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| No Surface All Feeling; 5/22 early evening - Rugby crew + others | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Nov 17 2013, 06:01 PM (573 Views) | |
| Kiwi Black | Nov 17 2013, 06:01 PM Post #1 |
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International Bloke of Mystery
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[Continued from Roimati Toroa] A bullroarer wasn’t a sound made for the close confines of one of the standard officer issue rooms on the Helicarrier, but though he noted that last half second of loud whine as Gateway brought them in, giving a shit about the excess noise was about the last bloody thing on Hone’s mind as he took another round of stock in his surroundings. The team from rugby, just as they’d been a second ago, more was the pity, Grey-Ginger a small pile in Wings’ arms, with barely more than a slight shifting of green hair to distinguish her as something living. Gates himself, Purple, but there were two more people in this particular room, and somehow the former chieftain wasn’t surprised to recognize Mantis, already rising smoothly from a cross-legged position on the floor. She met Hone’s eyes briefly with an expressive, but completely bloody mysterious look, while already moving unerringly to Wings and his burden, placing one delicate-looking green hand gently against his arm and guiding him toward the double-bed in the center of the room, while Hone turned his attention to the room’s other previous occupant. Pony-tail, silvery metal leg, now rising to his own feet just a little behind Mantis. Rankin’s friend from the Camp, the one running all the kids. Something about Kara there too, something Hone vaguely remembered Madison clucking over earlier in the morning, and there did look like some kind of look happening htere for a second, before the Indian’s attention also had turned toward the big Canadian. “Get Summers here,” Hone turned to tell Gateway, wasting no more time with watching everyone else shift and move around the room. “Wait till the end of whatever mission he’s on, but, then bring him back to here and now. Got it?” Briefest suggestion of a nod on the old naked bugger’s face, and then another whistle and he was gone. “Good as gold,” Hone said to nothing in particular, inappropriately as it could have been, under these bloody circumstances. Nothing to be done about that, though. “This One will see what she can do for Jeans Grey and Summers,” Mantis announced, perhaps for all their benefits, or perhaps just to try to encourage one or other of the pair of other telepaths to let go of each other enough to get the stiff, nearly unresponsive green-haired form set down on the bed. Couldn’t bloody tell, as usual with her, and right now, there wasn’t much to be done about it either. Next move... was out of his hands for once, and Hone didn’t much like it, but that was the way the sand castle crumbled sometimes, so that was how it’d get played. |
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| Mimic | Nov 19 2013, 06:41 PM Post #2 |
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One Man X-Team
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Get the hell outta there. His mind latched onto that like some kinda talisman. Get out, like he could somehow leave it all behind there in that cold, dead place. Everything that'd happened. What he'd done. What he'd had to do. All the goddamned things he knew now that he'd never ever wanted to fucking know. Every single thing that'd happened that shouldn't have. The image of that face. Lank red hair and cold green eyes, markings on her face and a life she'd barely had a chance to have before it got ripped away. A lost woman, frozen in ruin. Get the fuck outta that place and not look back as he stepped through that portal, jaw set, eyes ahead. Feeling empty and hollow and with another woman in his arms that was both his and not his. Wondering how much damage this had all done to her. How much of her life she'd just sacrificed. Just like that, like maybe there was some magic way to leave all the fucked up shit in that field in the middle of nowhere, they were back. Walking from that place into a normal looking room. People he almost didn't even fucking notice until the green woman, Mantis, was suddenly there, hand on his arm. Calvin looked down at her impassively for a second or two, trying to figure out what the fuck she was doing. Realized she was trying to get him to move, guide him toward the bed he'd hardly noticed. He let her, still holding tight to the light, limp burden in his arms. Bit by bit, like color slowly seeping back into a black and white picture, the things and people around him came into focus. Kiwi Black, Gateway and that damned loudass thing he used to open portals, though that sound was dying away now. Kara, not far behind him and sending a look he probably couldn't have made any sense of even if his own damned brain was working anything like normal toward the last person in the room. Forge, and the winged man's attention turned from the rest to the man that was the best friend he'd ever had. Couldn't manage to say a damned thing, just met his eyes. Maybe he could understand what a fucked up mess it'd all been, just from that. Fucker could do shit like that sometimes. “Get Summers here,” he heard Hone say and a muscle somewhere in his jaw twitched. “Wait till the end of whatever mission he’s on, but, then bring him back to here and now. Got it?” Then that damned noise again and he guessed Gateway was gone. Gone for Summers and, yeah, part of him resented the fuck outta that as he looked down a Jean again. But it was what she needed, wasn't it? Her husband. The rest was his problem to deal with, not hers. “Good as gold,” he heard the New Zealander say and Mimic's head whipped around, face drawing into a scowl as every fucking bit of goddamned rage he had boiling under the surface threatened to boil over. But he clamped down on it, ground his teeth and set his jaw, despite the sudden urge to just blast the hell outta the big bastard. Good as gold his ass. It was about as far from that as anything could goddamned get. “This One will see what she can do for Jeans Grey and Summers,” Mantis announced, giving him something else to focus on and he managed to get at least part've the scowl off his face as he turned back to the green woman. Realized he was still holding onto Jean when he should've already put her down, but couldn't quite seem to get his fucking arms to listen to him to do it. Held her tighter, just for a second, as he looked down into her face. "Yeah," he said, reluctantly, but then tore his eyes away and looked over to Mantis again, "Yeah, okay. S'alright," he told Jean, maybe as much for himself as for her, as he looked back to her again worry taking the edge of the scowl, "we're back. I'm gonna lay you down so she can-" fuck, what? Try to put her brain back together? Try to...dammit, he didn't' know, "So Mantis can help." If she could, or if anybody could and...fuck. He looked back to Forge briefly then, met the other man's eyes, noticed Kara standing not far behind him, looking on. Still couldn't come up with any damned words to say. Just...fuck. |
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| Forge | Nov 20 2013, 08:58 PM Post #3 |
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Anointed Prophet of the Atheists
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Time. There had ever been to little of it, and too much of it, often in the same space and period, and today had been no exception. A thousand things to do. Attending to the Dance, and the aftermath of all they’d been through. Discussing with a recuperating Blink, with Rogue, with whoever seemed to have thoughts on the matter what could be put in place for their training. The business - enough for twice, three times as many technological adepts as they had to keep occupied for some time - of re-functionalizing the Helicarrier. Completing Julian’s hands. A thousand things to do, and each attended to, in their turns and out of them, wherever the space could be found to fit them. And yet the day - or at least the afternoon - had crawled, each second stretching out upon itself with all the tension such elasticity suggested. Rankin, the fucker, and Kara. Both on that mission, beyond all communications. And no word, no news for hours. A good thing, one had to suppose (or at least try to suppose), for any news that had come early, from what he’d understood of the parts of the plan they’d outlined for him, would likely have been the news of failure. Yet that had not, could not, make the waiting easier. When Mantis had appeared in the lab half an hour ago, a single word on her lips and a bottle of rye whiskey in her hand, it had been almost a relief, despite the green-skinned, dark-haired woman’s nearly infuriating tendency to cryptic reserve. However much the Maker might have questioned unanswered about her choices last night, failing to alert and take proper steps to prevent something she’d clearly foreseen before it was too late, the fact remained that she had some sort of precognitive talent. Not to mention, if he understood it aright, an... association - perhaps that was the nearest word to fitting whatever it was - with the tattooed man with the habit of speaking in heavily accented banalities who was leading this particular mission. How that had happened, Forge had not managed to figure out, but the single word - Rankin’s last name, uttered in the absence of any emotional color had been enough to not only get his attention, but have him following the precognitive telepath without question, out of the lab and through the various levels and halls of the Helicarrier, to here, a private bedroom. If she’d realized the oddness, she’d given no sign of it, any more than she’d given any indication that she meant to explain the purpose of the bottle of whiskey, sitting alone (though not quite forgotten) to one side of where she’d sat silently and proceeded to give every sign of peaceful meditation, legs folded and hands balanced on her thighs, though without seeming to bother to close her eyes. With nothing else apparently forthcoming, Forge had joined her, settling his own thoughts to their long-accustomed practices of meditation, distilled away from worry and concern and a certain degree of what he’d count as understandable irritation with the green-skinned woman. Five minutes, ten, twenty - twenty-five had passed, by the former sergeant's reckoning when the low-pitched vibrato of a bullroarer filled his ears, presaging the arrival of the silent Australian, bringing with him the group that had left for Stamford that afternoon. Mantis was already rising to her feet, almost before the sound had even filled the small confines of the room, and Forge himself turned to see only a moment later, surprise tempered and quickly suppressed as he took heed of the group that had abruptly crowded the space. Gateway, the Australian, much the same as ever, and Kiwi Black himself, quickly passed over as Forge’s gaze went to Kara. It paused there briefly, long enough to see what looked like concern, tension, but also a wholeness - not a lack of hurt, or care, but a wholeness, at the least - then moved on again, falling on Calvin. Holding a slumped, limp figure in his arms, that it took Forge a moment to place as Jean Grey, or Summers, or whatever she’d thought fit to call herself, before he dismissed that for the moment and returned to studying his friend. No wholeness there, that much he could see from the line of the big man’s shouders, his wings, even before Calvin turned his eyes his way and gave the Cheyenne man a direct line into just how much he’d underestimated in calling the look a lack of wholeness. Never. He’d been there the morning that they’d found Jean and the other telepaths disappeared from the Camp without a trace, without explanation. He’d been there on Saturday, when Calvin had learned just what had happened to the red-haired, broken woman who’d found some way to come to mean something to him, in those few short weeks in the camp, and that that woman was gone, a tortured, tattooed puppet with her powers all that was left of her. He’d been there for Rankin both those times, and yet he’d never never seen a look of such utter desolated destruction in the big man’s eyes. What... Mantis was already moving, making a smooth, yet unhurried line toward Rankin and his unresponsive burden, and on the other side of the room, Forge heard the tattooed man’s voice giving quick, clipped orders to the teleporter regarding the woman’s husband. For his part, though, the inventor remained where he was for now, assessing and evaluating and letting his mind spin faster to try to pull together whatever details he could glean into something resembling sense without disrupting the moment. As the shorter, darker-skinned aborigine set his instrument spinning once more and disappeared from view, Hone Heke seemed to nod. “Good as gold,” the New Zealander murmured, loud enough for all of them to hear it. If there had been any three words that could have been more singularly poorly chosen as the absolute wrong phrase for the situation, Forge was glad that even his own imagination wasn’t up to the task of finding them. Sure enough, there was what seemed like a practically audible growl from Calvin, whose head whipped around with a new life and venom in his eyes that Heke could likely count himself lucky to have escaped from what could quite clearly easily have been a physical blasting gaze in any one of three modalities. Just a moment, and Calvin seemed to physically clamp down on his own reaction, while a moment later Mantis spoke up, as calmly