The Enemy Within: Part Five

[x-juggernaut.livejournal.com]

As Cain takes a moment to sit and think on things before heading to the jet, Haller finds him in the locker room, preparing for his journey.




Given the older man's avowed hatred of telepathy, Jim was sure Cain would have been pleased to know mutant powers had featured nowhere in this particular equation. Some signals you didn't need to be psychic to pick up on. The quiet, purposeful efficiency of movement, the set of the jaw and shoulders, the timbre of the voice . . . no. You didn't have to be a psychic to read the signs. You had to be blind to miss them.

Centering himself, breathing slow and deep, Jim stepped around the row of lockers.

"Going somewhere?"

"We're taking the jet out," Cain said quietly, not looking up at Haller. "Sam's coming with me. Heading off to where this whole mess got started."

He'd been sitting on the bench for a while, looking at his open locker with his X-Men leathers hanging there, the insignia glinting in the fluorescent light from overhead.

"So you're taking someone. That's good. That puts you a step above Nathan, anyway." Jim settled on the bench a little ways down from the larger man, hands resting on his too-angular knees. He glanced over at Cain. "That was a nice speech you made to the kids. Coming clean. Reminding them of what this place really is to them. What it can be. What it should. It was nice."

He paused, studying the older man's face. One that looked not much older than his own, reality to the contrary. Closed and calm. Decided.

"It was goodbye," Jim said softly, "wasn't it?"

"It was what it was," Cain said quietly, not meeting the other man's eyes. "This power I got... it ain't mine. Not in the way you, or Chuck, or anyone else here has. I ain't... I ain't like you guys. What I do comes from somewhere else. And it ain't a nice place. I done a lot of things I ain't proud of in my time, you know."

He reached out with one large hand, brushing his fingers over the collar of his uniform jacket. "Finally got to do something I could be proud of. Be a part of something. Use this power for something right."

Jim smiled slightly. "Yeah. I understand that." His mismatched gaze followed Cain's hand to his uniform. "It's not the same, knowing you're only alive because of something else. You're . . . not expendable, exactly, but somewhere in your head -- you know it was over. You've already run past your dues. Anything after, all the rest -- it's just a gift." His smile widened a fraction, gaze shifting back to the face of the man beside him. "But it's okay to take it, as long as you use it well. And being at the school, helping these people -- you did. You made a difference here. And that nothing takes away."

Cain smiled wanly, rubbing his thumb over the X on his collar. "What in the hell's that speech Nate likes, the Shakespeare one? From this day, but to the end of the world; but we in it shall be remembered? He was reading it on the way to Youra, you know. It wasn't about a blaze of glory, it never is. It's about knowing you do the right thing, and people remember that about you."

He shook his head, putting his hands on his knees. "Nothing takes that away," he repeated.

Jim nodded slowly. "Do what's right, until you can do no more. Sometimes that's all that's left."

He looked again from the red leather to the man on the bench beside him in the silence of the empty locker room. A kind of hollow loss filled him, knowing that he didn't really know Cain, realizing that now he might never have the chance. One more person gone, one more opportunity lost. The man next to him faced death, or worse, yet Jim held himself still inside, calm and steady as his odd-colored gaze. He couldn't stop Cain. He neither the right nor the desire. He could only watch.

David is witness. All my life, just witness.

"What did you tell Charles?" Jim asked.

"That I was going to set things right," Cain said. "Chuck and I... we ain't never been good brothers. He's always wanted to be, but it just ain't in the cards. He's gotta learn to accept that sometimes, people ain't going to see eye to eye. He told me... " Cain swallowed roughly, "he said that no matter what, our house would always be home for me. Our house, he said. Not 'the' house, or 'this' house. That's Chuck, always hoping."

Jim had to smile at that, remembering that night at Harry's what had only been weeks ago. "Yeah, Charles is the eternal optimist. But he's right, it is your home. With or without him, it always will be. Something to come back to. Nothing takes that away, either." Jim nodded to the leathers hanging in Cain's locker. "What about those?"

Slowly, Cain reached out and closed the door to his locker. "Not where I'm going," he said with finality. "Not today."

A slight, almost infintesimal nod of acknowledgement. "They'll be waiting," the younger man said. Eyes never wavering, Jim extended one long-fingered hand. "It was good to meet you, Cain. When you get wherever you're going -- be right with yourself. It was a gift. Don't let it have been wasted."

Cain took Haller's hand in his own, nodding back. "It ain't been a waste," he asserted softly. "Not a single damn moment. Take care of them, Dave."

