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xp_logsWar has its casualties. The only question is, who will it be? Amanda tries one last Healing.
I am too connected to you to
Slip away, to fade away.
Days away I still feel you
Touching me, changing me,
And considerately killing me.
"Sober" - Tool.
***
Around her, chaos. But organised chaos, she realised dimly. Pete was shouting something that sounded like ritual words, reading off a piece of paper, familiar faces were beginning to appear to take on the guards that suddenly swarmed the chamber, Kylun fighting like a dervish, Cain swinging his big fists around and apparently enjoying himself... But Amanda only had eyes for the crumpled form on the floor in front of her, the brightness of her hair extinguished to dull white, chest barely moving at all, her hands wrinkled claws. Selene had drained her practically dry and cast her aside like a piece of refuse. If Alison wasn't dead yet she would be in only minutes and it would be Amanda's fault, just as everything here was her fault. She'd fucked up so badly, put people in danger and there was no way to fix that, nothing she could do, not with the magic as drained as it was...
Then she caught sight of a familiar grey head, Nate's height making him visible even through the confusion, and a snippet of conversation came back to her. The last they'd had, if you could call it a conversation:
"The one thing about sacrifice is that it's clean, Amanda. It's hard, but it's right."
There was a way she could make it right. The only way, the best way, for everyone concerned.
Ignoring Jubilee's questioning of what she was doing, Amanda pulled herself into a kneeling position beside Alison's bod... no, beside Alison. Laying her hand on Alison's fragile chest above her stilling heart, the leather of the uniform baggy and loose from the mass lost, Amanda took one last look around at the room around her, at Pete, who somehow wasn't the bad guy any more, at Nathan, who she'd never hear call her mi'caehla again, Jubilee who'd somehow managed to pull her back from the brink. 'I wish Remy were here,' she thought briefly, and then she closed her eyes and concentrated.
It was frighteningly easy, really. Healing was energy transfer, after all, using the energy of the caster's magic to jump start the patient's own systems. And Alison was a void that needed filling, demanded it. The remaining magic disappeared into that void without making any apparent mark, leaving only one thing she could use to fill it. Something that wouldn't be missed, that was better off being used to bring Alison back, that she had no right to any more, not after everything she'd done. A life for a life. Kurt would find it appropriate, she thought dimly.
Amanda's hand began glowing brightly, golden light suffusing the corner of the room they were in. Energy poured into Alison... no, more than that, life poured into Alison, and under Amanda's touch the first signs of rejuvenation began. Sunken cheeks began to fill, parchment-like skin to smooth, colour to return...
Nathan moved through the crowd with almost no effort, barely thinking as he knocked people aside with near-instinctive flickers of telekinesis. One look told him what state Alison was in, and what Amanda was doing. He didn't even need the soft, urgent whispering at the back of his mind.
"Amanda!" he snapped. "Stop!"
She ignored him - this was the right thing to do, the only thing and she couldn't let Alison pay the price for Amanda's poor choices. "I'm sorry," she murmured, squeezing her eyes tighter shut as she concentrated harder. Already the room around her was getting colder, more distant, a growing chill spreading through her.
#We said STOP!# The firebird flared to life around Nathan, the voice in Amanda's head a composite of his and Askani's.
Amanda's eyes flew open as the combined voice reverberated in her head. Only to find the world had stopped - around her, everyone had become motionless, frozen where they stood. Except for the man standing on the other side of Alison, firebird flickering around him. "Nate?" she said, brow furrowing. Then she looked down at Alison. "Nate, you have to let me do this. It's the only way."
The firebird-effect flickered forwards as if blown by a sudden wind, the light taking Askani's shape. "It isn't," she said, firmly. She was almost transparent, Nathan fully visible through her. "Not when there's another option."
Nathan stared at Askani for a moment, dizzied. The sky in his mind was full of stars, blazing like they had the very first moment he'd seen them, a year and a half ago. He made himself focus on Amanda, shaking his head. "This isn't the way. Alison wouldn't want this, Amanda." He wasn't sure what was the way, only that...
