Five Against One: Giving Chase
Mar. 31st, 2007 11:08 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsAfter news of Haller's "episode" gets back to the school a retrieval party is scrambled. Cain and Wanda go after Cyndi. Mark, on the other hand, has no clue what the hell is going on.
Cain frowned, Charles' voice sounding almost like mental static in his head. "Jesus, Chuck, I'm trying to drive here..." he grumbled, steering the old pickup down the Manhattan street past the lines of BMWs and Escalades. Laying on the horn, he leaned his head out the window, bellowing "GET OUTTA THE WAAAAY!" as he glanced over at Wanda.
The coin glinted faintly in Wanda's hand as she laughed a little, shaking her head. "Remind me to get a recording of that to play the next time I'm in traffic," she said, patiently waiting until Charles was done talking. The use of her powers would disrupt him and that was, well, slightly rude. And headache inducing. The cab of the truck lit up in a brief burst of red as she flipped the coin up in the air and then caught it, turning it on her palm so that it was now on the back of her other hand. She lifted her left hand and glanced down at the head before turning to Cain. "Right. Now."
"Right on Bleecker," Cain repeated, hauling the wheel sharply, bumping the oversized truck against the curb as he took the corner sharply. As the loud engine backfired, car alarms went off up and down the block. He looked left and right at the next stoplight, frowning down at a convertible stopped next to them, loud bass music booming. Smirking, Cain shifted into neutral and floored the gas, drowning out the stereo momentarily and earning looks of ire from the vehicle's occupants. The light turned green, and Cain dropped the clutch, spinning the truck's back wheels and leaving the expensive convertible behind in a cloud of foul-smelling burnt rubber and dark exhaust.
Wanda oofed as she was pressed back into her seat but she couldn't contain a grin. Her evening was turning out better than she'd hoped...more exciting, at least. And no moping about Stephen for her, not that night. Once she felt safe to let go of the handle above her head, she flipped the coin again. "Now a left..." She squinted in an attempt to make out the street signs. "Looks like Lafeyette. And watch out for the old lady with her bag of groceries. I know she only has a few years left but still...oouf."
Cain turned onto Lafeyette, then swerved wildly to avoid an oncoming car. "One way street! One way street, asshole!" He shook his fist, then glanced at a roadsign. "One way street and I'm on the wrong way! Watch out, asshole coming through!"
Another series of loud bass thumps caught Cain's attention as he crossed Houston Street. Pulling the truck up onto the sidewalk, he looked to where a group of youths were gathered outside a nightclub, the music seeping out the doors and to the streets. "Silver?" he asked with a confused look. "Now what's that even supposed to mean?"
"Totally-unnecessary-tattoo-having ass monkey!" The indignant yelp was punctuated by a stamp of a foot by the door. A young girl with spiky black hair and enough piercings that the laws of gravity dictated the left side of her face should have been pulled off by now was holding up the sparse line by confronting a completely unimpressed bouncer.
"This is blatant height-bias," she ranted, throwing up her arms in a jingle of bracelets and exasperation. "I've been in there a ton of times without any of this song and dance because I am twenty-freaking-four. I am so not in the mood for thwarting. My day has been cracked out so far beyond belief I can't even see it with a telescope. Can I get one thing that's not a hassle right now?"
The bouncer just shook his head. "No ID, no club. Next!" he drawled, repeating the familiar line for the twentieth time that night. His psychometry was picking up something odd about her, anyway. Something off. It worried him, but now like there was anything a little girl could do to him here anyway.
"You guys got a seniors discount menu or anything?" Cain stood behind the girl, over two feet taller than her, even with the spiked hair. He looked down, grinning widely. "Heya, Dave. You're out past curfew. Time to come on home."
Cyndi looked back. And up. And up. . . . Noooooo.
This was so not happening. Cyndi hastily backed away, scrambling to recover her composure and snap her jaw off the sidewalk. Dodge! Dodge! Make shit up! Dodging meant a cover. Dammit, what was cover? She pointed an accusing finger at Cain. "Uh, uh . . . demon! Demon! Unclean spirit!"
The few others present gave no response other than confirmation that the world at large now considered itself to have proof of her total lack of sanity. Goddammit. That would totally have worked at the school. She tried not to panic. The cover could still be salvageable. Cyndi held out her hand, fingers poised to snap. It'll be more convincing if I add fire.