unruffled - one might say she’d gone well beyond the border states where it came to the land of detachment - as ever. “This One will see what she can do for Jeans Grey and Summers,” [she] announced, and the words were enough to draw Calvin’s attention back toward her, while Forge kept his own gaze on Heke. No sign the tattooed man had reacted to the threat in his friend’s look, or from outward appearances that he’d even noticed it, but Forge would not have even considered taking a bet that he hadn’t. No matter though - it seemed that the moment had passed for now, and there was the matter of Jean, however oddly the green-skinned telepath had chosen to refer to her. "Yeah," [Calvin] said, reluctantly, and he seemed to be looking down at the woman in his arms, who’d also turned, a very slight shift in her head that gave Forge a momentarily clearer view of her whitened knuckles, clenched tightly around his friends’ forearms. Looking up at him too, and the expression on her face was... stricken? Blank? Both, or none of those, yet her gaze was locked tight on his too, and for a moment, a long-forgotten memory crossed Forge’s mind of seeing a woman with the same face, in the darkness of the barracks, locking her eyes on Rankin like he was some kind of liferaft in an ocean of pain. His friend lifted his gaze toward Mantis, but only for a moment, before his eyes dropped once more too. "Yeah, okay. S'alright," he told [the green-haired bundle], gruffly but more tenderly than should have fitted for the spoilt, haughty woman whose portrait had been painted in between the lines of what his friend had said of dealing with this alternate version of Jean Grey, "we're back. I'm gonna lay you down so she can-" A faltering, but he rallied, "So Mantis can help." And yet, for all those words, Forge noticed, his friend had not moved an inch, shifted a single muscle toward putting his burden down on the bed as Mantis was urging. Couldn’t shift them, the inventor guessed, and he was already moving even before his friend’s gaze had shifted to rest on him once more, reaching the winged man’s side a moment later. “Fucker,” Forge said steadily, keeping his gaze locked on his friend’s as he put a firm, but unchallenging hand to the bigger man’s arm to guide his motion. “Set her down.” No help for it though, not while she too, was still clutching him like a drowning soul, both hands gripping tightly to Calvin’s arms. With a degree of gentleness, though no loss of resolve, Forge set to the task of loosening that hold, trying to ignore the glimpses of the expression on her face that he couldn’t wholly avoid. Stricken. Broken. Inadequate words, and there was also the sense of something shifting, momentary changes to the cast of her face that he couldn’t piece into sense. She was - there, he’d managed to prise her hands from the death-like grip she’d had on Calvin - murmuring something, it seemed. A single syllable, repeated over at long, irregular intervals, well below the threshold of real audibility. What it was, the inventor couldn’t tell, and for the moment, it seemed more than secondary to the matter of getting her to the bed, where Mantis waited, already mumuring something like soothing nonsense, not dissimilar to what he’d found her speaking to Brian when he’d come to attend the boy’s injuries the night before. “What happened?” Forge asked, turning back to let his gaze find Kara with a questioning glance, because it seemed as though, in all this group, she was the most likely to be capable of supplying anything like a coherent answer to the question, and no less to assure himself that she really was as close to whole as he thought he’d seen on their first arrival, now that just how far from it Calvin was had impressed itself upon him. |
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| Purple Girl | Nov 21 2013, 07:24 PM Post #4 |
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I Can Make You Love Me
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The sound of Gateway's bullroarer, low and almost mournful in a way she'd never really noticed before, and Rugby faded behind them. It was replaced by one of many nearly identical rooms on the helicarrier, looking like the one she had herself and indistinguishable from all the rest, except for it's occupants. Kara couldn't have said she'd ever been more glad to see two people than she was to see Mantis and Forge, both on their feet and Mantis moving toward Calvin Rankin and his small, shattered burden. Her own eyes, of their own accord, sought out Forge. Lingered there for moment. They'd brought his friend back to him broken. In nearly as many pieces as the woman the winged man was carrying. He'd had to do things, confront things, no one should ever be forced to do. For that, she was sorry. And she was worried, for both of them, but they'd survived - battered and worn and tired but alive - and that was something. It meant they had a chance to at least try to mend it. It wouldn't be an easy road. She'd watched Madison go down a similar one, after Bochs had lost his mind. After he'd had to put his best friend down like a rabid animal to save the rest of them. With time and luck and support, the purple-skinned woman hoped that Mimic would be able to move past this even worse situation the same way that Box had. That look on his face, however, as the winged man met his friends gaze when Forge's attention shifted to him couldn't help but make her wonder, however. So much pain and rage and a leaden shock that seemed to hang so heavily on him that he hardly appeared to notice Mantis' determined urgings to move Jean to the bed and lay her down. “Get Summers here,” Kiwi Black said to the silent Gateway and Kara's attention shifted to him for the moment, hand reaching up to push the tangled mass of her hair back from her forehead as she ignored the pounding in her temples. Minor compared to the more immediate issues. “Wait till the end of whatever mission he’s on, but, then bring him back to here and now. Got it?” With the barest nod of acknowledgement, Gateway started the bullroarer whirling again, vanishing into the portal. “Good as gold,” the New Zealander pronounced, the same as she'd heard him do a thousand times before. It was habit, Kara imagined, but not anything Calvin Rankin would want to hear and his head snapped around, pinning Hone with a look that should have set him on fire entirely without the use of any powers. For a moment, the sick certainty that she was going to be forced to add one more wrong to this entire mess settled heavy in her chest and Purple Girl tensed. He had a right to his anger, his pain, but she couldn't let him do something he'd regret later. But somehow the big man pulled himself back from that brink a moment later and she felt some, but not all, of that tension leech out again. A look toward hone showed the Jokers leader with every appearance of not having noticed the potential threat at all, but she knew better. Hone had noticed, but Mimic would've been too easy to push that extra bit over the edge by making that obvious. “This One will see what she can do for Jeans Grey and Summers,” Mantis announced and Kara watched Hone a half second longer before turning her attention back to her teammate. The little pool of calm in a room full of tension and emotions that were anything but. "Yeah," [Calvin] said, reluctantly, either unwilling or unable to do more than acknowledge that as he looked down at Jean Grey Summers, who was clutching at him still like a lifeline. The winged man gave Mantis a brief look, then said to the woman he was holding, "Yeah, okay. S'alright,"/i] he told her, but she wasn't sure if he was telling her or himself. Moving to stand slightly behind and to the side of Forge, she could see the confusion on his face over it all. Not what he'd expected, this strange tableau. Not what any of them expected, "we're back. I'm gonna lay you down so she can-" Calvin Rankin stumbled, but managed to catch himself, "So Mantis can help." Only he didn't make any real move to do it. Still stood there, holding onto her like she might be as much lifeline to him as he was to her. Maybe she was. They were the only ones who knew the whole of what had happened in that field. “Fucker,” Forge said moving even before he'd said the words and keeping his eyes and his attention on his friend, laying a hand on the other man's arm. This time, thank the gods, there wasn't any sudden rage or tension. Nothing but a turning of Mimic's head to look at Forge, that same almost blank, hollow look to his eyes. “Set her down.” No way he could, though, with her still clinging to him with white knuckled hands and so he began to gently but resolutely pry her fingers away. For a second, she thought Mimic would protest, but that protest never materialized. Kara turned her head toward Hone again, gave it a slightly shake, though even she wasn't entirely sure what she meant by the gesture. An attempt at a statement to how completely sideways this all was, maybe. Or just a general acknowledgement of the coming of the rest of long day and night. “What happened?” Forge asked and Kara turned her eyes to his again, meeting his darker ones. She took a few steps closer, not wanting to broadcast the words across the room as Mantis kept coaxing a still-reluctant Mimic to put down his fractured burden. At least she seemed to be having some success. "We did what we went to do," she told him quietly, one hand moving to rest lightly on his forearm. "We found the Hound Jean Grey, we got her away from Stamford." Pausing for a moment, her gaze moved briefly back to the other three, over by the bed, "It was ugly." There was no better word Kara could think to describe it as she turned back to Forge again. This wasn't news she wanted to bring him, but it was news he needed and Mimic wasn't in any shape to give it. Might not be for a while. "The fight was ugly, the end was brutal," the lavender skinned woman continued, "They took the worst of it." Kara's chin jerked toward Rankin and Jean, though it probably wasn't necessary. He'd know who she meant. "She...something happened, I'm still not completely sure what." Brow furrowing in concern and lingering confusion, she shook her head, "Jean overpowered the Hound enough that I could take her, but she seems to have gotten her memories, her personality, in trade." Or the personality of this world's Jean Grey before she'd become that thing Ahab had made her. Still, part of her wondered if there'd been something she could have done to stop it sooner, to prevent that. But she still couldn't think what and even if she could, there wasn't any going back to change it, was there? "Calvin," Kara continued, fingers tightening slightly on his arm, the name said quietly, "he had to finish it. And then, suddenly, this Jean was the woman he'd known. For a little while, at least. She's in a bad way. They both are." He'd seen that already, but hopefully this gave him an idea of how bad, poorly condensed as it was. And then there was the thing she'd said at the last. There was a baby. But Kara was almost afraid to mention it here, with them a few feet away. |
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| Kiwi Black | Nov 23 2013, 01:49 PM Post #5 |
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International Bloke of Mystery
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Right - buggered that up a bit, hadn’t he? Not the best time to not have bothered thinking before trotting out the stock-standard kiwisms to a group of North Americans (and Mantis, but then she was an exception to more than this), but having gone and done it anyway, some actual (though belated) thinking on Hone’s part made the New Zealander reckon it’d be best to move on, play it like he was oblivious to the violent fury of the look Wings had turned on him. Easier to step around it easy, move on if they could, because he didn’t much fancy his (or maybe anyone’s, except perhaps the half-metal Indian bugger) chances of talking the big Canuck down if he got far enough into his head to let all that rage and pain go out in anger, let alone doing much of anything at close range against a bezerker with that power set. Took the bloke a moment, but he looked like he’d got a handle on himself again even before Mantis interjected to announce her intentions of helping Grey Ginger. A look passed between the two paths then, Wings and the shrunken shell of a woman in his arms. Felt like the kind of look that another person should never have got to see, but no bloody way to help that now, and after a bit, the bearded man seemed to tear his eyes away, long enough to look to Mantis and get to agreeing with her. Agreeing with her, speaking softer words of comfort to the woman in his arms as she kept clinging tightly to him, and an explanation of his intention to set her down on the bed, like Mantis had suggested, but he wasn’t getting to do it yet, was he? It seemed - at least to Hone, from his vantage point back nearer the wall on the other side of the room, where he’d stationed himself with a decent view of the whole scene while Mantis and Wings were discussing his burden - that the Indian, the Medicine Man with the tech skills had already anticipated that reluctance. He was at his friend’s side practically by the time the big man sent a glance that might have been a plea for help, or might have just been a hope that someone else would be able to tell him how to make himself do what he clearly didn’t want to. Best to leave that there, and with a wee piece of swearing, and a few short words, the older man had set to disentangling the pair of ‘paths, working at lifting the green-haired woman’s hands from their grip on the big bugger’s arms. No protest from Wings, though