26: Gods among men
The anonymous black limousine rumbles out of the garage the minute the door is high enough to let it escape. It looks like hearse, Jubilee thinks, and it's out of her mouth before she can push the thought back.
“Well, somebody did die,” she cracks, and Mystique glances away from the road to raise an eyebrow at her outburst. That she can deal with – Scott's snort of disgust from the back seat stings, and Kitty's strangled sob brings tears to her own eyes.
Light relief, Jubilee thinks bitterly. That's all you ever were, and you can't even do that anymore. She stares out the front window and forces herself to shut up and watch the greyness of New York subside into the green of the suburbs as they drew closer to Westchester.
Mystique had stepped into the literal – and metaphorical – driving seat when it became obvious Kitty and Scott were both in shock. Jubilee's bitter about that, too.
It's not that she's not sad about the Professor – of course she is! He had taken her in when she was 14 years old and given her a new purpose in life – but is Jubilee the only one who remembers what he taught them? There are other X-men in danger right now, and they need her, so she's not about to check out just because the Professor wasn't here anymore.
Breaking down, sinking into catatonia – that isn't going to help things. “Not going to help!” she wants to scream at her teammates, but then, that probably wouldn't help either. Right now, it looks like it's Team Jubilee and Mystique, something that would have once ranked as Most Unlikely to ever, ever, EVER happen. Effective, though. They had powered their way through the facility, unlocking cells, taking out guards, ushering the dazed not-mutants out to freedom.
They had been looking for the children, but it quickly became obvious they'd been taken elsewhere. Jubilee's dread had sent her spinning into a series of horrible scenarios, but Mystique stopped her short.
“I'm thinking someone's had a stab of conscience,” she had observed drily. “The lab here – feels like a testing facility. Maybe they don't see the need to test on the kids. Maybe it's just because we're dangerous.” She eyeballed Jubilee dispassionately and shrugged. “Be thankful they're not here, girl.”
“What are we searching for, then?”
“You'll see.”
Mystique had only slowed once they got to the central lab, and it became clear she had a specific goal in mind. “Help me!” she'd barked at Jubilee as she dragged open the huge industrial refrigerator to reveal boxes upon boxes of neatly packed syringes.
The Cure.
They smashed the syringes against the wall. Stamped them underfoot. Threw them like darts at the ceiling. Carton after carton, emptied on the floor, clear liquid spreading across the floor like a flood of tears.
“Gonna turn up the heating, since it was in the fridge,” Jubilee said, remembering a disastrous lab project that had seen her grow mould rather than maintain a sterile plate. “What about the research itself? Can we do anything about that?”
“Not right now,” Mystique had answered grimly. “But when this is done? I know a man who can upload code with his mind. He might not even count this as a favour.”
“If they don't get to him first,” Jubilee had muttered, and found herself on the end of a questioning glance.
“They won't. Not if we remove the threat,” Mystique said, and her tone had hinted at something Jubilee still hasn't come to grips with.
The fact they were heading for the Mansion? That meant whoever had started all of this was there too. Jubilee has a Very Bad Feeling. It's not just the standard things-about-to-go-cray-cray bad feeling, either. Her skin is crawling with dread, and fingernails are biting into her palms, and fuck, they're here. The familiar gates slide silently open, and she's ready to beg Mystique to turn the car around.
She's not a coward. Never has been. So what in the eighteen levels of hell is going on? Her heartbeat is slamming in her ears as the car comes to a halt, and her limbs seem heavy as she climbs out of the car, there's something, there's something ...
She's worrying about nothing, she tells herself as they huddle together in the front hall, looking for a clue as to where to go. There are voices somewhere, but they're far away, somewhere in the lower levels. That's just wrong, she finds herself thinking. Upstairs is noisy, down below we have to be quiet – but the whole place is quiet now, without the children. Lifeless.
Her spirits rebound with a wild yank, and something reassures her that's it's all okay, there's no problem here. Perhaps everyone was in the dining hall, sitting down to roast beef and slightly overcooked vegetables. Perhaps they're out at the swimming pool, having fun.
Perhaps they should come quietly to the medbay, and stand on the safe side of the room, well away from the danger, near the angel in white. She'll protect them.
“Angel? You? Not even Jubilee will believe that,” a disbelieving voice sniffs, and that disdain is too fucking familiar, but it can't be Jean because it was inside her head and Jean doesn't do stuff like that without asking, Jubilee reassures herself. There's no one talking in her head, can't be …she's not even a mutant anymore.
“Jubilee? Are you okay?”
Mystique's voice is loud in the crowded elevator and she grabs onto it like a lifeline. “I don't … I heard ...”
