23: Shards of truth
Mystique blinked, then blinked again. In this, her true form, everything was sharper, more detailed. Something to do with the vertical slit eyes, she thought. In the balmy afternoon light, she could see the dust motes spiralling down from the ceiling, and the minute tracery of cracks and fissures in the seemingly pristine white paint. The white bedlinen was painfully glary, and the picture on the television screen was pixellated. The way it used to be, she found herself thinking. The way it should be.
Disquiet crept in as she realised something had changed. She was … not different, but the same. Again. Herself, once more. She had been away.
Her heart was thudding, Mystique realised. Alarm, teetering on the edge of panic. A growing dread. Neither was useful, not now, when her faculties were returning like sensation to a numb foot.
She reached for the coffee cooling rapidly on the bedside table, and put it to her lips. The warmth of the cup made her purr, and the bitterness on her tongue warred with the sugary dregs. Eyes closed in delight, she drank deeply, refusing to forego the pleasure of it even as she began to tease out the puzzle. How long?
How long had her body been dulled? Vision, touch, taste, all compromised. For more than a month. Or – was it her brain? Reasoning? Logic? She thought back, reviewing the plans, and plots. Some were unnecessary. Malicious. And calling in her chip against the Wolverine? For this? Irrational. Immoral. If Magneto needed to die, she would kill him.
Forty years, she reminded herself. Forty years of prejudice, and anger, and hate. Forty years of feeding his obsession with anything that would pay - murder, espionage, organised crime. He had killed her love the moment he chose to sacrifice their child, but the loyalty lingered. Forty years. His death was hers to deal.
The sudden insight was shocking. The unfamiliar clarity, with no sting of emotion, no slap of hate. Nothing redirecting her from logic or analysis. The realisation clawed at her gut, forcing bile into her throat. Mystique leapt from the bed, and sprinted for the toilet as her stomach rebelled.
Who? Who could have done this, she raged through the convulsions. Xavier, of course, but … she knew the feel of him. And the steel of him, and he wouldn't lower himself to this .. this .. violation. She had been raped. Her will, torn away. Mystique shuddered. She had nothing left to vomit, but her body was still intent on turning itself out, as if it could purge her of the invasion. The shame. The consequences.
Dread slid over her skin. The consequences!
She forced herself to the vanity on wobbly legs, and took a long drink of water straight from the faucet, before straightening to stare at herself in the mirror.
When had she decided they needed to die? Had it been her, or … someone else? She had her reasons – love turned sour, resentment, loss. Fear for her child, love, a mother's ambition. Doubts about the future he was so desperate to shape.
The breath hissed out of her as she recognised her motivations, stripped of the noise that had surrounded them before. Her feelings, without a doubt. But were they motivation enough? Yes, the Brotherhood needed to fall. Magneto needed to be stopped. But ...
She would have never sent an assassin after him. She owed him an honourable death.
And Charles. Yesterday, she had whispered in Sabretooth's ear to ensure Erik's strike on the Mansion would claim Charles as well. But today - nothing in her would allow him to be dead. Her first friend. Her protector. Even as she waged war on his dream, Charles Xavier had always been safe, more protected than her ever knew. Sometimes, in her dreams, she wore the black and silver, that shiny X taunting her, just out of her reach.
Someone had wanted them both dead. Magneto and Xavier, twin poles of the mutant world. Why?
Who? What was coming?
Her mind flicked back to the massacre in the cafe, and unseeing eyes of the murderer. Raped, her brain screamed, and fear burned acid in her mouth as she remembered that thousands had died, all around the world.
So much power, and so very ruthless. And with the X-men and the Brotherhood in disarray … the strike would come soon.
Mystique's mouth firmed as she searched for her phone, then quickly keyed in new orders for the Wolverine. The jitters were rage, she told herself. Rage, and the lust for the revenge. Later, she would drink them deep, but now – she had a weapon to redeploy. A coup to deflect. A daughter to save.
And an enemy to meet.
*
Wolverine was stripping the mangled leather from his body when his phone started buzzing in one of the fancy lockers. He considered ignoring it – Rogue was dressing slowly just a few feet away, and they needed to talk this thing out – but too many years of last minute instructions had trained him well.
Mystique, he saw. A text message.
ABORT ABORT ABORT.
And wasn't that just too fucking late.
He frowned at the order and made a note to call Mystique later before returning to the fight to remove the leather pants. Rogue's eyes were glued to his ass, he realised, and maybe a shower was in order - 'specially since they were the last two left down here.
“So – we back to talking yet?” he asked as her scent rose between them.
“No. But I'm open to --”
Colossus burst through the swinging door, his terror and pain announcing him in a welter of acrid hormones.
“The Professor! He's dead! And Jean … we think Jean killed him,” the blond giant blurted, and he looked about six fucking years old with all that loss in his eyes.