maybe it had almost crossed his mind for a wee second there, but there was no fury this time, just a shattered look on his face that was desolate enough it made a bloke wonder if anger might have been a better sign. Look from Purple there, turning her head to meet his gaze, with something that wasn’t quite a shake of her head to go with it, said that she might be thinking the same thing. In response, Hone nodded, or at least lifted his head just the slightest of touches, a movement that was more in his eyes than any of the rest of his face. Long bloody, messy business they were looking at here, having to deal to. No way around it, and the former chieftain reckoned Purple knew that, well as he did, but they’d do it. Somehow or other, they’d find a way to bugger through this mess. Still, it seemed like progress - bit by bit, and not too bloody fast, but steadyish all the same - was happening now between Mantis and Rankin about getting Grey Ginger to let go (or maybe that was both of them, still, couldn’t really tell from here) enough to get her down onto the bed. Reckoning that he wouldn’t do anyone any bloody good by trying to give a hand there, Hone stayed where he was, watching with dark, but hurriedly thinking eyes as the bloke with the pony tail - sticking close by Wings, but not intervening in the business of the paths any more either - turned the obvious question to Purple. “What happened?” Purple turned her gaze on him, but didn’t start to answer before she’d taken a few steps to close the distance between them, speaking quietly, though not so quietly that someone paying attention, like Hone was, couldn’t make out her words. "We did what we went to do," she told him quietly, one hand moving to rest lightly on his forearm. "We found the Hound Jean Grey, we got her away from Stamford." Pausing for a moment, her gaze moved briefly back to the other three, over by the bed, "It was ugly." It had been that. Funny thing to say, you might have thought, about an op that had gone down without any piece of actual bloodshed, nothing much like physical damage to any of them, except it wasn’t. Not one bloody bit of funny in any of it. Making a note to himself that he’d better check on ‘Ness soon, see how her end of things had gone back in Stamford, make sure she’d gotten out as well (best there was at what she did, and he didn’t have too many worries there, but not too many wasn’t the same as none, for sure), Hone nodded to that assertion, and Purple’s restating of it, watching both groups by the bed, Purple and the Tin Man, who’d turned his gaze entirely to her, though he still had a hand on Wings, connecting the two groups like an anchor line. "The fight was ugly, the end was brutal," the lavender skinned woman continued, "They took the worst of it." No prizes for wondering who she’d meant there, though she jerked her chin that way all the same. Creasing down into that same thoughtful frown she’d had in Rugby when she’d tried to give him another account of what the bloody hell had happened in that invisible fight, the Canadian woman went through what seemed to be about the best explanation they had to go on right now. Something happened, no one knew quite bloody what, Ginger did something to the Hound’s mind that ended dumping parts of it back on her, and Wings... "Calvin," Kara continued, fingers tightening slightly on his arm, the name said quietly, and as Hone watched, the man with the pony tail seemed to pause, then twisted his arm over so that he could take hold of that hand with the metal one that ended his right arm, "he had to finish it. And then, suddenly, this Jean was the woman he'd known. For a little while, at least. She's in a bad way. They both are." Bad seemed to only make a wee tui scratch on the surface of how the two paths who’d been at Rugby were, but that was clear in Purple’s tone, however restrained her words might have been. No mistaking how much of a right bloody mess it was, not for anyone who’d caught a good look of either of their faces. And of course, there was the rest of it, the part Purple hadn’t put words to. Rightly, probably, since saying those words seemed to have ripped out most of what had been there in Ginger’s mind, on both sides of whatever joint thing was going on in there, and scythed through the last of the resolve and determination that Wings had been operating on in the end. A baby. A bloody daughter, killed by that one-legged bastard who ran the pens. Bloody hell. Almost too much to believe, and they were talking about a woman they knew had created a fantasy of a son from the twisted memories of her dead boyfriend and his clone wife’s murdered baby, and set him to life in the mind of some unsuspecting shmuck of a teenager who’d happened to cross her paths in that place, coupled to one who had some version of a daughter who’d been there herself, in another world. Wouldn’t mind it being as easy as that, now, but Hone couldn’t quite make himself believe it outright. Not with Wings seeming like the possibility had been there, that there could have been a kid who was his. Course, who knew how straight he could even think right now - but it wasn’t the time where that’d matter. First things bloody first, and that was getting her stable, and him back a wee bit off that black ledge over the hollow, broken state that he seemed to be teetering too near. Maybe the one’d help the other, but then again, maybe it wouldn’t, because Hone was betting on the first needing Ginger’s husband, and who knew how that’d turn out with Wings? Gates ought to be appearing now, come to think of- -and right on cue, as the wee bugger always bloody managed to do, the bullroarer moaned, and Gates was back in the room, standing silently beside the much taller figure of the second coming of Ramsey’s Mutant bloody Messiah. Didn’t look like the bloke in the visor had too much of a clue of why he’d been brought back here, though he was probably smart enough to have put a couple of things together, like the timing and Gates himself. Certainly didn’t take him more than a fraction of a second to turn his head in the direction of the bed, where Mantis was kneeling on the mattress attending to some sort of meditative hypnosis over his wife. “Jean!” For that one syllable, there was actually a decent level of emotion threaded into the man’s voice. Concern, care, what have you. Next moment though, he already seemed to have clamped down on himself, into that stiff, frozen caricature of someone’s idea of a good soldier, and the next words out of his mouth were spoken in clipped, artificially calm tones. “What did you do?” Summers asked. Could have been any of them he was talking to, with that question. Could have been him, could have been Mantis, could have been Wings himself, because you couldn’t bloody tell where he was looking in that bloody visor. All the same though, Hone had a suspicion - and odd bloody suspicion, but he’d have called it an even bet at least - that it was still his own wife Summers was looking at, when he’d asked it. |
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| Mimic | Nov 25 2013, 02:29 AM Post #6 |
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One Man X-Team
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Help. Jesus fuck, was there anyone or anything that could do that? With this? Calvin hoped to god there was and he knew the green woman (with the goddamned antenna of all things) would do what she could, but... Shit. They needed the strongest damned telepath they could find and he didn't think Mantis was it. He knew he wasn't and why the hell hadn't he put more effort into learning how all this worked? He had Xavier's telepathy for fucks sake. He didn't know who or what or where. Who was powerful enough to go into somebody else's head and fix whatever the hell this was. Jean, he realized, looking down at the woman he was holding and couldn't seem to put down, despite determination to do just that. Jean could've done it. And what kinda cosmic damned joke was that? “Fucker,” Forge said steadily, and Calvin looked his way as the other man laid a hand on his arm. Maybe he could do something- “Set her down.” What the hell did he think he was trying to do? The words were on the tip of his tongue, along with a protest as Forge moved to loosen Jeannie's grip on him, as tight as the one he had on her. He started to protest, opened his mouth to do it, tensed and started to pull away, but then closed him mouth again. Let it go. Somebody had to do it if he couldn't and he couldn't have put her away from him right then if his sorry damned life depended on it. So he stood there, holding Jean - who was and wasn't his Jean, as she murmured words he couldn't make out or couldn't understand, while his best friend pried her fingers off of his arms. Stood there and just watched her face, feeling like all of him was a raw, open wound, leaking out everything inside. Helpless to stop it as it emptied him out until he was just a hollow ache and nothing else. There'd been Jean and there'd been a baby and he'd been the biggest dumbass in the universe. Handed that bastard, the Master of the Hounds, another way to torture her. Gave him something else to take way from her, another way to break her into little pieces. And Ahab had done that, hadn't he? Taken everything away from her, even herself. Shredded her into nothing but ragged wisps. Mantis was there again, crooning to Jean and trying to get him to put her down. He should, Calvin knew. But knowing and doing were different things. He managed, though, slowly. Kept his eyes on hers and kept telling her, over and over, in a quiet, gruff voice that, "It'll be all right," even if he wasn't sure he believed it himself. He told her anyway as he managed to finally get his hands and arms to unlock and set her slowly, gently, down onto the bed as he heard Forge ask a question he didn't catch. Heard Purple Girl, Kara, answer but he wasn't paying attention to that, either. Just reached for one of those small, pale hands as Mantis did whatever she was trying to do. As she tried to help with something he wasn't sure there was any help for. Maybe if they called up the Frost woman, too- The sound of that damned thing Gateway swung around hummed in the air again and a portal opened again, spilling out a figure Calvin immediately recognized. “Jean!” Summers. Sounding worried, maybe. Maybe a little panicked. Definitely fucking concerned and he looked it and that might've been the first smart thing he'd ever seen any version of the man do. Like Summers always managed to do, though, he wiped that out in about a half second flat. Took just that long for him to go back to that fucking 'I don't do emotions' expression. With his wife lying on the fucking bed, looking like she looked, and he was worried about his fucking image? Fucking soldier boy. Always so fucking perfect and calm. Never let 'em see you sweat, even when he should've gave sweet fuck all about anybody in this room except the woman on the bed. “What did you do?” Of all the goddamned things to say, of all the fucking things he could've said that would've been a million times better than that, that might've made him look like he at least had some kinda damned soul, at least for his wife, and that was what came outta Summers mouth. Didn't stop to think who he was talking to, didn't have to. Didn't want to. Didn't really give a fuck, though it was clear enough to him where the Boy Scout was looking, even with that goddamned visor on. His wife lying there in that kinda shape, and first goddamned thing outta his mouth was to blame her? Oh, fuck no. With a growl he didn't even realize was coming from him, wings folded tight to his back and shoulders squared, Calvin took a few determined strides forward, hands balled tight into fists. "You son'uva bitch," he spat out, not bothering to give Summers time to react. He was already swinging before the words were out. To the other man's credit, he very nearly fucking dodged, but Summers was on the defensive and he, Calvin, had the element of surprise. His fist connected solidly and the bastard stumbled back. Calvin pressed forward, expression pulled into a grimace of fury and eyes glowing red. "She did exactly what she had to do. Talk to her like that again, I'll freeze you solid and blast your fucking head off with your own powers." And fuck, he might regret it later, but damned if he wouldn't enjoy it right now. |
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| Forge | Nov 26 2013, 09:18 PM Post #7 |
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Anointed Prophet of the Atheists
