unlike other people, though, Gil Pryor didn't have the luxury of prejudice. His analyst's brain had already plotted all the paths forward.
He needed to shut down this confrontation. Move them beyond it. Guide them into a joint action. Working with criminals could never be contemplated under normal circumstances, but Lensherr commanded a useful group of talents, and if things came to war … if the President couldn't reverse the action, if the situation deteriorated even the tiniest bit - they would need Magneto's firepower. Their survival might even demand his repugnant anti-human stance, and repulsive separatist agenda, Pryor admitted.
But then the Wolverine struck.
His outraged bellow seemed to shake the walls as he flew at Magneto in a rush of gleaming claws and black leather. His fury – for what? why? - seemed unstoppable, irreversible, but his target simply stood there, a half-smile on his face. Then a real smile, as he twitched his fingers, and Wolverine's arms wrapped tight around his body, claws plunging deep into his own chest.
“Hello, Wolverine. I had heard you were contracting to the X-men these days. To do what, I wonder?” Magneto drawled as he flicked his fingers towards the ceiling, and the burly mutant followed, like a fly pinned to the roof.
“Nothing to say? Surely your lungs are clear of blood by now? Here – is that better?”
The feral hung in the air now, crucified on his own metal skeleton, agony written on his face. Was it the pain or the rage that kept him from speaking, Gil wondered. He doubted it was fear, or self-preservation, because even racked with shudders, he was still trying to kick out at Magneto, his leg flailing uselessly.
The older man tutted, and shook his head as if Wolverine was a particularly recalcitrant pet.
“Perhaps third time will be the charm for you, my friend. Next time you attack the Brotherhood, maybe you'll remember that I am the master of ...” his mouth opened as if searching for the word. But purple veins were creeping across his face and something – a heart attack? stroke? - seemed to have robbed him of speech.
It was only when he dropped to the ground that Gil saw the woman standing behind him, her eyes glittering with rage.
“And perhaps you'll remember that I don't need a weapon,” she said. Rogue, Gil remembered. They called her Rogue, and she could kill with touch.
He shivered, and told himself she had simply responded to a threat. Neutralised the aggressor. Then her gaze landed on the Wolverine, and he realised that was only half of the story. Detachment fled as she moved to crouch next to the fallen warrior, deadly fingers dancing lovingly over the contours of his face. Her voice was low and angry – they had been fighting earlier, he remembered - but Gil could hear the passion throbbing underneath.
“C'mon sugar, time to get you up. Crazy bastard. Don't make me ever have to watch that again, shithead.”
Wolverine grunted back at her as she helped him up, before pulling away to stand unaided, wobbling slightly as he shrugged his shoulders and cracked his neck with a sickening pop.
Magneto's henchmen had frozen when their leader fell, and were holding a whispered conference at the far end of the hall, obviously deciding what to do. A young punk – Latina female, omega tattoo, codename Callisto – stepped forward with her hands held high in submission, and kneeled slowly to check Magneto's pulse.
“He's alive,” she shouted to the others, and they began to approach, clearly intending to drag him away. Fury rumbled from the Wolverine's chest, and his claws flashed, and suddenly, the metal helmet was rolling on the ground.
“Ain't gonna be a next time, bub,” the feral growled, and the noise seemed to reverberate up and down the suddenly silent hallway. The X-men looked more shocked than the now leaderless Lensherr faction. What would the government call them now, he wondered idly. Where would the White House find an analyst that could make sense of this?
Gil wasn't sure he understood what was going on with the mutants, and he'd just been awarded front row seats.
*
The nausea hit hard after they turned onto the winding road that led them through the lakes and up into the wilderness area. Scott slammed his foot on the brake and hit the door lever with a blind swipe, before bolting outside to empty his stomach into the bushes by the side of the road.
What the heck was wrong with him?
He hadn't eaten anything strange for lunch, only the sandwiches that Jubilee and Kitty had made this morning in the Mansion, and no one else was sick. He was tired, yes, and stressed, but he'd never been carsick in his life. Yet he couldn't escape this clenching in his gut, and the wrongness that seemed to crouch in his chest, and periodically rise up into his throat and then explode out of his mouth.
It felt like sorrow, or death.
Scott felt his mouth turn down and his spine straighten as climbed back onto the bus, and restarted it for the third time that day. It had been four hours to the border, and three hours beyond that – they had to be getting close to their refuge now, and he should be feeling better. Not like something awful was waiting for him.
He nearly missed the sign, and had to yank the bus around hard to turn onto the rutted road that took them deep into the looming pines. Any sight that meant they would soon be getting off the overloaded bus should have been welcome, but a hush had fallen as they rattled their way towards a sorry collection of cabins that looked incapable of surviving the summer, let alone a Canadian winter.
“It looks like something out of a slasher movie,” Jubilee goggled, then sprung down the steps of the bus. “Last one in the lake's gonna get their legs chopped off!”
“Might be the warmest shower you get for a while,” Scott muttered as he killed the engine and stretched to his full height. “You heard her, guys. Go burn some energy, then we'll figure out who's sleeping where.”