... oh. The realization made him take a step back as Askani looked back at him over her shoulder, the fierce green of her eyes the most vivid thing about her. "Oh, no," he said aloud, his voice breaking.
"I can't just let her die." Amanda had missed the exchange of glances, focussing on Alison and when she looked up her eyes were full of tears. "This is all my fault, she wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for me."
"You don't have to." Askani didn't so much kneel down beside Amanda as the light that composed her flowed downward, reforming in the new position. "Listen to me," she said rapidly, as Amanda looked at her. "My time here has to come to an end, one way or the other--"
"No!" Nathan jerked forward. He wasn't sure how he'd managed the word. It felt like a vice had closed around his chest and was squeezing, crushing out his air.
Askani shook her head and went on, not looking at Nathan. "I am killing him," she said to Amanda, her voice low and fierce. "Do you understand? I am killing him by staying. It is slow, but it is inevitable. I was not going to let that happen, even before I sensed this coming." Those green eyes moved back to Nathan for a moment, then returned to Amanda's face. "But when I go, it is into oblivion, one way or another. Let me go to a purpose, child. Let me save them both." Her smile was odd, almost enigmatic. "You could wring every drop of life-energy from yourself and still not heal her. But the energy within me... enough, and more than enough."
"I can't," Amanda whispered, shaking her head, refusing to accept Askani's implacable logic. "I can't let someone else pay for what I did. Not any more. I fucked up so badly, it's the only way to make things right. Please, let me do this." It was almost a plea as she looked into Askani's bottomless eyes. "Nate was right, I have to make the choice."
Askani's eyes were almost glowing. "Do you think that she did this, made her own sacrifice, to see you throw your life away out of guilt? Do you think that your uncle made his for any reason but to win you and all the other children a chance to live?" The translucent hand shot out, grabbing Amanda's wrist. "~You owe them your life, lost child. Not your death! This does them no honor, and yourself less.~"
This wasn't happening. This wasn't happening. Nathan's hands were white-knuckled around his psimitar as he listened to what Askani was telling Amanda, heard the rightness there.
And for a moment, he hated them. Amanda, Alison, Pete... all three of them. He wasn't ready. He wasn't ready to let her go, and between the three of them, they'd brought him to a point where he had to, where there was no other choice...
...but the right one. Nathan closed his eyes for a moment, tried to let emotion drain away. It didn't quite work, but when he opened his eyes again, he was almost calm. There'd be time later for the rest.
He took one step, then another, until he was able to crouch down beside Askani. "Listen to her," he said, his voice tight and strained, but his eyes locked on Amanda's face. "Make a choice, but make the right choice this time, Amanda. She died..." His voice caught in his throat, tears blurring his vision. "She died for her people once. Let her do it again."
"I don't want..." The words locked in her throat. She didn't want to die, she didn't want anyone to die, that had been the whole point, hadn't it? To stop the loss? Only it had gone wrong, she'd got it wrong and now either way someone was going to die. "I didn't want this, any of it," she said, hating the whining sound of her voice. Looking down again at Alison, she tried to think. Nate was dying, Askani had said so, said that her presence was killing him. And there was a young baby back at the mansion who needed him more than any of them. But if she did this... All she had to do was listen to the pain in his voice, see it in his face. He'd never forgive her. But then again, why should he?
At least he'd be alive to hate her.
"I'm scared," she whispered at last. "Of what happens next."
"Living is far more frightening than dying," Askani said, with a ghost of a smile. "Trust me, little one. I've done both. But one has definite benefits over the other." She reached out with a hand, glowing fingertips brushing Amanda's temple for a moment. "~Brighter days,~" she murmured, "~and lights at the end of dark tunnels to you, little sister.~" Nathan felt a slight tug at his powers, repeated more strongly when Askani looked down and repeated the same gesture with Alison, more lingeringly against the fragile skin. Something had been transferred there, he knew. He wasn't sure what.
Then her form wavered for a moment, as if her attention was briefly directed elsewhere. Before Nathan could react, she was turning to him, a glowing hand touching the side of his face, luminescent green eyes locked on his.