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"It'll be all right," Forge heard his friend murmur to the green-haired woman, over and again in a voice that was rough and quiet and not at all like Calvin Rankin. A mantra offered with little conviction behind it, and seeming to make even less of an impression on its intended target, who gave no indication that she’d heard or understood the winged man’s words. For now, she was Rankin’s business though, and Mantis’, and if he himself were to be capable of offering any help at all, Forge knew that he would need information that neither of the pair with Jean Grey Summers would be willing - perhaps even capable - of giving him. What happened - that was the first, obvious question, and it was to Kara he turned, meeting her eyes with a look that was both an appeal for answers and a search for assurance that she was, in fact, truly as whole as his first brief glance had suggested. After seeing the look that had been in Calvin’s eyes, hearing the note that was in his voice, it seemed almost anything unthinkable could be possible. But if she was grim, her expression serious and those dark eyes unsmiling, Kara was also still at one with herself in a way that neither her countryman nor the green-haired woman could manage, and after meeting his eyes, she crossed the short distance to where he stood, still barely an arm’s reach from Calvin as he finally set his burden down on the bed. "We did what we went to do," she told him quietly, one hand moving to rest lightly on his forearm. "We found the Hound Jean Grey, we got her away from Stamford." Forge nodded, silent for now and following her gaze back to her teammate and Calvin. The green-haired woman was out of his arms, but one pale white hand was clenched tightly around one of his friend’s, even while her gaze went far away from anything like a realization that there was another soul in the room, let alone five. Locked at her knees, and her feet, drawn up to her body, seemingly heedless of the presence of Mantis, still whispering her own soothing mantras. "The fight was ugly, the end was brutal," the lavender skinned woman continued, "They took the worst of it." Forge nodded again, not needing to follow her indication of her subject to look back to Rankin, but keeping his eyes on her as she went to to describe the occurrence of something that seemingly lacked any more detail than that, but for the brief, spare description of having received their own Jean Grey’s memories in trade. No prizes for guessing the content of at least some of those memories, or at least the tenor of them. Why it might have led to the woman on the bed, alternately staring and seeming to shake with some unnamed pit of emotion. Not so dissimilar to the few memories Forge had retained of the last month he’d known the woman, her time in the Camp. But Calvin... what had he seen - what had he had to be a part of - to have sent him beyond the knowledge he’d taken into this ill-starred mission? What had she done to him? "Calvin," Kara continued, fingers tightening slightly on his arm, the name said quietly, and the note in her voice now had Forge shifting his arm, slipping his bionic hand around to enfold hers without any moment to think of what he was doing, "he had to finish it. And then, suddenly, this Jean was the woman he'd known. For a little while, at least. She's in a bad way. They both are." Another nod was all the response Forge offered to that, though his gaze searched Kara’s for whatever further explanation she couldn’t put into words with the pair of them so close. A cruel joke. For a little while, the woman he’d known, moments after he’d had to end her existence. The cruelest of jokes, in fact, and perhaps that would have been enough to have explained that look, the hollow, desolated look that had appeared in his friend’s dark eyes. Yet if that were it, if that were all, and she was gone again, then Forge still could not find an explanation for why Calvin was still there - this other woman, who’d obviously wanted no part of him -still letting her cling to him, still murmuring those gruff solicitudes. He was still missing a piece - or many pieces - the inventor had to assume, yet before he could find a way to ask what that might be, or to divine it from what Kara and the others seemed to be carefully edging around, Gateway’s bullroarer moaned in the air beside them once more, and the Australian had returned, stepping into the background even as the tall, visored man accompanying him strode forward. “Jean!” Emotion, panic, worry, all that was natural to the situation of walking into a room and seeing one’s wife a distraught tangle huddled on the bed was in that single syllable, then almost physically pushed aside a moment later, as Summers took hold of himself, shuttering that brief glimpse of himself back behind an impassive mask and arresting his own momentum in Jean’s direction. “What did you do?” he asked, and for a split second, it was all Forge could do to try to decide whether that really had been addressed to the glassy-eyed, disoriented woman. A split second too long, as a low growl erupted from Calvin, followed almost immediately by a softer whimpering noise from the green-haired woman - a protest from the sudden release of her hand as the big Canadian dropped it and rounded on Summers. Too late, Forge’s low-voiced, urgent, “Fucker...” might as well have been offered to the wall, as Mimic took a few strides, quickly outpacing the inventor who trailed after, far too late to have a hope of intervening. "You son'uva bitch," he spat out, launching a devastating right-handed punch that Summers was barely in time to even start to dodge, sliding just enough out of the way to catch most of its force in the jaw rather than the nose. Not enough for Rankin, who was still bearing forward. "She did exactly what she had to do. Talk to her like that again, I'll freeze you solid and blast your fucking head off with your own powers." Not a wince, not a flicker from Cyclops as he turned his head back to face Calvin. “Try me,” was all he said, in that same impassive voice. Were his lips curving into a smirk? Forge didn’t take long enough to look, for he’d reached the pair of them, forcibly inserting himself in between the two white men before red eyes met red visor and settled the question of whether Mimic’s use of Cyclops’ powers would do as little to the man as Havok’s. “Not now,” Forge insisted, vaguely aware of Kiwi Black stepping in to intervene himself but with eyes only for Calvin, using the extra strength in his bionic hand to try to lever his friend back away from the other man. Not now, though who could tell if that appeal to reason would be enough, with Rankin like this, but all there was to do was to try, and work to call his best friend back to himself. “Come off it, mate. Not the bloody time for it, eh?” the New Zealander was saying to the other member of the red-eyed pair, his voice calm and measured, but with a note in it that was used to command, and having its thoughts listened to. “You reckon this is helping your wife?” “Fuck you, you tattooed piece of shit. This is on you.” If Summers had even turned to look at the Resistance cell Leader, Forge didn’t know, and hadn’t bothered to look, but the indignant note in his still-placid voice was audible. “Maybe so, mate, but right now-” But whatever Kiwi Black had been attempting to point out in that same casually reasoning tone of voice he’d been using before the younger man’s insult, it was cut off from a low moan from the bed. “Hope,” said Jean Grey-Summers, finally making that single syllable loud and clear enough to be comprehensible. “Hope,” she repeated, pushing Mantis’ hand away with one half-clenched fist as she lifted her chin up enough to turn dimmed green eyes unerringly toward Rankin. |
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| Purple Girl | Nov 26 2013, 11:55 PM Post #8 |
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I Can Make You Love Me
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How to explain it in some way that did it justice? In a way that still didn't leave more questions than answers? And manage that with the subjects - still freshly broken and wounded - only a few steps away. Maybe they wouldn't have noticed. Jean Grey and Calvin Rankin seemed only to have attention for each other, only have focus for that shared private pain that had become unfortunately public. Maybe discretion was a luxury they'd left behind in that dead field, but Kara still did the best she could not to be too obtrusive about it. Forge, he and Calvin were close. She'd seen that, knew it. He deserved to know. Needed to know, because it was the only way he could understand how deep this went. And so she told him what she could, even if it was far from all. The only people who knew all of it she knew weren't in any shape to tell that story. They might never be. What had happened was ugly and tragic and necessary and it had taken a bigger toll than any of them could've imagined. One Jean Grey was mercifully gone, at least in body, but it had left the other one, and Mimic, as something like cracked and shattered pieces of glass. Brittle and damaged and missing pieces, and with pieces that didn't belong. No, it wasn't news she wanted to bring to this man about his friend and her hand curled easily over his bionic one as he shifted it. Regretted that it was the only type of new she could give him, but knew there hadn't been any other choice. It had left them both, Jean Grey Summers and Calvin Rankin, in a bad way, though he'd seen that himself and the nod he gave her only confirmed that. There was more, of course, a million more details as her eyes met his dark brown ones that were shadowed with concern and questions. One more detail, especially, that she didn't know how to say with the other two so close. Remembered the looks on both their faces as Jean had shouted those words out into the cold air, the desolation and grief in her voice, the way Mimic had closed in on himself, shuttered himself inside himself. If it were true, and she didn't have any reason to believe that it wasn't, there'd been a baby. A baby that was Calvin Rankin's and this world's Jean Grey's and Ahab, the Master of the Hounds, had killed that child. Kara couldn't bring herself to say those words out loud, not where they could hear. But Forge needed to know this, too. Before the purple skinned woman could make a decision one way or another, though, there was the sound of Gateway's bullroar and there was Scott Summers, stepping into the room. “Jean!” And there was emotion there, where she hadn't seen any to speak of from this man the few times she'd seen him before. Panic, worry, confusion, all swirling in his voice and on his face for the space of a moment. Then gone the next as if he'd shut the door. “What did you do?” He was looking toward the bed, and Kara had less than seconds to wonder if he meant Jean or Mantis or Calvin before the latter was moving with purpose, planting himself right into this alternate dimensional Cyclops' face. “Fucker...” Forge began in that unaccountable way they had of addressing one another as Jean let out a protest at the loss of contact and Kara herself fell in next to Forge as he moved toward the two men. Nothing seemed to register with Calvin other than the man in front of him, though. "You son'uva bitch," Calvin Rankin spat out, following that up with his fist before the rest of them had barely made any steps. Scott Summers managed quick enough reflexes to take the hit on his jaw instead of the middle of his face, but it was obvious the winged man would be more than happy to try again. "She did exactly what she had to do. Talk to her like that again, I'll freeze you solid and blast your fucking head off with your own powers." Cool as ice and still with that implacable expression, Cyclops turned his face back to the man facing him. “Try me,” the visoerd man said, inserting himself between the two men and making Purple Girl hope to whatever gods or spirits were watching that he hadn't succeeded in only making himself another target. “Not now,” Forge insisted, trying to widen the gap between the two men without much success as Hone intervened as well and Kara, despite her headache, readied herself to force the issue. Rankin was still pushing forward with a sound that was as much growl as grunt, eyes trained on Scott Summers. Was it her imagination, or was the room temperature dropping? “Come off it, mate. Not the bloody time for it, eh?” the New Zealander was saying to the other member of the red-eyed pair, his voice calm and measured, but with a note in it that was used to command, and having its thoughts listened to. “You reckon this is helping your wife?” “Fuck you, you tattooed piece of shit. This is on you.” His attention still trained on Mimic, Scott Summers didn't seem to even look toward Hone, but Kara's eyes narrowed at the visored man. He was angry, yes, and that was understandable, but he had no business making judgements when he knew nothing. "Wait a minute," Kara began, voice even, but Hone was already answering with, “Maybe so, mate, but right now-” “Hope,” said Jean Grey-Summers with a moan that seemed to override everything else. Even Mimic eased off, red glow fading from his eyes and ice she'd only just noticed fading from where they encased his clenched fists. “Hope,” she repeated, pushing Mantis away and sitting up, training clouded eyes on Mimic. "I'm alright," he told Forge gruffly, looking at the other man for a moment before turning and moving back toward the bed. Hope. What did that mean, exactly? A plea from that part of her that was her damaged, broken counterpart who wouldn't have had very much of that if any at all? Nonsense, just a random word that came to mind? But that didn't seem right and that word had something she couldn't identify flickering over Mimic's face. A lament for what she'd lost, because how could she possibly have held onto that? What she'd lost... Moving up next to Forge and laying a hand on his shoulder, Kara watched the winged man for a heartbeat, then leaned in close. She spoke only loud enough for him to hear and hopefully no one else. "There was a baby," Kara whispered quickly, eyes moving to his face, "She said there was a baby, a daughter. And she said that Ahab killed her." He might know if it were true or not, or if it were possible. If anyone would besides Mimic himself, it would be Forge, and either way, it was a very big detail that he needed to know. As for herself, Kara was still inclined to believe it was just as the ghost of their Jean Grey, sharing her twin's head. There had been too much pain there, too much anguish. |
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| Jean Grey | Nov 27 2013, 09:56 PM Post #9 |
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Can kill you with her brain.