“Incorrect.” The voice rose from behind the kid, and he could smell nothing familiar in whoever the fuck this was. “Jean Grey did nothing. She was incapable. The Phoenix has done what she could not.”
The light fell on her as she stepped through the doorway - a nightmare, wearing Jean's clothes, and Jean's body, and Jean's face. But his every base instinct assured the Wolverine that nothing of Jean remained.
She had killed a man, Colossus had said. Yet, Wolverine could detect only curiosity in her scent, as she tilted her head a little, red lips pursed as she watched them react. He schooled his features into stillness – he couldn't show weakness, not to her – and forced his muscles to relax. He felt like a mouse scurrying under the gaze of a hawk, and his animal was cowering, shaking.
What the fuck was she?
“Your Professor was lost in sorrow. I have but released him,” Jean Grey said, as if the explanation would make it easier for them. The Phoenix, Logan corrected himself. She calls herself the Phoenix. Jean was Rogue's teammate, Scott's wife, the kids' mentor … this thing is not Jean.
“The world is clean now. Wheels within the wheels, moving.”
So, crazy? Check.
Powerful? Bitch killed Xavier. Fucking check.
And the only other question he had was how in hell he was gonna get Rogue outta here safe while he took this bitch down. He knew insanity when he saw it, and he sure as hell wasn't letting his girl anywhere near that.
“Oh, dear boy. You have no idea of her potential, do you? He wants to lock you in a box, child, and keep you safe. So sweet,” the Phoenix cooed, sliding in close to Rogue, her fingers trailing slowly over the younger woman's denim-clad hip.
“But you know the truth, don't you Rogue? You're the dangerous one. He's merely an animal, used up and soon to be broken. You're the real killer,” she whispered, as if confiding some sort of delicious secret.
Wolverine ordered himself to ignore Rogue's dizzying arousal, so warm and thick and intrigued, and focus all of his senses on the immediate threat. It was the Phoenix's smug smile, and the surge of triumph in her scent, that forced his attention back to the younger woman. Her eyes were closed, as if the world was too ugly to look at, and when she opened them, Marie's warm brown eyes had given way to a cold, hard green that shone with malice. The real Rogue, he knew. The unpredictable bitch.
“Oh, he knows. He made me that way,” she said, and moved to slide her arm around the Phoenix's waist. They turned as one, and made their way out of the locker room, two dark goddesses sharing secrets of war, and death, and destruction.
His girl was gone, and all he could do was howl.
*
Spending Sebastian's money had never been quite so fufilling, Emma thought. She had wasted it on pretty things at first, but there was only so many animals they could make into white coats, or so many beautiful boys (or pretty cars, or cute little houses). The blueprints had changed that. Nearly a decade, now, she thought as she readied herself to leave the tower. It had seemed ridiculous that it could work, but her little scientist had demonstrated with a diamond box, and her hand inside it. She could still taste that first rush of power, and it was nothing – nothing! - compared to the bliss of the diamond room.
Dusk was fast approaching, but even at night, even with a sliver of moon, the millions of facets magnified each other, and bounced back and forth into a shrieking crescendo of light and power. It was a side effect, of course, but she chose to see it as a visual counterpart for the mental energy she was throwing out into the world. She was a powerful telepath in her human form, Emma knew, but in her diamond form, the energy was doubled and trebled by her every facet. And the diamond room provided a million more facets, a billion more, amplifying the signal, reflecting it back, and amplifying it again and again in a never-ending vortex of psychic energy.
For a decade, she had struggled to harness the power, until she had stumbled across an account of Cerebro, Professor Xavier's very own technological wonder. It gave him range, and he gave it focus, she was intrigued to find.
The path forward was very clear, then. Control Xavier, and she could control the world.
“Xavier simply refines the signal. You are the source,” Emma reminded herself as she pulled on high, white boots over similarly toned stockings.
Sheer bravado, however, was for shortsighted men like Sebastian Shaw. She was the source, but she wasn't above taking extra measures. It was heavy, as necklaces went, but incredibly beautiful, her storage device. A diamond for every angle in the room, and complex circuitry in platinum wire, giving her access to power stored over a decade, and a refinement of control beyond the skills of any other telepath. Even Xavier.
She would have quite liked to test it against him, Emma thought. Whoever had stolen that opportunity from her would be made to regret it. There was, after all, no one else who could challenge her – Xavier had made sure of that. Poor little Jean.
She considered a cloak – she hadn't yet worn the arctic fox – but reluctantly conceded that Westchester in September would be barely verging on autumnal, far too warm for such a statement.
“I'm ready, Tonio. On the roof in five,” she ordered silently, and closed her eyes to take one last hit of the power before leaving this place. She climbed the few stairs to the roof slowly, her eyes adjusting to the weak polar sunshine, and the sensation of wind on her face strange and exciting.