And she was crying, too. But smiling, at the same time.
#~So proud,~# her voice whispered in his mind. #~So proud, Askani'son.~#
She leaned forward, lips brushing his forehead in a kiss like any mother might have given her son, and then she was gone and the firebird was back in that internal sky, blazing. Waiting.
Nathan looked up at Amanda. "Don't be afraid," he said, in a voice that wasn't quite his. "Just... take my hand. And do it, quickly. While there's still time."
Do the easy thing, or do the right thing - there was only one way to go, Amanda knew that. But it didn't stop the shaking of her legs as she stood, or the trembling of her hand as she reached out for Nathan's, or the tears that were streaming down her face now. One life for two, that's what it came down to. "I'm so sorry," she repeated as her fingers brushed Nathan's palm, half-expecting him to jerk away.
Sorry has no meaning, Nathan thought, but didn't say. Just as he didn't jerk away, or tell Amanda that Askani was lying, or at least creatively embroidering the truth.
She would kill him if she stayed, yes - but only eventually. There could have been months more if he was willing to pay the price, accept the slow, cumulative damage. It had occurred to him, these last few weeks, that it might have been worth it. To learn more, to know more. To be more ready when the time came to take up the burden he'd be carrying in her name.
At the very least there could have been weeks more. Enough time to come to terms with it, to let her go. There could have been a better goodbye than this.
But Alison was dying. And Amanda was ready to kill herself in a futile attempt to save her. So there was no more time, and only one right choice.
One life for two, he heard Amanda think, and knew that she was right.
Except that the second life wasn't his.
Nathan's hand closed over hers and around them the world unfroze. Time, there was no time, Alison was slipping away even as they watched. Amanda hesitated just a second longer and then let her powers surface.
Usually when Amanda used her mutant ability, there was no visible sign of anything happening. This time... she jerked violently, hand clamping down tightly on Nathan's. A flush crept over her skin, unnaturally pale under Selene's influence, then increased to a glow, steadily brightening until she was almost incandescent. Her hair crackled and lifted, as if by an unfelt wind, the colour bleaching from it. Power filled her, thrumming through her nerves. And in her mind, Askani's presence unfolding great flaming wings.
Nathan tried to concentrate on minimizing the backlash. The floor beneath them glowed and flashed into glass, but he held it to a circle surrounding himself and Amanda and Alison's prone form. Immersed in altered sight, wrestling doggedly with the molecules of everything around him so that the building didn't explode from the inside out, he could almost ignore what he was feeling.
It wasn't his life she was draining away. It wasn't, and it was. One more death, he was sharing one more death with Askani, and he willed his heart to keep beating, forced himself to keep drawing air into his lungs. Will. Will let him hold it together, even as the patterns inside his mind were torn apart, the psionic structures he'd built since last May crumbling into rubble as the foundation for it all was torn out from under him.
The tears on her cheeks turned to flames, fire oozing out from beneath her tightly-closed lids. Power... no, life, there was so much life within her it felt as if her heart was about to burst. Fire and life incarnate - she had it in her now to be anything, do anything. But it was borrowed power, it had always been and she understood that now - even as she felt something shifting in her head and the first trickles of blood begin flowing from her nose and ears, she pulled her hand from Nathan's and dropped to her knees beside Alison again. Flames erupted from the tips of her fingers as she lay both hands on Alison's chest, let them rest there and pushed them into the woman's body.
Nathan sagged, his shoulders slumping as the backlash died, all at once. Gone. She was gone from his mind, every last trace of her, and he closed his eyes against the blinding pain inside his skull. The last pattern flickered and died, and he knew that his role in this was over as quickly as it had come in the instant before his precognitive awareness vanished entirely.
But he forced his eyes open, wanting to see what happened next.