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She was nothing. A thousand million billion dust motes, floating on the air, blown this way and that and not feeling any of it. She didn’t have to listen to those other forces, coaxing and needing and prompting her thoughts to coalesce. She didn’t want to. Not when every step toward integrating her mind brought those feelings, the stark, forsaken edges of the memory shards slicing and carving their way back, and all there was left was to fly apart, dust and ashes on the wind. She was nothing, and she wanted it to be that way. She didn’t want that voice, those soft green whispers, pulling her back. Why would they do that? She didn’t want to have to be here, pushed it aside, with her mind and with her hand, and forced the one word, the one that mattered, into the air. If they could only understand that, maybe they could let her go again, and stop trying to make her feel. There, that was Calvin, moving closer, his mind cut and scourged and torn, but his eyes were on her, and she could feel him near. Reached out to him, with faltering telepathic powers, focus flying away and slipping back through her fingers, as though something wouldn’t let her hold on to him. But he was there, and there for her, like he’d promised he would be. He was still there. And that was... that was Scott. Her old friend. Her best friend. It had been so long since she’d seen them - no, why did that seem wrong? Something said that was wrong, but she couldn’t find the reason why, and it had been so long, so long since that last night in the Mansion, but he’d understand, if she could only find the words to tell him. And he was in her head again, slipping into that part of her mind that had belonged to him, almost as though he’d never left, and he was crossing to her quickly, stepping through everything and kneeling down beside her on the bed, and taking hold of her hand like it was something precious. “Jean?” he asked, and she could make out that old note of pleading through his voice, cracking it in a way that hovered on the edge of audibility. Felt a flash of guilt whisper through her stomach to hear it, to have put him through it again, but it flickered and was gone. “Scott...” she said, smiling like an old friend, even while her eyes slipped away, not quite able to hold on to where his might have been, behind that visor. “He took my baby,” Jean added quietly, calmer now, with Scott before her. Who knew better than he did, what that had been like? If he could understand, if she could tell him, maybe he could tell her what to do. “Ahab. He took her away and he killed her.” There, she’d said it this time, and she’d kept her pieces together, kept her senses. Even remembered to say His name, so that Scott would know who she was talking about, because he’d been gone for longer than that. Why was he shaking his head? “Jean, no...” he said, and the pressure around her hand, the one he’d clasped tightened, until she’d managed to turn her head, look back to where his eyes were supposed to be. “No, Rachel’s okay,” he promised then, warm and sure and certain and so full of conviction and love underneath those three words that only barely struck a form of sense. “She got free. She’s home, and she’s safe. I promise you, Red. He can’t hurt her any more.” He was warm, and he was sure, and he loved her. Jean knew all of that, could feel all of that, and that name, that had stirred something. A memory, fluttering in her mind, and stronger in his, as he brought it to the surface of his thoughts. A girl on fire, burning and unhurt and smiling and tattooed. Rachel. Jean shook her head though. “Not your daughter,” she told him. “Mine. My baby. Mine. In that place. He took my baby away.” “...the kid from there? Nate? Jean, he’s here. We can-” and he paused, looking back around somewhere behind him, as if to ask someone, that look on his face that Scott always had when he’d decided that he had to do something he didn’t want to, “I can get them to bring him to you.” Nate. Quentin. A boy. A teenage boy, a mind reaching out to her, just like Nathan Christopher had done. Terrified, just like he had been. But not hers. Not Scott’s, either. “HE’S NOT MY SON!” Jean screamed, pulling her hand out of Scott’s grasp and flailing, pushing away anything close to her with the other, before closing her fists and scrunching them down around her temples while she huddled in on herself, pushing away at the guilty, sick feeling that churned through her guts. She’d taken some poor scared kid, made him into a puppet, filled his mind with a fantasy, a soap bubble, that wasn’t real. Wasn’t anything. Was only something to hide behind. “Shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have,” she muttered to herself, to Scott, to those voices that kept prodding in her mind, not letting her rest. Turned her head again finally, setting dull red-rimmed eyes toward his visor. “It would have all been okay, if I’d just married you. I could have had your son. I wouldn’t have killed him. None of it would ever have happened,” she said, words pouring out faster and faster, more frantically as she rushed the thoughts out before she could lose them again. “No one would have gotten hurt, if I’d just...” If she’d married him - and why did that spark, why did it hurt, why didn’t it seem simple, when it was? - then it would all have been fine, wouldn’t it? No Madelyne. No Inferno. No Camps. No... Slowly, painfully, Jean turned her head the other way then, seeking for the pair of dark brown eyes she still knew would have to be found somewhere close. He’d said he’d be there. She shouldn’t have let him say it, shouldn’t have let him want to say it. “I named our baby Hope,” she told Calvin, softer again, but simply. No catching, no faltering, just the words, and two tears welling slowly over the corners of her eyes. “Because the moment I felt her growing inside me, I knew there wasn’t any left.” |
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| Mimic | Nov 30 2013, 12:54 AM Post #10 |
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One Man X-Team
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From somewhere, like it was coming from a million miles away, Mimic peripherally registered the sound of Forge's voice, but didn't pay any attention to what he was saying. Didn't fucking care right then. The entirety of his focus was on the visored man that'd just stepped in the room and started acting like the asshole Calvin always knew him for. Couldn't spare even a whole damned second or two for any kinda genuine emotion or concern, just shut it all off and started throwing blame around. And threw it at the last fucking person in the room he had any business doing something like that, too. The last person who needed Scott Summers' particular brand of asshole right now. She was his wife for fuck's sake, lying there like that, and he wanted to know what she'd done? His fist was headed for Summers' face before he consciously realized he'd moved. Just struck out, the red in his eyes matching the red in his head. Bastard tried to dodge, didn't quite make it and took a fist to the jaw and still didn't show so much as a flicker of anything past that goddamned smirk Mimic would've been more than happy to beat off his fucking face. Jeannie had done what she had to do, the only damned thing she could do and if they myopic jackass so much as breathed wrong in her direction, much less opened his mouth to her that way again, husband or not, he'd freeze his as solid and blow his goddamned head off with his own fucking powers. “Try me,” the bastard practically dared him and Calvin could feel the frost forming on his palm, felt the pulse of those stolen powers behind his eyes, just waiting for him to let them go. “Not now,” Forge insisted, suddenly there between them and pushing at him with that damned metal hand of his. Glowing red eyes cut briefly to the other man, then back to Summers and Calvin pushed back, resisting that force with something between a grunt and a growl. Goddamned fucking Summer. Theirs, this other one, every damned one've them from whatever universe they fell in from. “Come off it, mate. Not the bloody time for it, eh?” Hone said, moving in with Forge and trying to reason with Summers. Calvin could've told him how damned much good that was likely to do. Exactly fucking none. “You reckon this is helping your wife?” Not that Summers gave a fuck about that. No surprise there. “Fuck you, you tattooed piece of shit. This is on you.” The winged man let out a derisive snort, eyes still locked on Summers over Forge's shoulder. Kara's voice came from somewhere, not sounding too happy about that idea, even as Kiwi Black practically agreed with him. Fuck it. He didn't need to be close to the bastard to blow him to fucking pieces. “Hope,” and that voice cut through it all, got his attention like nothing else, could. As much a moan as a word, the pain in it, the urgency, cutting him to the bone. “Hope,” she said again, pushing Mantis away and trying to sit up and fuck. What the hell was he doing? He was as bad as fucking Summers. Heke was right, this wasn't the time or the place. "I'm alright," Calvin told Forge, forcing that rage - helpless and frustrated and feeling like it was gonna make his head explode any second - back under some kinda control. He wasn't alright, but fuck if he wouldn't be anyway right now as he turned back toward the bed and the woman there. Felt her reach out to him with her mind, brushing against his like the edges of butterfly wings, not able to connect. Part of him wanted to reach back to her, do...something, though fuck if he knew what. But he held back uncertainly, not knowing if it'd make things better or worse or what. Summers must've been right behind him, because suddenly there he was, too, kneeling down next to her and taking her hand as he said, “Jean?” And maybe there was some damned feeling there now, though Calvin wasn't sure what the hell it was, exactly. “Scott...” she said smiling at Summers and...shit, what was he even still doing here, Calvin wondered, suddenly feeling at a loss, like he was in the middle of something he had no business in. And he was, wasn't he? No matter what the hell was in her head, no matter whose memories, she was Summers' wife. “He took my baby,” Jean added quietly and that stopped all his thoughts cold. Gave him that same feeling, like a knife to the chest, that he'd had before. Not screamed this time, but calmer. Didn't have one bit less impact that way. “Ahab. He took her away and he killed her.” Couldn't have moved then if he'd wanted to, couldn't do anything but look over at the woman on the bed as she looked at Summers. Felt his jaw clench, teeth grind together as the other man tried to tell her no, assure her that 'Rachel' was fine. Safe. Beyond that bastard's reach. Thought he was talking to the woman that was his wife, but Calvin knew better. Wanted to reach out, snatch her away from Summers who didn't know what the fuck he was talking about and as Jean, his Jean now, shook her head. “Not your daughter,” she told him. “Mine. My baby. Mine. In that place. He took my baby away.” No, not Summers' daughter. His, and that cold lump of ice that he'd meant for Summers settled itself in his chest instead, taking up all his room to breathe, even to think. “...the kid from there? Nate? Jean, he’s here. We can-” he paused, looking around like he thought maybe that damned fucked up kid would be there somewhere, “I can get them to bring him to you.” "No, you stupid-" Calvin started to growl, eyes whipping to Summers again, but Jeannie beat him to it with a scream of, “HE’S NOT MY SON!” as she pulled away from Summers, lashing out and pushing away wildly, then closing her fists and pressing them to her temples, drawing in on herself in that way that brought back so many damned memories he wasn't sure he could stand it. “Shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have,” she muttered to herself, to Scott, to those voices that kept prodding in her mind, not letting her rest. Turned her head again finally, setting dull red-rimmed eyes toward his visor. “It would have all been okay, if I’d just married you. I could have had your son. I wouldn’t have killed him. None of it would ever have happened,” she said, words pouring out faster and faster, more frantically as she rushed the thoughts out before she could lose them again. “No one would have gotten hurt, if I’d just...” Not so much a knife to the chest, but like somebody carving him open, laying every fucking thing inside him bare, hearing those words, in that voice. But fuck if he could argue with it. Any of it. Considering what had happened, what he'd let happen, what a stupid fucking dumbass he'd been, what the hell was there to argue about? The truth spoke for itself. He should've left. Got his ass outta there and left her to her husband. Left her to Mantis and anybody else that could help her. Couldn't move, though. Even if he'd wanted to, just like he couldn't walk away that day he'd found her in the barracks. Couldn't turn his back and leave her like that. Instead, looking back over toward Forge, though for what he didn't know, Mimic pulled his wings tight to his back and sat down on the edge of the bed, opposite from Summers on her other side. She wasn't his Jean. Except, right now, she was. Slowly, like just moving was more effort than she had left in her, Jeannie's head turned his way, those eyes nearly as green as that ridiculous damned dye job. Familiar as they found his. “I named our baby Hope,” she told voice soft, almost calm, with tears shining at the corners of those eyes he knew as well as his own. Spilling over slowly as he watched, tried to absorb that. He'd had a daughter, and her name had been Hope, and now she was gone. It sunk in slowly, like the gradual realization that there was an open, gaping wound in the middle of your body that you couldn't fucking close up, no matter what you tried. “Because the moment I felt her growing inside me, I knew there wasn’t any left.” Sharp, sick pain, worse than any beating he'd ever had. Worse than every single one've them put together. Worse than dying, because some damned things were. He'd tried to protect her, wanted to more than he'd maybe ever wanted anything in his sorry damned life. That he'd failed entirely fucking miserably really shouldn't have been a surprise, but that didn't make it any easier to live with. "Jesus, Jeannie," he managed, voice hoarse and cracked as one hand clasped her smaller one, folding over it. His other hand lifted, brushed gently at the tears in the corners of her eyes. "I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry." That was just as hoarse, just as cracked, low and halfway broken even to his own ears. And totally goddamned inadequate for any of it. But it was all he had, even if she damned well deserved a hell'uva lot more. She always had. |