“Miss Frost,” her pilot saluted her, and she nodded before climbing into the seat beside him. He didn't need to know she was breathless at the kiss of fresh air for the first time in months. As the helicopter lifted into the sky, she watched the home she had built for herself so many years ago shrink to nothing against the field of glistening white. After Xavier and Magneto had torpedoed Sebastian's foolish dream, she had needed a bolthole to outlast her enemies, and she had grown to appreciate the solitude of Sassivik. But it was time to return to the world.
Emma lifted her head and looked out to the horizon. The helicopter would slip invisibly into American airspace, and her little jet was waiting in Prudhoe Bay. Antonio would set it down on the basketball court, and she would tell them – once – to take her to the lower levels. First, she had taken Xavier, and now, she would take his X-men. There would be no more torpedoes.
She had already set the world into disarray.
Time to rein it in.
*
The seduction was unexpected.
Her nerve endings were on fire, Rogue realised. Her skin was singing with energy, begging for more contact with this woman. This force. She was … elemental, Rogue considered as they climbed the stairs together. Even through their clothing, even with her control clamped tight, Rogue knew exactly what the Phoenix was. A being of pure feeling.
Like to like, Marie whispered in her ear. But she is not you. She is not us.
Us, Rogue concentrated. Not like us. Marie had retreated so suddenly that Rogue had been momentarily trapped, alone in an eerily silent mind. You're the real killer, she heard, and Marie was gone, even Wolverine was gone, with only the demons left to keep her company. And the Phoenix, tap, tap, tapping at her mind, and slurping up hate and resentment and Sabretooth's vile black rage.
Glut yourself, bitch, Rogue thought, and but the Phoenix just smiled. Not so different to Jean, after all, Rogue ventured, watching the other woman's face for the slightest reaction. All she could see, however, was lust, hungry eyes dipping down the front of her shirt and wandering fingers tracing the seam of her jeans. Rogue forced herself not to wonder about Jean and practised the vacancy, practised being open and clear and easily influenced.
And Marie laughed, and the Wolverine was horny, and her father was caught in a paroxysm of disgust as Rogue called the multitude, harnessed every voice in her head to resist, to chatter, to add to the clamour. Even Xavier had been unable to make his way past the disorienting swirl of thoughts and feelings; so many separate minds, all trapped in her head. The Phoenix thought she had, but Rogue – and Marie – knew better.
They were approaching the med bay, and Rogue steeled herself for what she was about to see. She had respected Xavier even when he had been her enemy, and if she'd felt more like hired hand than beloved student since joining the X-men, well, perhaps she hadn't been ready for another mentor. Didn't mean she wanted to see the man dead, though, and walking in hand in hand with his supposed killer … her mouth twitched. Awkward.
“What did you mean Xavier was lost in sorrow?” she asked as they strolled down the hall together.
“She made him watch,” the Phoenix said desultorily. “Each killing. She used him to reach out and touch their minds, turn them into monsters. The guilt, you know.” Her smile made it clear the Phoenix was untroubled by guilt, or regret, and she had pitied Xavier for his weakness.
Smug bitch, Rogue thought angrily then stopped short, dragging the other woman to a halt as well.
“She? You mean – not you? Jean?”
The answering laugh was one part amusement to two parts derision.
“Oh no, not Jean. She might have had the talent but suffered from an overwhelming lack of vision. But then, Emma Frost has always had vision, but a distressing lack of talent … quite impressive, really, that she should manage something like this.”
Emma Frost. Havana. Long chats about power and potential and taking control. And her old friend Logan, who had arrived at the Mansion just days before the killing had begun.
But … mass murder. Raping a man's mind to execute mass murder. She had slit her own father's throat, and grown up killing people for money, but she had never considered killing innocents. There was a line, and he had drawn it in the sand for her. Even if his old friend had jumped straight across it, Logan wasn't a part of this.
She hoped.
Immaterial, anyway. They'd deal with Emma fucking Frost when she was in striking distance. Until then, her immediate problems included surviving her pissed off teammates, managing her possibly murderous ex, and somehow dealing with the scary murdering bitch currently swanning around the Mansion giving orders.
She needed to figure out how to do it. Because for all the power singing under her hand, Rogue was pretty damn sure this was one mutant she did not want inside her head.
*
It wasn't his first autopsy, but it was certainly the hardest. Not the science – quite straightfoward – but the conditions. The murderer, watching calmly from the other side of the autopsy table, her expression flickering from politeness to boredom. The spectators – on one side of the room, Rogue, prowling a circle around her surprising new ally, their hands always touching or stroking or reaching for each other, on the other, Wolverine, Colossus, Storm, Gambit and Pryor, by turns bemused, alarmed and glaring daggers. And on the table, the victim. A man who meant everything to him.