Mark crushed the cigarette filter with his shoe as he meandered up to Silver. Another night, another hangover. The bouncer briefly waved at him and stepped aside to let him in, but he stopped when he saw the little girl flail at the huge guy three times her size. And Wanda stood next to them. "'Evening, Wanda. Friends?"
Wanda snorted under her breath. "Hello, Mark. Yes, friends that...should be behaving themselves." Her gaze went to the girl's fingers, poised to snap and frowned deeply, taking a quick looksee through the chaos strings before going back to her normal vision. "Darling, I really, really would not do that if I were you." Her eyes shifted back to Mark. "It is simply amazing how many interesting things get drawn to your club these days."
Cyndi did a double-take at the newcomer. "Mark? Oh, dude, Mark! Wow," she said, the grin momentarily interrupted by a blink as their relative eyelevel sank in, "I thought it was the dorkbody but you are totally short. Well, whatever." She waved at Wanda and Cain in a flash of metal. "Look, doesn't matter. Don't believe their lies. The big one falls into holes all the time and Wanda's run around in the woods behind a private school naked and evil before. You got to consider the source."
"Five foot eight is average for guys my height. And do I know you?" The mannerisms were familiar to Mark, but he couldn't quite place her. She wasn't a regular, and he'd have remembered if he'd hooked up with a teenager. "I swear, I really can't take the special around here anymore. Wanda, you'll make it go away if you love me."
Reaching down, Cain placed one massive hand on Cyndi's shoulder. "Ain't going to say this twice, Haller. You're coming back with us, and Chuck's gonna help set you right." The tone of his voice gave no doubts that if the pyrokinetic girl wasn't going to cooperate, that he had no problem carrying her bodily all the way back to the mansion.
The look Wanda gave Mark was priceless. "It is a very long story," she said. "Though now we will take the special away from Silver since, really, I doubt the bouncer would let her in at all at this point." She glanced over to Cyndi with a wry grin. "You should try running through the woods naked, it invigorates the soul. Though I would pass on the evil again."
"Lady, you better be glad the guy made of right angles skips the outdoors fetish." Cyndi ducked out from under the hand Cain had fortunately only seen necessary to lay on her shoulder rather than clench. Sticking her tongue out at him, the girl sprang back up and turned to Mark. "The story ain't long at all. I'm Cyndi. I'd be insulted you didn't remember making out with me except I was inside David Haller's head and I get that some things you leave off the scorecard." She touched two fingers to her forehead in mock-salute. "Yo. They are totally oppressing me."
An alternate personality had found its way out of a person and made itself flesh. Mark nodded slowly. It seemed par for the course, really. "Why not? I mean, really. If we're going to fuck up people I know, then let's literally split their brains." He sighed and reached into his pocket for another cigarette, then paused and held it out. "Care to give me a light, at least?"
"Don't you dare," Cain said, squeezing Cyndi's shoulder lightly. "Bad idea to ask her that, kid. Him. Her. Dammit!"
Cyndi hissed through her teeth. "Oh, sure, now question my gender because I don't wear a bustle like the girls you used to date!" A shin-kick was attempted and then encountered the reality that was Cain's leg. Cyndi swore, drawing the foot up into both hands, and only failed to hop because of the pressure on her shoulder. Fire started to flash in the air around her. "God! I just got that foot, dammit!"
Hands shoved into her pockets, Wanda tilted her head. "Feel better?" she asked calmly, watching the look of pain pass across Cyndi's foot. And she eyed the flare of fire but didn't comment. After all, it wasn't like Cain could burn, that was the reason they sent him out to get her, one of many. She just happened to be standing nearby. "Would you mind coming back to the mansion with us?" Everyone looked at her and she shrugged. "I figured asking could not hurt."
The change was immediate. Cyndi gaped at Wanda, then smacked her palm against her forehead.
"Dude, I think I just heard a chorus of angels. Somebody finally bothered to ask." The defensive, combative posture dropped, as did the alter's foot. The girl blew her bangs out of her eyes; a totally affected gesture since her hair broke as many laws of physics as her body of origin's. "Geez. I know going crazy on a beach does not help with the illusion I'm susceptible to reason, but I'm not a crazy person. I just live in one. And, y'know, like my schedule was gonna be so heinously packed fresh out of David's brain."
A thought made its way into the stream of consciousness ranting and Cyndi slapped a fist against her hand. "Oh! And 'cause we're all being adults here, for the only guy here who did actually bother to phrase in the form of a request--" She turned briefly to Mark and winked at his cigarette, a considerably smaller fire glowing now. "Wish granted. Because I'm that big a person."