For those watching, Amanda's hands flared with light, light so bright it was painful to watch, the glare expanding and brightening until neither woman could be seen. Her head was filled with fire and pain and power, Askani's voice murmuring reassurances to her softly. To her magically-altered senses there was nothing beneath her hands but a gaping void, a sucking abyss of darkness and cold and it was into this that she poured everything Askani had given her, all that and more. It wasn't just about saving Alison now, it was about making Askani's sacrifice worth it, worthy of the life the woman had lived, the price it was exacting on all of them.
The room grew still, an expectant hush falling.
Light, all was light now, and fire and she couldn't hear Askani any more. Healings were different, she had specific damage to work on that she could sense, but all she could sense here was that void needing to be filled. 'Live. You have to live,' she thought desperately at Alison as she pushed with everything she had left.
Energy exploded outwards from the point Amanda's hands were sunk into Alison's body, flinging the girl backwards, lifting Alison off the floor. Light, brilliant white and blinding, filled the ceremonial chamber, knocking aside the few remaining guards. Everyone else it touched was healed of whatever wounds they'd picked up - the fingermark bruises on Jubilee's neck, the residual drugs in her system, the ligature marks on Amanda's throat from the scarf... And then the light faded, the lingering patterns of a bird of fire dissipating last, leaving the room seeming dingy and dark despite the lighting. A stunned silence descended, broken by the sound of a gasp.
Alison was breathing again.
The ravages of old age had entirely faded from the still unconscious woman, unmoving on the floor save for the rise and fall of her chest as she fell into steady breathing, once the first struggles for breath were over. Those looking closely, counting each breath as the seconds ticked by, soon noticed the odd glints in her hair from the lighting - silver streaks shooting through her hair, steadily more obvious, a remnant of the fact that the very life had been drained from her.
Amanda lay in a crumpled heap where she'd landed, now-blonde hair covering her face, the Hellfire outfit even more absurd. Jubilee, torn between checking on Alison, checking on the shell shocked looking Nathan and checking on the witch, finally scooted over the glass floor to touch Amanda's cheek. Her skin was cold, her breathing shallow, although all traces of the earlier bleeding were gone - obviously what she had done had pushed her to her limits.
And beyond - with what remained of her consciousness Amanda was trying to come back from the brink, only there was no 'back' that she could see. Askani's power, her essence, they'd gone, leaving Amanda in a cold and dark place. She'd pushed too hard, used too much of herself and now she wasn't sure she could make it back.
The thought terrified her.
~Please,~ she thought desperately, clinging onto the fine thread of her consciousness. ~I want to live. Someone, anyone... help me?~
The abyss yawned up, pulling at the fringes of her consciousness. The gravity tugged her closely, fragmenting slowly into the black. This was death; cold and final. Amanda looked into the dark, blacker than anything she'd ever seen and realised that it was over. The ebony wave gathered and broke over the last vestiges of her spirit.
And stopped. She was buffeted, felt the very life pull from her but in the void, a single fragile silver thread had appeared. A touch, just enough to let her hold. The darkness gathered again, overwhelming her and making a mockery of the tiny thread, ready to snap it effortlessly for the void.
In the cold muggy darkness, as black as the maelstrom around Amanda, power flared. It was deep and rich; like the deep black mud of the bayou. The essence from which life comes, as rich and dark as the voice in the black.
"Just hold on, childe."
Power leapt from the touch, and raced through the ether to ground into the ones in Amanda's emotions. One thread became two, two became three and she reached for them, knowing somehow what they were. Who they were. She was lost, lost in the woods, but it didn't have to be that way, she knew that now. Threads of hope, of faith, glimmering in the dark. Faith in her.
~I just want to come home.~
***
There was a hand holding hers and a voice talking softly, saying... her name? Amanda sucked in a breath and immediately started coughing.
"Hey, dude, take it easy there. Air's not goin' any where, ya know?" Jubilee's voice sounded relieved and there was a squeeze on her hand. "Just breathe, okay?"
Amanda opened her eyes, ignoring for the moment the dull ache in her head, the yawning sense of emptiness that indicated she'd drained her magical energies dry. Jubilee's smile was wobbly, but genuine. "You back with us?" the other girl asked.