Don't look at his face. Don't look at her face. Don't think. Just do, Hank told himself.
Professionalism had gotten him through stickier situations than this, he reminded himself. He just had to trust in his expertise, and his training, and ignore the personal issues at play here. When it came down to it, he was a scientist, and a doctor, first. Dr Henry McCoy, MD, PhD.
He would have never finished his training, or practised as a doctor, if it hadn't been for Charles Xavier.
Don't look at his face!
He returned his focus to the minute blood vessels in the subject's eyes. A small bleed, but not sustained. Indicative of an unusually rapid, immediately effective asphyxiation. One that had not only blocked the airways, but had managed to still the operation of the lungs themselves. Had it been mercy? Or a simple desire for efficiency? Doctors always make the best killers, he thought sorrowfully.
Don't look at her face!
The heart had been showing some signs of distress, certainly. Arrhythmias, a steady increase in blood pressure when it should have dropped, but there were no signs of a physical deterioration. The heart of a man of who ate well. Physically fit, despite his disability. Dedicated to calm and practised at finding it. Ambushed by stress only in these dreadful, last days.
Ambushed by a woman he had loved. A girl I had loved. A woman who is watching me now, flames flickering behind her eyes. The Phoenix, she calls herself.
Oh, Jean. So practiced at self-deception.
He was shaking with anger, now, the scalpel unsteady in his hand. A moment more, and he would snap, and be hurling it at her. An eye, perhaps. He had always loved her eyes. Instead, he released the clamps pulling the ribcage apart and began to sew the flaps of skin back together. Dignity in death. This man, above all others …
“Finished so soon, Dr McCoy? What about the digestive system? The stomach contents?”
“I am confident I have established caused of death, Jean.” Don't look at her.
The blow came from the dead man, his balled fist swinging up to catch Hank under the jaw with surprising force.
“I am the Phoenix. Jean Grey is dead.”
Fuck professionalism. Raw anger would have to do.
“No, she's not! Are you forgetting who you're dealing with here, Jean? I was here when you arrived, and I remember a little girl who was so angry at the world, she destroyed her entire street out of spite. Who tormented her own parents just because she could. Who used her power whenever she wanted and however she wanted and hated Charles for telling her to stop.”
He took a long breath and ignored the shocked faces around him. “She didn't need to call herself the Phoenix, Jean. She might have been selfish and insecure and immature but – she was honest. And she wasn't scared of who she was, either.”
That came later, he knew. The fear, and the shame of being less than perfect. They were imperfect human beings, but as Charles Xavier's favourite students, they were expected to be perfect mutants. High achieving, morally upstanding, publicly laudable. Mutant showponies.
He'd had his books, his retreat into acadaemia and the arcane. He had worked with Xavier to modify his responses, tame his anger, bely his bestial nature. Hide his physical characteristics, speak softly at all times, never shout, never run, never fight.
He remembers a snippet of conversation, half-heard from the hall outside the Professor's office.
“I've never seen power like that, Erik. Any anger, any passion, and her control just deserts her. Pure power takes over. She could quite literally destroy the world. Just by wanting it to happen.”
Now, with adult ears, he remembered the fear in Xavier's voice. And not for the first time, he wondered what she had been made to do.
Because he had admired Jean Grey, her relentless work ethic, her vast knowledge, the kindness and compassion that came as such a surprise after knowing the moody, scrappy girl. He'd put it down to growing up, then. But now he wondered if Dr Jean Grey was as false a front as this Phoenix incarnation. And if so, what had created her.
He looked, then. Xavier's face, calm in repose, looks untroubled by human concerns. Remote.
“You did this,” he thinks. “Empire building, masked as acceptance.”
She laughed, and made her way around the table to slide up next to him, close enough to speed up his traitorous heartbeat.
“Always the philosopher, Hank. But don't waste your pity. I am glorious.” She leaned in close, breathing in his ear. “Let yourself be glorious too. Fight with me.”
And that was the moment, of course, that the alarm broadcasted a presence in the main hall. He flicked his eyes up to the security monitor and blinked at the sight of a gorgeous ice blonde, resplendent in white leather, knee-high boots and far too many diamonds for the day time. He should know her name, he thinks, but he can't quite remember ...
“Who the fuck is that?” Wolverine asked with his usual charm, and they're all too busy shrugging to object to his language. Rogue raised a sceptical brow in the Wolverine's direction and scowled at the camera.
“Really, sugar? Such a short memory? That's the bitch we have to kill.”
***
The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive
Barely Legal Since 2000
Author's Chapter Notes:
What a lovely birthday present - to have the WRFA up and running again :D With thanks to Bancainte for the beta ... you cracked your whip, and the result WAS better for it :D