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| Forge | Dec 2 2013, 01:41 AM Post #11 |
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Anointed Prophet of the Atheists
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Dammit, why’d the big Fucker have to be this fucking strong? Even with the extra power from his bionic hand, Forge knew he was on the losing end of a battle to keep his friend from following up again on Summers, and if it hadn’t been for Kiwi Black’s bodily intervention removing the visored man from the fight, the inventor could well have ended up an uncomfortable, quite possibly roasted meat in the midst of a livid sandwich, though he did suspect that Kara would manage to intervene before that, if it came to it. The New Zealander’s words of reason were less effective than his physical presence though, garnering only a curt set of insults from the still outwardly calm Cyclops. "Wait a minute," Kara began, remonstrating with the outworlder in a manner as calm and even as his own, while Heke made his own start on turning the subject, both of which were rendered moot at once when Jean Grey - or Jean Grey-Summers, or whatever on earth the green-haired woman on the bed should be called - settled the matter of deflecting the two men’s attention from each other with rather more success than either Purple Girl or Kiwi Black could really have been hoping to manage. And ‘hope’, it seemed, was her subject of choice, though what could have possibly possessed her to bring up that word, let alone repeat it, was as mysterious to Forge as it seemed to be to Summers, at least. No telling what Mantis or Heke thought of the word, anymore than what they thought of anything, but in any case the Maker’s gaze passed over them only briefly before resting on his best friend’s face, looking for something he couldn’t quite guess at. What had that been that flickered on Rankin’s face for a moment? Not surprise, or confusion. Nothing so fortunate as that. "I'm alright," he told Forge gruffly, the strain of an internal struggle for control obvious in the lines and hollows carved into his face. It was almost as though an artist whose only tool was anguish had attempted to recreate Heke’s tattoos on the Canadian, but though he fought for mastery, he seemed to have succeeded, turning toward the bed and the woman on it and taking that first movement toward her, only to be passed by Summers, who closed the distance and took hold of one small, pale, limply dangling hand as he knelt beside her. A gentle hand on his own shoulder turned Forge’s attention from that odd triptych tableau, and he twisted his head to let his eyes meet Kara’s, one hand shifting automatically to steady her as she leaned in closer, an intent look in her purple eyes. "There was a baby," Kara whispered quickly, eyes moving to his face, "She said there was a baby, a daughter. And she said that Ahab killed her." She’d spoken softly, clearly for his ears alone, and though Forge started, eyes widening briefly as the heavy words fell into place, realization replaced confusion in rapid succession on his expression. “A baby,” he repeated, just as softly, and without coloration, eyes darting to the green-haired woman, now greeting her husband like an old, long-absent friend and then to Rankin - yes, that finally explained that new, desolate expression in his friend’s eyes, didn’t it? If only... but no, there was no doubt. There could be no doubt. Too many memories from those few short weeks in the camp, now clarifying as if coming into some new, terrible focus. “Gods, those idiots,” Forge swore under his breath, though there was no accusation in his tone, and no judgement. Simply an expression of facts, tempered by compassion. Those poor, stupid idiots, now paying an unthinkable, unconscionable price for an error of judgement that should never have been punishable by this. Forge watched as the green-haired woman told her story to her husband, received his mis-placed assurances and turned them aside, for what else was there to be done? Nothing but to look to the other spectators in this cruel pageant, and there the Cheyenne inventor did find something interesting for though Mantis, Heke and Gateway were all silent, the looks that the three were passing between them indicated that they must be sharing some sort of telepathic discourse. The general subject was clear, for what else could it be, in this situation, but the particulars remained mysterious to Forge, who returned his gaze to his friend, and to the two newlyweds on the bed, just as Summers turned his head to look back around the room, as if appealing for something distasteful. Following up on Nate. The wrong move, and obviously so, for it set another growl into Rankin’s throat, and put the desperate look of a panicking wild animal onto Jean’s. "No, you stupid-" the former began, but her voice cut over top of that, whipping her hand away from her husband’s grasp as she screamed, “HE’S NOT MY SON!” Suppressing a wince on behalf of the thankfully absent Quentin - and making a mental note to make sure to find a way to scotch any ideas the boy might take into his head about visiting the woman who he seemed at times to still consider as some sort of mother - Forge watched as the woman seemed to almost try to burrow in on herself. Looked to Calvin, but didn’t go to his friend - not yet, some sense of caution holding him back as the green-haired woman raised her eyes again, to her husband, and began to speak once more, babbling more and more frantically into a stream of regrets that shouldn’t have been hers. As she lapsed back into a mute silence, Rankin’s gaze turned back to Forge briefly, his expression not quite readable. An appeal for help? For an intervention he couldn’t bring himself to make? A resolution, to cut this gordian knot? But in this, even his powers couldn’t supply an idea for a solution, and in any case, the big man was already folding his wings back behind his shoulders, and taking a seat on the edge of the bed, on the other side of the woman. What must it seem like to Summers, the inventor couldn’t help but wonder. Most likely knowing nothing of what had happened to his wife, whether there was any left of her behind that frantic babbling that so clearly belonged to the woman who’d been her double, for unless Gateway had broken what seemed to be a rule of silence, no one had told him exactly what (or even what little was known or guessed) had happened to her on this mission. Entering the room to find her broken, changed, turning intent, tear-filled eyes toward another man. “I named our baby Hope,” she told Calvin, softer again, but simply. No catching, no faltering, just the words, and two tears welling slowly over the corners of her eyes. “Because the moment I felt her growing inside me, I knew there wasn’t any left.” There had been terrible things that had happened in his own life. Terrible things that had happened, that he’d done, and that he’d had to do, and had to find a way to live with. But nothing like this. Losing children, loved ones, the failure to protect, all of that he’d seen, lived, carried. But not this. Not with his own flesh and blood, not like it so clearly was for those two on the bed, their worlds contracted in misery and despair into a sphere that had no room for anyone else within its bounds. "Jesus, Jeannie," [Calvin] managed, voice hoarse and cracked as one hand clasped her smaller one, folding over it. His other hand lifted, brushed gently at the tears in the corners of her eyes. "I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry." No one spoke, but there could have been a thousand shouting, screaming voices, and Forge would still have doubted that either Rankin or Jean Grey would have heard. Not until the spell was finally and resoundingly broken by the voice of Scott Summers, cracking in a way that brought back a memory of another version of the same man, seven years earlier, after losing the woman, the avatar of the Phoenix Force that he’d thought was Jean Grey. “Sorry?” the man asked, the word sounding uncharacteristically raw from the normally assured man, roughened and halting, but gathering strength even as he rose back to his feet, “You asshole.” Another step, fists clenching, and Summers had thrown a fist back at Rankin before Forge could even think to move. “You fucking asshole!” the visored man shouted, launching a second punch with his left hand, the right already pulling back as though he were planning another, though the gods alone knew whether he’d get a chance for that. “You slept with her? In a goddamn concentration camp, and you let her do that?” No cocksure, controlled automaton now, the man’s voice was wild with emotion. “You’d risk her like that, and now you’re sorry?” “Hold on,” Forge said softly to Kara, though in truth he didn’t know how seriously she might be considering intervening in this. In any case, a moment later the intervention came anyway. “Stop it!!” Jean Grey screamed, and the two men’s movements did cease abruptly, limbs frozen and outlined in a faint pink glow that had them floating apart in the air in something that wasn’t quite slow motion. “Stop it. Stop it. Stoppit,” the green-haired woman repeated, fists clenched. She dropped her head back down to her knees, brought her arms over to cover her head, and seemed to let go of her telekinesis, dropping them both to the ground beside the bed. “Make it stop.” Almost as though he’d been released from an unseen forcefield himself, though in truth there had been no barrier, Forge finally found his feet able to move, and crossed quickly toward his friend, placing one hand atop a brawny shoulder. As he did, he could see Heke appear again in the corner of his vision, moving himself to exchange intense but quiet words with Summers, but for now, Forge’s attention was occupied with his friend alone, only breaking the gaze to look briefly toward the sobbing woman on the bed. “I don’t think you can help her by staying close, Fucker,” he said quietly. “Maybe the opposite.” Both personalities were there in her mind, that was what Kara had said, and surely the one that was whole, the one that had not lost everything, the one that had not been broken and tortured ought to have been the stronger? And yet it was the other that had been dominant in all of this. When you remembered that imagined sphere that had seemed to exist around them, that ceased to seem surprising at all. “Will you leave here with me?” Forge asked, looking to meet his friend’s eyes. His choice - it had to be his choice - but there seemed to be very little way but toward further hurt, for all of them, if they stayed right now. |
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| Purple Girl | Dec 2 2013, 07:17 PM Post #12 |
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I Can Make You Love Me
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Calvin Rankin was anything but all right. It would be more than a huge surprise if anyone in this room, including the only half-coherent woman on the bed, didn't know that. The winged man put that assertion forth to Forge all the same, then turned and moved toward the bed, attention diverted by Jean Grey Summers' plaintive but apparently incoherent words were drawing him. But maybe not so very incoherent, as Kara saw the flicker of something unnameable on the tall man's face as he turned away, only to be passed by an equally diverted Scott Summers, the argument and aggression apparently put aside there, too, as he rushed to his agitated wife. Unaccountably, the word sparked something in her own mind as well, and the purple-skinned woman turned to Forge, hand going to his arm as his reached to steady her and she passed on the information she hadn't known how to communicate before. Didn't really know how now, other than directly as she did with most everything else. As quietly as she could, so that the words didn't pass beyond the two of them. Maybe what she and Hone had heard in Rugby was nothing but the confused delusion of a broken, mad, desperate woman, but Kara thought Hone would agree with her that it had the ring of truth to it. There'd been a baby. A little girl. Ahab had killed her. Few words for such an enormous thing and her eyes watched his face. If there was anyone who'd know if there was the possibility, or probability, of truth there, aside from Calvin and Jean themselves, it would be Forge. He physically started, dark eyes going wide in confused surprise, then a realization was there that was as good as any words for confirmation. It really was true, then. It took a monster to kill a helpless, defenseless baby and Ahab had been that. Just as Pestilence had been, when he'd killed Narya's husband and her baby who hadn't even been old enough to be named yet. At that age, she hadn't understood that kind of evil, couldn't comprehend it or make sense of even how it could exist. Now, she was more familiar with it than she'd ever wanted to be, understood it more than she'd ever wanted to, but still didn't think she'd ever be able to make sense of it. "A baby," Forge repeated, eyes moving toward the group at the bed as she nodded, though she didn't think he really needed the confirmation. "Gods, those idiots," Forge swore under his breath, though there wasn't any blame or condemnation in his tone. There wasn't any point in that, the two of them would do more than enough of that themselves, she suspected, and they'd paid for whatever lack of judgement or self-control, whatever small comfort they'd stolen in that place, in a way no one should ever have to. Scott Summers was understandably confused by it all as he held his wife's hand and talked to another version of her who'd never been his wife. He tried to reassure her, tried to placate her with assurances that their daughter was fine, when he didn't realize that wasn't who she meant. Not the girl from another dimension who'd had versions of them for parents, and certainly not the boy Madelyne Summers had sacrificed, or the boy she'd tried to turn into 'Nate' in a state of delusion Purple Girl couldn't even imagine. The very wrong thing to