"Yeah," Amanda said, not letting go of Jubilee's hand. "I reckon I am."
I am too connected to you to
Slip away, to fade away.
Days away I still feel you
Touching me, changing me,
And considerately killing me.
"Sober" - Tool.
***
Around her, chaos. But organised chaos, she realised dimly. Pete was shouting something that sounded like ritual words, reading off a piece of paper, familiar faces were beginning to appear to take on the guards that suddenly swarmed the chamber, Kylun fighting like a dervish, Cain swinging his big fists around and apparently enjoying himself... But Amanda only had eyes for the crumpled form on the floor in front of her, the brightness of her hair extinguished to dull white, chest barely moving at all, her hands wrinkled claws. Selene had drained her practically dry and cast her aside like a piece of refuse. If Alison wasn't dead yet she would be in only minutes and it would be Amanda's fault, just as everything here was her fault. She'd fucked up so badly, put people in danger and there was no way to fix that, nothing she could do, not with the magic as drained as it was...
Then she caught sight of a familiar grey head, Nate's height making him visible even through the confusion, and a snippet of conversation came back to her. The last they'd had, if you could call it a conversation:
"The one thing about sacrifice is that it's clean, Amanda. It's hard, but it's right."
There was a way she could make it right. The only way, the best way, for everyone concerned.
Ignoring Jubilee's questioning of what she was doing, Amanda pulled herself into a kneeling position beside Alison's bod... no, beside Alison. Laying her hand on Alison's fragile chest above her stilling heart, the leather of the uniform baggy and loose from the mass lost, Amanda took one last look around at the room around her, at Pete, who somehow wasn't the bad guy any more, at Nathan, who she'd never hear call her mi'caehla again, Jubilee who'd somehow managed to pull her back from the brink. 'I wish Remy were here,' she thought briefly, and then she closed her eyes and concentrated.
It was frighteningly easy, really. Healing was energy transfer, after all, using the energy of the caster's magic to jump start the patient's own systems. And Alison was a void that needed filling, demanded it. The remaining magic disappeared into that void without making any apparent mark, leaving only one thing she could use to fill it. Something that wouldn't be missed, that was better off being used to bring Alison back, that she had no right to any more, not after everything she'd done. A life for a life. Kurt would find it appropriate, she thought dimly.
Amanda's hand began glowing brightly, golden light suffusing the corner of the room they were in. Energy poured into Alison... no, more than that, life poured into Alison, and under Amanda's touch the first signs of rejuvenation began. Sunken cheeks began to fill, parchment-like skin to smooth, colour to return...
Nathan moved through the crowd with almost no effort, barely thinking as he knocked people aside with near-instinctive flickers of telekinesis. One look told him what state Alison was in, and what Amanda was doing. He didn't even need the soft, urgent whispering at the back of his mind.
"Amanda!" he snapped. "Stop!"
She ignored him - this was the right thing to do, the only thing and she couldn't let Alison pay the price for Amanda's poor choices. "I'm sorry," she murmured, squeezing her eyes tighter shut as she concentrated harder. Already the room around her was getting colder, more distant, a growing chill spreading through her.
#We said STOP!# The firebird flared to life around Nathan, the voice in Amanda's head a composite of his and Askani's.
Amanda's eyes flew open as the combined voice reverberated in her head. Only to find the world had stopped - around her, everyone had become motionless, frozen where they stood. Except for the man standing on the other side of Alison, firebird flickering around him. "Nate?" she said, brow furrowing. Then she looked down at Alison. "Nate, you have to let me do this. It's the only way."
The firebird-effect flickered forwards as if blown by a sudden wind, the light taking Askani's shape. "It isn't," she said, firmly. She was almost transparent, Nathan fully visible through her. "Not when there's another option."
Nathan stared at Askani for a moment, dizzied. The sky in his mind was full of stars, blazing like they had the very first moment he'd seen them, a year and a half ago. He made himself focus on Amanda, shaking his head. "This isn't the way. Alison wouldn't want this, Amanda." He wasn't sure what was the way, only that...