Camp Winchelsea had advertised itself as fully furnished, he realised with a sinking heart. They hadn't even brought sleeping bags … simply booked it for two full months, with no ancillary services. Right now he was hoping bedlinen and mattresses hadn't been regarded as ancillary, along with closing doors, running water and wild-life free cabins.
His gut coiled again and doubled him over in pain. This time, the pain radiated right up into his brain, leaving him moaning and horrified. This wasn't right. Something was wrong.
Jean, was all he could think. Jean!
He was almost sobbing her name when he returned to himself, and it was that, most of all, that scared him. Why? He missed his wife, sure, but he had other things to worry about now. She was safe, at the mansion. She'd be joining them later, as soon as the Professor was stable.
“JEAN!” his mind shrieked again, and his stomach emptied itself all over his boots, leaving him shaken and drained.
He dialled her number anyway, desperate to hear her voice.
“Jean, thank god. Is everything OK?”
“Fine, thank you Scott. And you?”
He blinked. “Seem to have some sort of stomach bug. And it's a real dump up here, so there's a lot to do.”
“Tell me where the camp was again?”
He doubled over again, dry wretching, unable to keep the train of thought. Ah!
“Scott, the camp?”
“Sorry, Jean, I've got to go. I'll call later.”
She'd sounded almost bored, he realised later. Unlike her. He'd always loved hearing her Dr Grey voice, the smooth, professional tones so different to the seductive purr she used to communicate telepathically, but this evening, she'd sounded … different. Disconnected, as if what he had to say was of no importance.
Jean changed, sometimes. She hid herself behind a facade, an outer shell as impenetrable as any she had built inside her head, and the masks would come and go, always hiding the woman inside. But underneath she had always been the same - caring, smart, passionate Jean.
Lately, though. The facade seemed to be eating her alive – so cold, and remote, and calculating, he couldn't see his Jean anymore. Flashes of her, like yesterday, when she stomped out of the TV room shaking at the injustice, or this morning, when she sat with the Professor, eyes huge with fatigue and dread, but … only flashes. And today, when they were leaving, he had felt her mind touch his. He had smiled, expecting a silent embrace or final goodbye, but she had nothing to say, simply flicking through him like a filing cabinet, in search of information. And the feel of her – burning in his head, blazing, leaving him weak and shaking as he threw up a ramshackle wall to protect himself from the invasion.
She didn't feel like Jean anymore. And he couldn't shake the feeling that his body knew it, and was trying to purge itself of her. Of his link to her.
Which was ridiculous. Jean could form a mental link when he was close – in the Mansion, sometimes in Westchester itself, but never miles and miles away. Certainly not several hundred miles away.
Not-Jean, his body reminded him once more, doubling him over.
And the chill rolled over him in a moment of pure fear.
*
Emma was sleeping when Charles Xavier's heart began to stutter.
At first, her subconscious didn't quite know what to do with it, that irregular thumping followed by a sharp spiral of choking agony. It drew patterns, made walls of pink squeeze tight around her dream self, and spun the colours out into delirium. A huge fist came down from the diamond-bright sky, to swoop her up, then squeeze. Squeeze. Squeeze.
The pain woke her. His failing heartbeat – ka thump, thump,thump, kathump. Thump. Th.. th ... – echoed in her veins, and the tightness in his chest began to fracture into a million points of light. Distant light, beckoning through a world of black. Realisation rocketed through her, and she threw up a block, and then another, and wall beyond that, desperate to escape the link she had forged between their minds. But she had stolen his consciousness so many times now, the link pulsed like a superhighway – she could slow the traffic, yes, but it was still there. Thought, moving between them. Feeling, seeping through.
Death, shared.
Perhaps this was her penance, her desperation screamed as she fought to free herself. She had abused her own gift, pushed it beyond its limits, to capture that one part of him that she had always wanted. She had harnessed him like a mule, and used his vast mind to push, push, push … strangers on a street corner, half a continent away, or the President himself, locked in an ivory tower – it made no difference to the immensity that was Charles Xavier.
And she had used him. To wreak abomination. To foment revolution.
“You weren't the only one,” she shoved down the link, mutely begging him to release her.
“We all had dreams. We all wanted to help, but you were so in love with your ideas of peace and coexistence and teaching the children – you were making us weak, Xavier!” His sorrow and disappointment came rushing back to her, but this was her last chance to be understood, and dammit, she was going to take. Going to force him to listen.
“We were born to be strong. We were born to be warriors and telepaths and rulers, but you would have us be slaves instead. When this thing is done, our people will tear off their shackles and will refuse to bow to the humans ever again!”
He was floating now, beyond pain, and she could feel something of his bliss. He was glad to leave. And he … pitied her. Her poor, little mind that couldn't see beyond the hate.
Emma Frost screamed her rage, frustration and disbelief shattering the peaceful night. Even in death, she fumed. Even beyond death, Charles Xavier remained a sanctimonious tosser who couldn't get his head out of his arse long enough to appreciate that necessary wasn't always nice.
She was prepared to do what was necessary. To survive. To rule. To live.
Emma reached for the telephone on her bedside table and began to text Mystique.
xxxxx
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