"We will." Jim grasped Cain's wrist briefly, then slid back to clasp the oversized palm, his hand in the older man's no bigger than a child's. One shake, two, and it was done. "Take care, Cain. I hope you find what you're looking for."

Cain smiled genuinely, looking around him, then back at David. "I think I really have," he said softly before standing and heading for the hangar.





Upon entering the hangar, however, Cain discovers that what he had intended to be a private two-man trip has turned into a somewhat larger excursion when Wanda and Marie-Ange show up. Cyttorak makes an appearance, and the five of them board the jet.



Cain walked out of the hallway into the hangar, looking at the sleek lines of the Blackbird before him. He was expecting to see Sam walking around finishing up pre-flight checks, and the tall Kentuckian was indeed doing just that.

What he hadn't expected was to see Wanda and Marie-Ange both standing by the ramp to the plane, not exactly blocking it but definitely interposing themselves between him and the plane. And the looks on their faces practically screamed that the women had a Plan of sorts.

"Great..." Cain mumbled, trudging over to the plane.

"Hello, Cain," Wanda said brightly, even though it was obvious that there was a lot on her mind. "The gossip mill is extraordinarily fast in the mansion and when I heard what was going on..."

She shrugged. "Sadly, consider me your expert on this subject."

Marie-Ange finished the sip of tea from the travel-mug she'd brought with her, and looked up. "If this... ends the way that I fear it will, I need to know what happens, as it happens." She actually looked.. clear-eyed and alert, like she'd managed more than a few hours of sleep.

Cain stopped in front of them, then exhaled and threw his arms in the air. "You two ain't gonna take no for an answer, obviously. I..." he shook his head, looking at the foot of the ramp. "Thanks. All I ask is that you let me do what I gotta do. I need to, you understand that?"

"Of course. The ball is totally in your court, we're just here to watch your back." And keep an eye on Cyttorak, though the chances of doing much of anything to him if something happened seemed very small indeed. Wanda grabbed her satchel from the floor, it would be a long flight and she could work during it, and turned towards the plane.

Sam chuckled from where he was crawling under the plane. "Yeah, we got steamrolled," he called to Cain. "Neither of them was interested in takin' no for an answer from me, neither."

"I am not going to interfere" Much. Unless it was strictly necessary. "Or -meddle-." Marie-Ange tried to bite back the bitter on the word, and managed to succeed. A little. "not at least, any more than I already have. Seeing the future changes it.."

"Yet some things will always be inevitable," the rasping whisper echoed off the walls of the hangar. Across the shining metal floor, Cyttorak strode towards the jet, hands shoved in the pockets of his wrinkled white suit, his lined face twitching as he took in the four figures before him. "My power will be returned to me, I will leave this place, he will be restored to what he should be, and our business will be concluded."

Pausing on the rampway, Wanda sighed under her breath. Cyttorak was creepy and off setting but...well, different than she'd expected this Destroyer to be. "How quickly will it be concluded?" she asked, mostly to Sam though it was also to Cyttorak. She would not be amused in the least if there were games being played.

"We will venture to the very place where he first became one with my essence," Cyttorak rasped, tracing an arc in the air with one liver-spotted hand. "He will surrender my power back to me, and it will be done."

"You're swearing it'll be that simple?" Cain shot back. "You get what's yours, you leave, we go our separate ways."

The being who styled himself a god smiled, placing a hand over where his heart would be, were he human. "As I explained to your dear brother, what reason would I have to remain? When a prisoner is paroled, how long does he spend on the steps of his penitentiary? I wish to leave as much as you wish me gone."

Having finished his walkaround, Sam joined the group at the ramp. He had a bad feeling about things, but it was Cain's choice to make in the end. "We're all set," he told them. "Everyone get strapped in, an' we'll take off shortly." He strode up the ramp and into the cockpit.

With a set of stereo grunts of identical acknowledgement, Cain and Cyttorak both stepped onto the ramp at the same time, then paused. Cain stepped back, motioning the old man forward into the jet. As he buckled in, he looked over at the figure who had set the entire event in motion.

"Out of curiosity, once you leave here," Cain asked, "what're you gonna do?"

Cyttorak put a finger to his chin, thinking. "I've always been fond of supernovas," he said after a moment. "Especially when you get that one just right that cascades over and starts another one - it's like skipping a stone across an entire galaxy. Entire solar systems just - WHAM! - one right after the other. Yes, yes. That is what I will do."