Mark coughed violently as the end of his cigarette flared up. "Damn. Well, thanks." He flicked the stick to let the ash fall to the ground. "Yo, you know, if you're going to leave his brain and set up your own shop, you could've at least made yourself not jailbait. I've been to prison once. Can't say I have any interest in doing it again."
"And this time, you wouldn't get a spiffy hat out of it." Wanda clapped her hands together. "Alright, let's go, shall we? There was a nice glass of wine, some good food and activities not meant to be said in mixed company tonight. In my apartment. And not out in front of Silver." An eyebrow quirked. "I think that might get me arrested."
"Woman, I can't know that!" Cain protested, shaking his head at Wanda. He glanced down at Cyndi and clenched his jaw tightly before he spoke. "Now, would you please come back with us, without any fuss, so we can get you all put back together again?"
Cyndi worked hard on inducing amnesia about Wanda and Cain's exchange. She had no idea what they were talking about. It was probably better that way.
"Well, since you said 'please'," the alter replied to the groundskeeper, using the sweet smile to distract her from a mental image that was mercifully mostly fuzz. "Which means a lot coming from you. Since it's not like we don't have that special bond of you throwing me into an ocean. Which I am in no way holding against you." She glanced at Mark and waved one hand in a consoling way. "Don't beat yourself up for the spiritual statutory, man. I got an old soul. Several. But at least three out of five still would like to know what the hell's going on."
"Good luck with that." Mark raised his cigarette in an odd sort of salute. "When you're back in one piece, take the reins from the boys and come tell me about it. I'm sure you'll be able to get in with his ID, even if it's only kinda you. First drink's on me." He glanced at Wanda and Cain and raised an eyebrow. "What? Technically she'd be twenty-one. It counts enough."
There was a sigh. "What am I going to do with you?" Wanda asked. "No, actually, Mark, do not answer that. I think there has been enough scarring for one evening. We will save the rest for another time." Tilting her head, she looked up at Cain. "Shall we?"
"Okay, back in the truck," Cain said with a wave and a nod to Mark. "Wanda, if you don't mind, I think Dave... Cynd... Haller can ride up with me. If you're nice," he said with a genuine smile at Cyndi, "I'll even let you pick the radio station."
Of course, he wasn't about to tell her the truck only had an AM radio.
Cyndi gave Cain an appraising look. She suspected she was being suffered. She enjoyed that.
"Suuuure. Uh, hey, so where'd the dork end up parked?" A hand fluttered again, vaguely. "Not that I'm worried. Or, like, slightly guilty because I left him in lying in a gutter." At the looks she just put her hands up in the air. "What? You only live once, and me never. Timesharing does not count."
"No worries," Wanda assured her. "Instead of a gutter, they're parked in Sofia's apartment." She thought about that for a second and snickered softly to herself. "And trust me, no one is going to get out of line over there. And woe to any man who attempts to."
Cyndi choked as they made for the truck. "Sofia? Dude, David's brain already exploded and ran all over New York. No wonder he's not getting any better. People keep throwing him at the pretty white jacket." She grinned and ignited a sequence of small, brief bursts of flame in the air just behind Cain's left ear. It was fuzzy because they'd been pretty thoroughly crazy and all she really remembered was something about herrings, but some mission report had said light had given Marie a seizure. Jim hadn't wanted to let her test this because it was mean. Cyndi decided this was a good opportunity as any to try because Cain was invulnerable, impact into the ocean had stung, and, most importantly, because she could. "Hey, Cain. Not touching, can't get maaaad . . ."
Cain swatted at his ear, then reached out to pick Cyndi up by the back of the collar and throw her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. "All right, brat. Chuck asked us to bring you in so he could fix Dave's brain. I don't see anywhere that means you gotta have all your fingers and toes still attached, you get me?" He reached up and squeezed Cyndi's ankle gently between two fingers, not enough to hurt, but enough to let her know that he was done playing around. "You want to throw fire at me, fine. Pick a time when my friend's mind ain't at stake. Next time he lets you out or whatever, you can drop a big ol' inferno on me. But goddammit, kid. Quit playin' around."
"Brutality! Brutality! ARGH!" She attempted a kick at Cain's head, and then after a few seconds that involved determining her leg couldn't bend that way and finally went sullenly limp. It was all for show. David's doctors had referred to it as 'attention-seeking behavior.' Or, as Cyndi thought of it, what happened when the screaming inside his head finally found a way to make it out.
Davey did it too. Whether it was conscious for him or not, Cyndi had never thought of it as anything but what it was: the only way to make sure someone was listening.