“Yes. Someone's playing games. Ignore them,” Mystique says coolly, and Jubilee wants to ask how the fuck she's supposed to do that when the elevator glides to a stop, and the doors open.
It was Jean, she gasps. Sort of. Not really, she realises as the tall redhead turns cold, black eyes in their direction. There's no feeling there, no regard whatsoever – not even Jean's usual pissy contempt.
“Jean!” Scott cries behind her, and she throws herself in front of him, not wanting him to see.
*
The Phoenix wasn't buying the buddy-buddy best friends routine anymore, and Rogue was pretty sure she knew what was going to happen: she was dead, the minute they dealt with Shiny Obnoxious over there. Possibly sooner: the Phoenix seemed inclined to swat them like flies at the most minor annoyance.
She wonders if the newcomers had any idea how close they'd been to complete annihilation when they'd charged through the open door. Cyclops, sans goggles, Jubilee, Shadowcat and a stranger, who seemed to be in charge. Rogue was still wondering at that, when Jubilee caught sight of the Phoenix, and threw herself in front of Cyclops to stop him in his tracks.
“What's happened to Jean?” Jubilee whispered, and Rogue simply shook her head behind the other woman's back. Now was not the time for explanations.
“She's liberated herself,” the stranger breathed, her voice naggingly familiar. “God help us.”
The Phoenix stalked towards the newcomers, a smile stretching across her beautiful face. Not for Cyclops, but for tall brunette who stood in front of him.
“Well, well, well. Proud of me at last? How nice. What brings you here, Mystique?”
Mystique? Rogue repeated in shock. Mystique?
“Oh – that's right, I already know!” the Phoenix said pointedly, glancing at Rogue. “But the family reunion will have to wait, I'm afraid. Busy now,” she almost sang, dismissing them.
“Actually, I was here to find out who's been meddling with my mind for the past few months,” the stranger – Mystique?- fired back, looking past the Phoenix to Emma Frost. “I guess that would be you.”
The White Queen smiled demurely and nodded her head as if accepting an honour.
“Don't be too hard on yourself, dear. Some of it was your idea. Not much, but some. And you were so stubborn! It wasn't until I had Xavier on board that it became so very easy. His power made everything easy,” she gloated.
The question had been gnawing at her for days now, and Rogue simply couldn't hold it back.
“Why? Why would you bother making people kill each other like that? Making us public enemy number fucking one, and making them come after us? What could you possibly have to gain from that?”
Rogue had expected a mental slap, or a sudden loss of the ability to breathe. The doting smile came as a shock.
“So clever, Rogue! I do love it when people ask the right questions? Very simple, dear. They needed to want to make it stop. They needed to want it enough to give me exactly what I need.”
“What could you possibly need that much?”
Emma Frost claps her satin-clad hands as if Rogue had just performed a pirouette.
“You, darling. Just you.”
*
James 'Logan' Howlett is still trying to make sense of his recently unlocked memories when the Wolverine shoves him aside, teeth bared and claws sliding free as he registers the threat to his mate.
Wolverine's right, it dawns on Logan. That almost religious awe, despoiled by pure avarice … he last saw it in Havana.
“Let me in, child. Relax your shields. I need to know what it's like to be you!” Emma wheedles. Logan can smell Rogue's fear souring the air, and he wants to tell the woman to leave her the fuck alone. But they were so close, the White Queen had said earlier. If she couldn't control her own mind, she would never control her body, and that was what Rogue wanted, Logan told himself. She wanted that above all, and he wouldn't get in her way.
“They're fighting so hard,” Rogue sobs, and she's working so hard to relax her mind that sweat drips from her brow.”Try again,”she grunts, and Emma's face goes blank as she focuses her own power. Suddenly, her eyes open and Logan gasps at the emotion blazing forth: joy, and admiration, and naked, unrestrained hunger.
“So beautiful, Rogue. So much power. Any gift, any life – all you have to do is reach out and take it,” Emma cries, and falls to her knees before Rogue. “So ungrateful, that lot. You've kept them alive! You took them from their miserable, weak bodies and gave them yourself – and thanks to Wolverine, you'll never grow old! Never die!”
Her voice was rising and falling with all the cadences of an old-time preacher, and she was almost frothing at the mouth with excitement. “You've given them immortality itself!” Emma intoned, and her voice shook with belief, and a fervour that made Logan's hair stand on end.
Immortality. Emma Frost wants to live forever, and she plans to do it in Rogue's body.
Seven years, she'd been spinning her web. Seven years, and she'd concocted the perfect plan, a way to make Rogue not only agree to absorb the White Queen, but to let her take control of what Emma had called the Rogue collective.