mention, too, and it brought a growl from Rankin as he spat out, "No, you stupid-" as a haunted, desperate looking Jean jerked away from her husband and screamed, "HE'S NOT MY SON!" that Kara was glad the boy wasn't around to hear, no matter how much he might protest that he didn't care. Jean seemed to sink on herself and Kara looked toward Mantis, but the green woman was unruffled as always even as Calvin turned his head briefly to Forge, another of those unreadable expressions there. Helpless. She hated feeling helpless, tried to think of some help she could be, but there was nothing. Nothing short of taking control of someone who'd already been used far too much in her short life and there was no solution in that. Only a temporary reprieve at best, even as the green-haired woman almost folded in on herself in a stream of nearly incomprehensible self-blame and regret. The air was think with conflicting emotions. Kara didn't have to be a true telepath to feel them. Despair, confusion, regret, and pain, they filled this enclosed space. The room felt almost too small to hold it all and there was a dizzying flash of claustrophobia that thankfully vanished as fast as it had come as Mimic pressed his wings to his back and sat down on the edge of the bed, opposite Scott Summers. Purple Girl wondered briefly how Mantis wasn't drowning in it all. But it wasn't the first time and her teammate was a remarkable if sometimes unfathomable woman. "I named our baby Hope," Jean told Calvin, turning to him voice soft but clear, glint of tears in her eyes, "Because the moment I felt her growing inside me, I knew there wasn't any left." Was this, Kara wondered, how her own mother had felt? Were her thoughts the same the day she'd realized she was pregnant? For a moment, Kara closed her eyes, hand tightening just marginally on Forge's arm. No one deserved that kind of misery. She'd lost friends, people who were family in all the ways that mattered. People she'd loved, but this... "Jesus, Jeannie," she heard the broken voice of Calvin Rankin say and she opened her eyes as he took her other pale hand and reached up to wipe ever so gently at the corners of her eyes. "I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry." No. There were no words for this, and so for moments there was silence. "Sorry?", Scott Summers demanded more than asked, shattering that silence as he turned on Mimic, definite emotion there on his face where Kara had become accustomed to not seeing any as the visored man rose to his feet, "You asshole." He took another step toward Calvin, hands balled into fist and one of those fists flying out toward the winged man before she'd even registered the movement. If Mimic saw it coming, he made no move to dodge and it connected with his cheek, the force turning his head to the side. "You fucking asshole!" the visored man shouted, launching a second punch with his left hand, the right already pulling back as though he were planning another, and Rankin didn't dodge the second one, either. Just stared at the other man with hard, flat eyes. "You slept with her? In a goddamn concentration camp, and you let her do that?" Summers was ranting, furious and Kara tensed, about to move forward. This couldn't continue. "You'd risk her like that, and now you're sorry?" He threw the third punch, but it never connected. Instead, Mimic caught it in one fist, holding fast to the other man's hand. "You got two, that's all you fucking get," the winged man told him flatly, staring into that furious, visored face. "You're goddamned right I'm sorry. More sorry than your goddamned, self-centered, self-righteous ass ever was or ever has been for all the shit-" "Hold on," Forge said softly and she nodded, keeping her own eyes on the situation she was afraid would escalate. They couldn't let that happen. Not here. "Stop it!!" Jean Grey screamed before Calvin could speak another word, before Scott Summers could throw another punch. The two men were suddenly encased in pink telekinetic bubbles and force apart by the distraught woman on the bed. "Stop it. Stop it. Stoppit," the green-haired woman repeated, fists clenched. She dropped her head back down to her knees, brought her arms over to cover her head, and seemed to let go of her telekinesis, dropping them both to the ground beside the bed. "Make it stop." Forge moved forward then, going to Calvin and laying a hand on his shoulder, trying to talk him into leaving. Scott Summers looked unhurt and Kara trained her attention on that visored face as Hone moved to him in turn, attempting to warn him with a look that trying to resume hostilities, with anyone, would not end well for him as she moved to the bed and the broken form (if not physically, then certainly mentally) of Jean Grey. Whichever one she was at them moment. "It's alright," she told the telepath quietly, reaching slowly for the other woman's hand, voice calm and matter-of-fact. "They've stopped. They're going to behave." One way or another. As much as she felt for all of them, this testosterone poisoning wasn't doing Jean any good at all and she was the one with the greatest need at the moment. "Will you leave here with me?" Forge asked Calvin and Kara turned their way momentarily, looking from Calvin to Forge, then back again. Forge needed to help his friend, Calvin needed the help no matter what he thought, and Jean needed peace and a chance to unite mind and body the way they should be. It was easy enough to see that that wasn't going to happen with Calvin in the room. "Mantis will make sure she gets the help she needs, and I'll stay here with her, too. She'll be all right." It was a promise she hoped they'd all be able to keep, but in his place she thought it was also one she'd need to hear. |
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| Kiwi Black | Dec 3 2013, 10:12 PM Post #13 |
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International Bloke of Mystery
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Hope. Funny word, that. Strange bloody time to be talking about it too, at least if you were thinking about it in English. Put it in Maori, though, then it didn’t seem nearly so out of place as something the pakeha woman on the bed might be insisting on. Te manawa ora, the breath of life. His mother tongue never had bothered to make the distinction between life and hope, and in all his life, Hone never had really seen anything to make him doubt that in that, Te Reo had the right of it. Right now, that conviction was being put to a bit more of a test than usual, but. The words she’d screamed back at Rugby. The look on Wings’ face, then and now. The words that were bubbling up from the green-haired woman again, that the former chieftain was keeping a small portion of awareness for, even as he’d been busy trading thoughts and the plans with Mantis and Gates. That was another part of it, too. *This one cannot help her. She is too strong.* That was what she’d said, or thought, or whatever the bloody hell it was. There weren’t too many things Mantis would admit to being unable to do. Mostly because there didn’t seem to be too many things that really went beyond what she could do, but she’d said this was one of them, and between her assertion, the way Jean Grey had been throwing her off physically, Hone didn’t see any reason to doubt that. Still, they had a solution - or a breath of one - sorted silently between the three of them by the time Wings had taken that spot perched on the edge of the bed on the other side from the husband. Just in time to watch her turn to him, eyes on his and glinting with tears that began to fall as she spoke. “I named our baby Hope,” she said, and though her voice was calm, and steady, Hone Heke still found himself feeling, for just a moment, like the pakeha might have had it right about their being two words, after all. “Because the moment I felt her growing inside me, I knew there wasn’t any left.” No, there were some cases where a body could keep breathing, long after hope or anything like life - a real, human life - had fled from it, weren’t there? Whatever the right of it was, it had a thrown a pall over the room, hushed and still as death except for the slow, heavy movements of Rankin’s hands as he took hold of hers, and brushed those bloody tears away, whispering his apologies in a cracking, quiet voice that stole through every little cranny of the room, stealing breath and words away with it. Not until Summers’ harsh voiced repetition of the word, followed by the laying in to Wings, verbally and with his fists, did the silence end. But then it ended pretty damn well, and it looked like even the good stolid soldier boy might have met his match and found the thing that would snap that self-control he seemed to like to cling to. Not for his wife, either, but for what had happened to her counterpart. Hone had gathered enough detachment in his years on the world to retain the ability to make note of that as something he wouldn’t have expected, even as the scene unfolded before him, two hard knocks raining down on the big man who didn’t even bother to dodge. Making no effort to move to intervene, Hone watched it unfold. He’d always said, when two white blokes wanted to fight, the brown folks (or folks of any particular color you might want to choose, in this particular company) were best off staying out of that, and this here wasn’t doing anything to change that opinion. Specially when after two punches, Wings caught the third in one fist, stopping it dead in a way that left no doubt that he’d made the choice to take the first two. "You got two, that's all you fucking get," the winged man told him flatly, staring into that furious, visored face. "You're goddamned right I'm sorry. More sorry than your goddamned, self-centered, self-righteous ass ever was or ever has been for all the shit-" No, intervening in fights between white boys was a game played by stupid buggers. Them and Jean Grey, apparently, because with a scream of generalized ‘cease and desist’, she’d gone and taken matters into her own hands (figuratively), using her powers to forcibly separate and freeze the pair in the midst of their reenactment of bull elephant seals in the mating season. “Go, mate,” Hone took the time to tell Gateway in the wee space provided by the short spell of silence that fell again before the telepath repeated her command, or plea, or whatever it bloody was, over and over again before dropping it all, herself and the two men, and folding herself into an almost shapeless heap on the bed. Starting to move as the last plea was uttered, Hone had reached his target - the not-quite dazed, not-quite purposed figure of the husband - around the time the Indian inventor put himself alongside his friend. The New Zealander didn’t put a hand on the visored man, though he did carefully go toward placing himself at a point where his own bulk was putting part of a screen between the pair of white men, while still keeping Cyclops’ gaze - if he happened to be looking his way - in a place that would keep Rankin out of his vision. “Was this your great, special, fucking plan all along?” the man behind the thin line of red asked him. His voice was quiet - seemed to have found that icy composure of his somewhere along the way - but still thick with a nasty bitter edge of humour’s abandoned cousin. “Trick my wife into going along with this, so you could use her to get your own version back?” Seemed like his gaze went to his wife then, chin turning slightly as though he were taking in the full sight of that huddle she’d made of herself atop the mattress, then Hone could feel the full gaze back on him. “You’re good, aren’t you,” the man stated, rather than asked. “I’ll admit it. All the scenarios I was running in my head, I didn’t even see this coming.” Calm as you please, icy like he probably thought he needed to be. Prickly bugger of a bloke had been Hone’s estimation on Sunday, but he was beginning to figure he’d low-balled that. Still, this was the sheep in front of him now, and that was the one you sheared, not the one it had looked like in the lines. “It’s not like that, mate,” Hone told him, keeping his own voice quiet enough to stay between them, just like Summers himself had, and watching Purple go to Grey herself in his peripheral vision. “You want to listen, or you want to be a bloody shit? Look, that’s her. Your wife,” the former chieftain continued, with a little more force behind it, adding a significant look of his own to the pair of rings that were standing out, plain as day, agains the whitened skin of one of the hands the woman had clasped round her own head before turning back to fix his gaze on that slit in the visor that was trained on him. “Or maybe there’s bits of both of them now - we’re still figuring out what happened to her, but they’re both there still, and they’re trading places, like flipping a coin.” “Like flipping a coin.” The words were calm, dry, but there was a hint of a vicious edge to them. Not impressed by the analogy, was the bloke Summers. Hone ignored that too, didn’t ruffle. “Less luck in that than you’d think. Side that lands up is the one that gets encouraged to,” was all he said, and Other Bugger willing and not feeling like making his mischief, that hint would be enough to make it through the man’s outer casing of stubborn grunting masquerading as self control to tip him off to what he ought to be doing right now. “Truth mate, is that it’s pretty bloody far from good. Mantis can’t get in there deep enough to try to help sort it through,” Hone explained to him, quickly and concisely as he could, backed up by a silent nod from Mantis when he looked her way. “So we’ve called in a bigger gun.” “Who?” “Frost,” said Hone, jerking his head to the empty space where Gateway had been, to indicate the mode of delivery along with the identity of the package. “Emma?” the visored man asked, and he’d be buggered bloody before he’d manage to figure this one out, wouldn’t he, because for some reason, the next moment that had put a trace of that same smirk back on the man’s face, coupled to a snort like he’d seen some sort of ironic humour in that. More bloody power to him, if he had, maybe. Whatever it was, it wasn’t even on the list of things to bother figuring out. |
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| Mimic | Dec 4 2013, 01:28 AM Post #14 |
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One Man X-Team