... oh. The realization made him take a step back as Askani looked back at him over her shoulder, the fierce green of her eyes the most vivid thing about her. "Oh, no," he said aloud, his voice breaking.
"I can't just let her die." Amanda had missed the exchange of glances, focussing on Alison and when she looked up her eyes were full of tears. "This is all my fault, she wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for me."
"You don't have to." Askani didn't so much kneel down beside Amanda as the light that composed her flowed downward, reforming in the new position. "Listen to me," she said rapidly, as Amanda looked at her. "My time here has to come to an end, one way or the other--"
"No!" Nathan jerked forward. He wasn't sure how he'd managed the word. It felt like a vice had closed around his chest and was squeezing, crushing out his air.
Askani shook her head and went on, not looking at Nathan. "I am killing him," she said to Amanda, her voice low and fierce. "Do you understand? I am killing him by staying. It is slow, but it is inevitable. I was not going to let that happen, even before I sensed this coming." Those green eyes moved back to Nathan for a moment, then returned to Amanda's face. "But when I go, it is into oblivion, one way or another. Let me go to a purpose, child. Let me save them both." Her smile was odd, almost enigmatic. "You could wring every drop of life-energy from yourself and still not heal her. But the energy within me... enough, and more than enough."
"I can't," Amanda whispered, shaking her head, refusing to accept Askani's implacable logic. "I can't let someone else pay for what I did. Not any more. I fucked up so badly, it's the only way to make things right. Please, let me do this." It was almost a plea as she looked into Askani's bottomless eyes. "Nate was right, I have to make the choice."
Askani's eyes were almost glowing. "Do you think that she did this, made her own sacrifice, to see you throw your life away out of guilt? Do you think that your uncle made his for any reason but to win you and all the other children a chance to live?" The translucent hand shot out, grabbing Amanda's wrist. "~You owe them your life, lost child. Not your death! This does them no honor, and yourself less.~"
This wasn't happening. This wasn't happening. Nathan's hands were white-knuckled around his psimitar as he listened to what Askani was telling Amanda, heard the rightness there.
And for a moment, he hated them. Amanda, Alison, Pete... all three of them. He wasn't ready. He wasn't ready to let her go, and between the three of them, they'd brought him to a point where he had to, where there was no other choice...
...but the right one. Nathan closed his eyes for a moment, tried to let emotion drain away. It didn't quite work, but when he opened his eyes again, he was almost calm. There'd be time later for the rest.
He took one step, then another, until he was able to crouch down beside Askani. "Listen to her," he said, his voice tight and strained, but his eyes locked on Amanda's face. "Make a choice, but make the right choice this time, Amanda. She died..." His voice caught in his throat, tears blurring his vision. "She died for her people once. Let her do it again."
"I don't want..." The words locked in her throat. She didn't want to die, she didn't want anyone to die, that had been the whole point, hadn't it? To stop the loss? Only it had gone wrong, she'd got it wrong and now either way someone was going to die. "I didn't want this, any of it," she said, hating the whining sound of her voice. Looking down again at Alison, she tried to think. Nate was dying, Askani had said so, said that her presence was killing him. And there was a young baby back at the mansion who needed him more than any of them. But if she did this... All she had to do was listen to the pain in his voice, see it in his face. He'd never forgive her. But then again, why should he?
At least he'd be alive to hate her.
"I'm scared," she whispered at last. "Of what happens next."
"Living is far more frightening than dying," Askani said, with a ghost of a smile. "Trust me, little one. I've done both. But one has definite benefits over the other." She reached out with a hand, glowing fingertips brushing Amanda's temple for a moment. "~Brighter days,~" she murmured, "~and lights at the end of dark tunnels to you, little sister.~" Nathan felt a slight tug at his powers, repeated more strongly when Askani looked down and repeated the same gesture with Alison, more lingeringly against the fragile skin. Something had been transferred there, he knew. He wasn't sure what.
Then her form wavered for a moment, as if her attention was briefly directed elsewhere. Before Nathan could react, she was turning to him, a glowing hand touching the side of his face, luminescent green eyes locked on his.