Not a fucking collective, Logan tells himself. Not even Rogue's to give away.
“Marie!” he howls, throwing himself into the attack.
*
The Wolverine's bellow reverberates up from the floor, shaking them all. Horror, and pain, and a sheer, ungovernable rage that makes Scott flinch just to hear it. The feral's claws spring loose and he is hurtling towards the White Queen, a cannonball of sure death.
Something catches him in mid-air, suspending him, then floating him gently back to Jean's side.
She did that, Scott realises paling. Jean had done that with the power of her mind.
“No, no, Wolverine. Let's not make it too easy for her. Such arrogance deserves to die slowly,” Jean says archly, as if they were discussing a naughty child at a church picnic.
“She'll just turn you against someone else. And where will you be then? One more death on your conscience and nothing gained. I have something much more fitting in mind.”
Scott's heart misses a beat as a sly grin stretches across his wife's face. He has no doubt what she meant. Jean had often played with the idea, joked about fitting ends and appropriately grisly deaths. But this woman wasn't joking – she is delighting in the idea of causing pain, and terror. For the first time, Scott takes in her grey pallor and the veins creeping over her skin. Decay, he thinks. Something eating her alive, from the inside. She is foreign and terrifying.
Not Jean.
His stomach revolts, and vomit splashes over his shoes, pooling around his feet. She doesn't even bother to look at him, instead gliding closer to her quarry.
“I know old age must be so tiresome, Emma, and yes, you are looking a little frayed at the edges, but I don't think I want you in Rogue's head,” the Phoenix says idly.
“I think I'd prefer to let him gut you, really, but there's something you need to know first.” She leans in close, inclining her head and adopting a screamingly false stage whisper.
“It wasn't your plan. It was never your plan. Did you really think your little mind could conceive of this alone?” the Phoenix taunts.
“Something so grand? So sweeping? Please. As if it would have been possible for you to control Xavier. Your fancy machine gave you reach, but it was I who crippled him in the first place. I who left him vulnerable.”
Scott's mind screams with questions as the Phoenix unleashes her scorn on Emma Frost. How long? Had it been sudden, or had this monster stolen his wife long ago? Had Jean known?
“ … the greatest mind of our his generation? You? Nobody but I could have done that! He created the pathways himself, when I was a child, and shaped me – hidden away, in the dark, like a secret, but always watching, always learning. And when the time came, he was glad to surrender to me. Humble! In awe of his creation, and you? Emma Frost, half telepath, half party trick? You think this could have been you?”
The Phoenix throws back her head and laughs, even as Emma Frost takes a step back, beginning to armour herself in her diamond form. A gun appears in her hand, but the Phoenix merely twitches her fingers, then opens her hand to show off the bullets.'
Scott's head begins to ache, and then he is on the floor, screaming. His mind reels with hate and anger and love and sadness, jumps to obey orders, then curls back in to relive the memories they are hurling at each other, history and slights and insults and resentments. He's tossed like jetsam on the psychic storm, helpless, vulnerable, and he can feel them tapping away at his mind, trying to steal it. It's nothing to do with him, nothing they want from him, simply a body, and energy source. A chip in the battle against each other. He is nothing, and they are huge, endless wells of power, dark and light, the very poles of being.
The light hurts his eyes, and the dark chills his soul. Neither gives a damn about him, and he submits, lays down his will, to watch a huge bird rise, soaring up until it hovers overhead, protecting him (and every other tiny, insignificant creature crouched under its wings) from relentless glare of the noonday sun.
He opens his eyes at the sound of laughter, a manic giggling at odds with a low-pitched wail of pain and loss. Diamonds are floating through the air. The Phoenix is laughing as she carves out gorgeous, gem-sized chunks from her rival's skin, the diamonds detaching themselves from the White Queen's body a few a time, dancing through the air in a glorious swirl of light. Then more, flying from the writhing form at the centre of the tableau, and then more, until she is nothing more than a twisting, tortured chain of atoms, desperately trying to reform itself into the shape of a woman.
“Goodbye, Emma,” the Phoenix says, and her voice thrums with something so human that Scott's needs to see her face. Her eyes are still black with power, and her skin grey with desolation, but her smile is horribly familiar. Jean's smile – his least favourite, but Jean's nonetheless. It was the smile she would try to hide when she knew she had the upper hand, or felt bitter and slighted. The smile that broke his heart, even as it tells him that his wife isn't completely gone.
Had never been gone.
Had never, perhaps, really been his at all.
Her power had claimed her first.
**
Disclaimer: This fanfiction was written for personal enjoyment rather than profit. No infringement on the rights of the intellectual property owners is intended.
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