She slumped, her arms hanging down Cain's back in defeat. "Fine, fine. I give up. You win, okay? Geez. Not like it was even a contest." She gave Mark a forlorn wave and placidly allowed herself to be hauled to the car. "So if Chuck threw you guys at me, who drew the short straw with the others?"
Lorna, Betsy, and Nate find themselves with slightly less cooperative targets. Violence happens.
Suburban neighborhoods at this time of night were vaguely creepy things, Nathan thought, his eyes scanning their surroundings even as his mind stayed locked on the images that Charles had given them. "You know," he said to Betsy and Lorna, keeping his voice low in deference to the quiet (and the fact that they didn't want the pursued catching onto the fact that they were being pursued just yet), "having had my own mental voices that used to decide to stretch their legs on a regular basis really doesn't make this any less alarming." At least the Askani had been guests, so the desire to occasionally take a stroll had been at least semi-logical.
Their search had led them to a neighborhood playground. There were no syringes, but the dirt was scattered by litter and cigarette butts. Though the equipment was inexpensive it was in good repair: a sandbox, a few spring-mounted animals, a jungle gym, a set of monkey bars, a swing set. It was quiet, isolated. A good place to stop and regroup. Only one streetlight was close enough to serve as any illumination, but it was enough to trace the shapes of the park's sole occupants: a young boy on the swings, and a man seated on a graffiti-scored bench.
The swing creaked with each pump of the boy's legs. The man only sat and watched.
Betsy stopped walking. She stopped everything. Her eyes transfixed on the scene as she heard a child's laughter filling the air and watched as the guardian looked gloomily on. It was too surreal to speak, watching them together outside of the protection of Haller's mind. It was as if she could hear the ripping of flesh, the force of psychic disconnection, and the pain of it had never felt more evident. "Oh god."
Lorna touched Betsy's arm lightly then moved a bit in front of her. "This is a little bit horror film, isn't it? I probably should go first. Davey likes me and Jack...well, there's not really anything he can throw at me and it's not like he hasn't already dislocated my shoulder once." She tucked her hands into the pocket of her coats and shrugged. "Unless you're feeling stupidly overprotective or something, Nate."
"I'm not feeling anything but cautious. I've had my shoulder dislocated once already this month, remember?" Nathan muttered, eyeing the two figures. "You go. I'll back you up from here." If Jack lashed out, he could see it and stop him, Nathan told himself as he let his vision slide towards to where he could see the lines of force. Very different from that beach in San Diego - from what he understood, at least, as he still didn't remember the moment Jack had attacked.
"No," Betsy's voice resonated firmly. "I'll go," she said with a sad smile. "And this way, we can see how far this will actually go without hurting the two of you more than absolutely necessary." The telepath made her way toward the swing set and said over her shoulder as she moved away. "Besides, I think it's time I had a tete a tete with old grey eyes."
Betsy's assertion had not been soft. As they spoke the pump of the boy's legs slowed, then stopped.
Creak, creak. Creak . . . creak . . .
Feet scuffed on the dirt; the swing halted. "Hello?" Davey called into the darkness, his voice uncertain.
Jack's head turned.
Betsy cleared the edge of darkness as the aura from the park lights reflected off her bowed head. She wore a dark black longcoat and tightened it around her as she stopped just shy of the swings. Betsy lifted her head and brushed back her purple tresses and kept eye contact with Jack as she spoke. "Hello, Davey. Jack."
From his place on the swing the boy blinked at the woman who stood pale and strange in the darkness. Davey's forehead creased.
Who's she?
The tall, unkempt man on the bench stiffened. His eyes widened slightly as the speaker's voice registered, then leaned back on the bench with exaggerated care.
"Well," Jack said quietly, the soft Texan drawl pulling at the words. "It would be you that came, wouldn't it." His eyes glanced past Betsy to touch on Lorna, then Nate. He smirked at the last. "With some other choices that're more interesting. Think the preemptive sling on one's going to save time?"
"No one's going to be breaking anything today," Nathan said mildly, his expression level. He wasn't about to let Jack goad him. "Bones or anything else."
Lorna ignored Jack and smiled at Davey. She continued up to the swing, dropping down to her knees in the soft playground sand to bring her eyes level to the boy's, "How are you doing, Davey? We've been looking for you." Without turning away from him, she gestured to Betsy to come over and meet Davey properly. "This is Betsy."