And she was crying, too. But smiling, at the same time.
#~So proud,~# her voice whispered in his mind. #~So proud, Askani'son.~#
She leaned forward, lips brushing his forehead in a kiss like any mother might have given her son, and then she was gone and the firebird was back in that internal sky, blazing. Waiting.
Nathan looked up at Amanda. "Don't be afraid," he said, in a voice that wasn't quite his. "Just... take my hand. And do it, quickly. While there's still time."
Do the easy thing, or do the right thing - there was only one way to go, Amanda knew that. But it didn't stop the shaking of her legs as she stood, or the trembling of her hand as she reached out for Nathan's, or the tears that were streaming down her face now. One life for two, that's what it came down to. "I'm so sorry," she repeated as her fingers brushed Nathan's palm, half-expecting him to jerk away.
Sorry has no meaning, Nathan thought, but didn't say. Just as he didn't jerk away, or tell Amanda that Askani was lying, or at least creatively embroidering the truth.
She would kill him if she stayed, yes - but only eventually. There could have been months more if he was willing to pay the price, accept the slow, cumulative damage. It had occurred to him, these last few weeks, that it might have been worth it. To learn more, to know more. To be more ready when the time came to take up the burden he'd be carrying in her name.
At the very least there could have been weeks more. Enough time to come to terms with it, to let her go. There could have been a better goodbye than this.
But Alison was dying. And Amanda was ready to kill herself in a futile attempt to save her. So there was no more time, and only one right choice.
One life for two, he heard Amanda think, and knew that she was right.
Except that the second life wasn't his.
Nathan's hand closed over hers and around them the world unfroze. Time, there was no time, Alison was slipping away even as they watched. Amanda hesitated just a second longer and then let her powers surface.
Usually when Amanda used her mutant ability, there was no visible sign of anything happening. This time... she jerked violently, hand clamping down tightly on Nathan's. A flush crept over her skin, unnaturally pale under Selene's influence, then increased to a glow, steadily brightening until she was almost incandescent. Her hair crackled and lifted, as if by an unfelt wind, the colour bleaching from it. Power filled her, thrumming through her nerves. And in her mind, Askani's presence unfolding great flaming wings.
Nathan tried to concentrate on minimizing the backlash. The floor beneath them glowed and flashed into glass, but he held it to a circle surrounding himself and Amanda and Alison's prone form. Immersed in altered sight, wrestling doggedly with the molecules of everything around him so that the building didn't explode from the inside out, he could almost ignore what he was feeling.
It wasn't his life she was draining away. It wasn't, and it was. One more death, he was sharing one more death with Askani, and he willed his heart to keep beating, forced himself to keep drawing air into his lungs. Will. Will let him hold it together, even as the patterns inside his mind were torn apart, the psionic structures he'd built since last May crumbling into rubble as the foundation for it all was torn out from under him.
The tears on her cheeks turned to flames, fire oozing out from beneath her tightly-closed lids. Power... no, life, there was so much life within her it felt as if her heart was about to burst. Fire and life incarnate - she had it in her now to be anything, do anything. But it was borrowed power, it had always been and she understood that now - even as she felt something shifting in her head and the first trickles of blood begin flowing from her nose and ears, she pulled her hand from Nathan's and dropped to her knees beside Alison again. Flames erupted from the tips of her fingers as she lay both hands on Alison's chest, let them rest there and pushed them into the woman's body.
Nathan sagged, his shoulders slumping as the backlash died, all at once. Gone. She was gone from his mind, every last trace of her, and he closed his eyes against the blinding pain inside his skull. The last pattern flickered and died, and he knew that his role in this was over as quickly as it had come in the instant before his precognitive awareness vanished entirely.
But he forced his eyes open, wanting to see what happened next.
For those watching, Amanda's hands flared with light, light so bright it was painful to watch, the glare expanding and brightening until neither woman could be seen. Her head was filled with fire and pain and power, Askani's voice murmuring reassurances to her softly. To her magically-altered senses there was nothing beneath her hands but a gaping void, a sucking abyss of darkness and cold and it was into this that she poured everything Askani had given her, all that and more. It wasn't just about saving Alison now, it was about making Askani's sacrifice worth it, worthy of the life the woman had lived, the price it was exacting on all of them.