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Him. He'd done this. Oh, maybe he hadn't taken her outta that fucking Camp in the dead of night. Maybe he hadn't turned over to that psychotic bastard to torture and brainwash and torment. To hollow out like melon. Like a pumpkin you turned into a jack-o-lantern, taking out what was supposed to be in there, scraping it clean and changing it into a horrible goddamned parody. A nightmare. He hadn't made her a Hound, hadn't taken who she was and shattered it beyond repair. No, he hadn't done that, but he'd fucking done this, hadn't he? Put that look on her face, that tearing anguish in her voice that was like acid spilling through his veins, eating through him from the inside out. He'd put those tears in her eyes. That name on her lips. The one goddamned thing he should've never, ever let happen. The one thing he could've controlled, the thing he could've done above everything else to protect her. He'd damned well known better, every single time. Known what kinda place she was in, what kinda state she was in. And he'd still let it happen. Hell yeah, this one was on him and he'd never fucking forgive himself for that. How the hell could he, when he knew what it'd led to? How much worse it'd made that goddamned nightmare she'd had to live? Sorry. Fuck. That didn't even start to cover. Didn't even come close to what he owed her, but it was the only word he had, the only damned thing he could say, and so he gave her that. Inadequate as hell and he knew it as the words tried to stick in his throat, voice halfway refusing to work. "Sorry?" That was Summers and he felt the bed shift, knew the other man was up and moving toward him but didn't give a fuck. Didn't bother looking up. He sure as hell didn't give a damn about Cyclops right now or the fact that he finally'd found something to use all that stored up emotion he never bothered to have on. "You asshole." Scott Summers tacked on and Calvin could've laughed in his face. Hell, Summers didn't think he knew damned well what he was? But Mimic stood anyway, finally turning his attention to the other man, just in time to see the blur of a fist coming at his face. Didn't bother to even try to dodge it. Sure as hell wasn't anything he didn't deserve. It connected and his head was jerked to the side with the force. "You fucking asshole!" the visored man shouted, and another fist flew his way and he didn't bother ducking that one, either, just looked at the bastard, hiding behind those goddamned glasses like always, but at least there was something on his face now besides that smirk and that was almost satisfying, "You slept with her? In a goddamn concentration camp, and you let her do that?" Summers was ranting but that was nothing new. "You'd risk her like that, and now you're sorry?" For once, at least the son'uva bitch felt something and actually showed it. Even something that wasn't just about him, and damned if that wasn't even more impressive. Not impressive enough to let him have another free hit, though, and jaw set, Calvin caught the next punch with his hand, muscles in his arm tense and straining to arrest that force and momentum as his own rage, boiling under what felt like a frozen glacier, burned through. But that felt cold, too. Colder than if this whole room was a solid chunk of ice. "You got two, that's all you fucking get," the winged man told him flatly, half surprised he hadn't already froze the bastard solid like he'd threatened a few minutes ago. He stared right at that fucking ruby quarts and added in something close to a growl as it all started spilling out. All the shit the bastard had put her through, long before that Camp, "You're goddamned right I'm sorry. More sorry than your goddamned, self-centered, self-righteous ass ever was or ever has been for all the shit-" you did to her, was what he'd meant to finish with, but he never got that far, the words cutting off, but not by choice. "Stop it!!" Jean screamed like a soul in torment and he was frozen, couldn't have moved if he'd wanted to. Then he was surrounded by a bubble of pink and moved away from Summers. Or Summers was moved away from him. "Stop it. Stop it. Stoppit," the green-haired woman repeated, fists clenched curling up into a ball in a way he remembered during the worst of times for her as she suddenly let them go and he landed on his ass on the floor. "Make it stop." "Jeannie," Calvin began, attention focused back on the small, curled form on the bed and feeling that knife slice into his gut again. Started to take a step back that way, forgetting about Summers and his bullshit, forgetting about everybody else in the room, but felt a hand on his shoulder before he could close that distance again. “I don’t think you can help her by staying close, Fucker,” [Forge] said quietly and he turned to his best friend with a frown. What the fuck was he talking about? “Maybe the opposite.” That confusion and lingering, cold fury lasted a moment longer, then cleared slowly like a lingering fog as he looked around the room. Felt like it all slowly drained outta him, little by little. Fuck. Not his Jean, even if right now she might be. Not the Scott Summers he'd known, even if this one was just as big a bastard. Not his place, but he couldn't make his damned feet move and he turned briefly to look at Forge again, brow furrowed. Undecided. How the hell could he just leave when she was like this? When, no matter what universe she was from, this was his damned life. And hers. Theirs. Broken and shattered and nothing but jagged, tearing pieces, but still theirs. "Will you leave here with me?" Forge asked and Calvin started to shake his head, opened his mouth to say no, but couldn't get it out as Kara looked up at them both, one to the other. When the hell had she moved there to the bed? "Mantis will make sure she gets the help she needs, and I'll stay here with her, too. She'll be all right." That last part was a fucking joke. After this, none've them were gonna be okay. How the fuck did you even get to 'okay' from here? Still, he hesitated again, took another look around the room. From the woman on the bed to Summers and Heke, over there having their own little talk. Gateway, the half-naked fucker, was gone again and he'd missed that, too. But that wasn't the point. The damned point was, how the hell would he ever stay in a room with fucking Summers, Jean between them, and not keep doing this shit? The answer was, they couldn't and he knew it. And, in the end and as damned much as he hated to admit it, Summers had more of a right to be here than he did. The last fucking thing on earth he ever wanted to do was hurt Jean even more than he already had. Reluctantly, he turned back to Forge and Kara, nodding his head slowly. "Yeah, alright," he told the Fucker, wings rustling at his back and hand racking through his hair. "I'll go. I'm not doing anybody any damned good in here." Then he looked back to Kara from Forge, to Kiwi Black and Mantis and even goddamned Summers and added, "Just..take care of her, alright?" That was all he had any right to ask. Maybe more than he had a right to ask, considering his own track record, but fuck it. This wasn't about him. |
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| Forge | Dec 5 2013, 09:51 PM Post #15 |
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Anointed Prophet of the Atheists
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One punch then another connected solidly, but the third Rankin caught one-handed, and the gaze that he fixed on Cyclops was the gaze of a man with no reason left to put up with more. "You got two, that's all you fucking get," the winged man told him flatly, before whatever last thread of composure he’d been clinging frayed away, releasing another low growl and a torrent of words that spill forth. "You're goddamned right I'm sorry. More sorry than your goddamned, self-centered, self-righteous ass ever was or ever has been for all the shit-" On the other side of the room, Forge murmured a quiet suggestion to hold to Kara, whose nod told him she hadn’t needed the words, but in any case, a moment later it was Jean Grey, or Jean Grey-Summers, who broke up the bull fight with a desperate, half-screamed plea for them to stop it that cut through Calvin’s rant like a chainsaw through a china shop. Her powers too - that could only be her, lifting both men in the air and forcibly separating them, before dropping them to the ground and collapsing herself. Though Summers had made it to his feet first, the big Canadian was the first of the two men to find his voice. "Jeannie," he said, a quiet, harrowed word - painful even to listen to, and so how much more painful to have spoken? - as he began to take a step toward where she was lying, huddled with her hands around her head like a protective cocoon. Forge had already begun to move though, and he got there in time to arrest the second step, one hand on his best friend’s shoulder and a few short, quiet words of his own to bring the unfortunately distinct possibility that Calvin doing what he wanted - what could only be natural - could not help her. Perhaps the opposite. Rankin met that with a frown, confusion and a vestige of that cold fury that had been in his eyes when he’d faced off with Summers mingled, shifting slowly to the one then the other. Thinking, silently. Trying to find clarity again, in a situation where it was unlikely there was any to be found. At the bed now, Forge was aware of Kara, who’d reached the green-haired woman, already speaking calmly and levelly to her, as one might to a skittish horse, reaching for a hand that remained limp and unresponsive for a second, before turning over and clasping the purple-skinned woman’s fingers tightly. Assuring her that the two men had stopped, that they would ‘behave’, just as Jean Grey had been begging them to. Summers was holding his ground now too - or perhaps having it held for him by the tattooed New Zealander who’d interposed himself there, carrying on an intent, low-voiced conversation, the content of which was beyond Forge’s hearing, and indeed his interest too. That, like his attention, was all Rankin’s now, looking back at him with a furrowed brow and a clear element of wavering about his thoughts. Deciding that the only thing that could be done to help his friend now was to press the issue, Forge spoke again, meeting his friend’s eyes. ”Will you leave here with me?” A simple question on its surface, and in its tone, but that was a thin shell for all the heavy, messy complexities that it contained within itself. The big man started, stopped, moved as if to shake his head and put voice to a ‘no’, then arrested that too, looking back to the bed once more. Turning his own head to follow his friend’s gaze, Forge found Kara there, looking between the two of them. "Mantis will make sure she gets the help she needs, and I'll stay here with her, too. She'll be all right." Somewhere, in another world that existed no more than two yards away, Forge was vaguely aware of Cyclops’ voice lifting slightly in a question - the name of the White Queen - but the Cheyenne inventor paid it little mind, instead watching the emotions play across his best friend’s face. A hint of disbelief, uncertainty, that same sense of a new hollowness, an open wound that had left Rankin gored and gutted, and yet still, even with that, a sense of determination, or decision, that slowly came to the fore as the winged man made his choice. "Yeah, alright," he told the Fucker, wings rustling at his back and hand racking through his hair. "I'll go. I'm not doing anybody any damned good in here." Not doing anyone any good here, and certainly not doing himself any good, though Forge held his tongue, rather than speak that thought as it crossed his mind, while Rankin looked back to each of them in turn, ending with Summers himself. "Just..take care of her, alright?" Cyclops - this new, but eerily familiar version of the man - lifted his chin slightly, appearing to turn his visored gaze on Mimic. After a moment though, he nodded, a small movement but an unmistakeable one, as though there might still have been some understanding that could be shared between the two men on this point at least. Then he turned aside, taking a step toward the bed and sliding down to sit beside his wife on the side opposite Kara. With an almost surprising degree of tenderness, he slid one hand over hers, gently prising it away from her face and taking it in both his own, murmuring her name softly as he did. Whether this sign that his plea that she would be taken care of was being fulfilled could give Rankin any more than a hollow comfort, Forge didn’t know. Rather than watch his friend’s face for the answer, for the moment he turned instead to Kara, lifting his hand and cupping her shoulder gently, palm arranged so his thumb just barely brushed against the base of her slim neck. “When you’re finished here...” he said, looking into those fine eyes with a slow gaze that still held urgency, “...find Clarice. Or Madison. Someone. Don’t be alone tonight.” In another world, another time, another set of particulars, he’d have moved everything he could to be with her himself tonight, to not let her have gone through something like this, whatever her part had been, without being there to help her as she needed. But here and now, there was no way around it, a friend - the best of friends - in greater need. As he turned his gaze away from Kara finally, Forge found himself looking to Mantis - though with the green-skinned woman, likely it wasn’t half the coincidence that it had seemed. No words she spoke, but the image of the forgotten, abandoned bottle of rye appeared in his mind, and after a fraction of a second lost to confusion, Forge recalled the point, and nodded to her, just once. An odd one, certainly. But perhaps in some things, there truly was a method to her madness. He took the short detour necessary to retrieve the bottle from where it had been left on the floor before stepping back to Rankin. Said nothing more, but placed his bionic right hand on his friend’s wide shoulder, looked once more around the room, then began to guide the big man back toward the door. Not an easy walk, having to turn your back and abandon the wreckage of everything you’d held dear, knowing that at least part of that wreckage could be laid at your door, and walking past the eyes of people who knew that too. But Calvin, at least, wouldn’t have to make that walk alone, that much Forge could make sure of. |
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3:33 AM Jul 11