The room grew still, an expectant hush falling.
Light, all was light now, and fire and she couldn't hear Askani any more. Healings were different, she had specific damage to work on that she could sense, but all she could sense here was that void needing to be filled. 'Live. You have to live,' she thought desperately at Alison as she pushed with everything she had left.
Energy exploded outwards from the point Amanda's hands were sunk into Alison's body, flinging the girl backwards, lifting Alison off the floor. Light, brilliant white and blinding, filled the ceremonial chamber, knocking aside the few remaining guards. Everyone else it touched was healed of whatever wounds they'd picked up - the fingermark bruises on Jubilee's neck, the residual drugs in her system, the ligature marks on Amanda's throat from the scarf... And then the light faded, the lingering patterns of a bird of fire dissipating last, leaving the room seeming dingy and dark despite the lighting. A stunned silence descended, broken by the sound of a gasp.
Alison was breathing again.
The ravages of old age had entirely faded from the still unconscious woman, unmoving on the floor save for the rise and fall of her chest as she fell into steady breathing, once the first struggles for breath were over. Those looking closely, counting each breath as the seconds ticked by, soon noticed the odd glints in her hair from the lighting - silver streaks shooting through her hair, steadily more obvious, a remnant of the fact that the very life had been drained from her.
Amanda lay in a crumpled heap where she'd landed, now-blonde hair covering her face, the Hellfire outfit even more absurd. Jubilee, torn between checking on Alison, checking on the shell shocked looking Nathan and checking on the witch, finally scooted over the glass floor to touch Amanda's cheek. Her skin was cold, her breathing shallow, although all traces of the earlier bleeding were gone - obviously what she had done had pushed her to her limits.
And beyond - with what remained of her consciousness Amanda was trying to come back from the brink, only there was no 'back' that she could see. Askani's power, her essence, they'd gone, leaving Amanda in a cold and dark place. She'd pushed too hard, used too much of herself and now she wasn't sure she could make it back.
The thought terrified her.
~Please,~ she thought desperately, clinging onto the fine thread of her consciousness. ~I want to live. Someone, anyone... help me?~
The abyss yawned up, pulling at the fringes of her consciousness. The gravity tugged her closely, fragmenting slowly into the black. This was death; cold and final. Amanda looked into the dark, blacker than anything she'd ever seen and realised that it was over. The ebony wave gathered and broke over the last vestiges of her spirit.
And stopped. She was buffeted, felt the very life pull from her but in the void, a single fragile silver thread had appeared. A touch, just enough to let her hold. The darkness gathered again, overwhelming her and making a mockery of the tiny thread, ready to snap it effortlessly for the void.
In the cold muggy darkness, as black as the maelstrom around Amanda, power flared. It was deep and rich; like the deep black mud of the bayou. The essence from which life comes, as rich and dark as the voice in the black.
"Just hold on, childe."
Power leapt from the touch, and raced through the ether to ground into the ones in Amanda's emotions. One thread became two, two became three and she reached for them, knowing somehow what they were. Who they were. She was lost, lost in the woods, but it didn't have to be that way, she knew that now. Threads of hope, of faith, glimmering in the dark. Faith in her.
~I just want to come home.~
***
There was a hand holding hers and a voice talking softly, saying... her name? Amanda sucked in a breath and immediately started coughing.
"Hey, dude, take it easy there. Air's not goin' any where, ya know?" Jubilee's voice sounded relieved and there was a squeeze on her hand. "Just breathe, okay?"
Amanda opened her eyes, ignoring for the moment the dull ache in her head, the yawning sense of emptiness that indicated she'd drained her magical energies dry. Jubilee's smile was wobbly, but genuine. "You back with us?" the other girl asked.
"Yeah," Amanda said, not letting go of Jubilee's hand. "I reckon I am."