"Betsy Braddock," she announced, leaning forward and offering her hand to Davey. With a smile, she said. "It's a pleasure to meet you, young squire. You know, a dashing young lad like yourself should be out fighting dragons and saving the world instead of protecting old grumpy Jack from us girls. Isn't that right, Jack?"
Davey looked askance at his guardian, but Jack's eyes were already on Betsy's. He turned his eyes from her to where Nathan stood, growing hard again as he fixated on the most obvious threat, but the silence of his turn carried tacit consent.
"Say hello, kid," Jack said.
The youngest alter's eyes flicked to where Lorna knelt, green hair haloed with gold from the streetlight behind her, and then to the woman beside her. The bottom of one blue eye narrowed.
"Betsy," Davey repeated, the word almost a question as he scrutinized the pale face set above the black coat and framed by hair almost swallowed in the darkness. A memory trickled through. He said slowly, the connection dawning for the first time, "The butterfly lady."
She smiled with a grin that lit up her face from within, the very smile she always had whenever Haller was too oblivious to notice her staring. "Yes, that's right," she ducked her head slightly at her eagerness. "The butterfly lady." With her hand still extended, she stared curiously at the child. "Nice to meet you."
"Nice to meet you," Davey said. He took the hand with more than usual tentativeness, but the smile he gave her in return wasn't Davey's normal childish grin.
Jack ignored the boy and women, focused instead on the large man beyond them. Hanging back was doing nothing to divert Jack's attention. They were of equal height, almost equal mass. Threat. An empty wrapper skittered away from his boots.
"So the gimp sent the expert on astral escapees to collect," Jack said, rising from the bench with lazy ease. "Bad call. Guess I'm not worth the redhead."
Nathan made a mental note to ask Charles just why he had sent him out after Jack. Later, of course. "We can skip the posturing," he said calmly. "It gets a little tedious, especially when you sound like one of the kids trying to sound tough." Perhaps a little much there, but he would give Jack a little of what he expected.
Jack turned to the side and spat casually. "Now I'm talking essential judgment. Sending out the biggest gun makes sense. Except when it'll hit all David's triggers." His eyes lighted briefly on Betsy before returning to Nathan. "I think maybe the prof's a little compromised."
"If that were the case," Betsy said, giving Davey's hand a slight squeeze and then moving into Jack's line of sight. "I doubt we'd be here now would we, David? Or at least I wouldn't be here..."
The name brought a flicker, quickly recovered from, but Jack's tone was soft, almost calm.
"I know why you're here. He called you, didn't he?" The emphasis on the 'he' indicated they were no longer talking about Charles. He gestured sharply at Lorna and Nathan. "This isn't about you. This is about the gimp deciding to make our business everybody else's because, once again, he knows what's best."
The playground's plastic animals mounted a few feet away began to rock gently, creaking under unseen force. Davey pulled his hand over his face.
"Aw, man." The utterance was both distressed and resigned. The boy retreated to the safety of Lorna, slipping around her in a way that wasn't subtle whatsoever. "Okay," he said as he secured her between him and everyone else in the park, "I'm using you for a human shield."
Lorna curled her arm back behind her, slipping it around the boy who felt perfectly solid and safe but not living not really like a person at all. She stood, getting to her feet without hurry. "That's a good choice. If he throws something at me, I can stop it." What she would do if he threw her she wasn't sure. The question of their relative strength had never come up. "Jack, you're scaring Davey. Just quit with the chest beating and let's all head back to the mansion, okay? We get that you're eternally cranky but geez."
"Nate," Betsy called back warningly. "If he just so happens to kill me, you promise you'll make him regret it." The hair on the back of her neck stood on end as she took a precarious step forward. "Jack, now we wouldn't want to scare the others. Be a good manifestation and calm down."
"Jack," Nathan said, very calmly. "I feel the need to point out that I'm not burnt out and reeling at the moment. Nor do I have my back turned. You're not going to get very far here." He reached out and... flattened the telekinetic disturbance, meeting each surge of power with careful precision, slicing through the jumbled lines of force like a surgeon. The ominous movement of the playground animals stopped, suddenly and immediately. It was done fairly gently - he didn't want to provoke Jack into anything more violent - but firmly, at the same time.
Just as in his sessions with Jean, Jack didn't even attempt to get into a telekinetic tug-of-war. Rather than jerk he released the power, letting the force slip through his mind like a line let slack. Around the small group the empty park went still, waiting.
Reasonable. Everyone was trying to be reasonable here, but Jack wasn't looking for reason. Someone had made him hurt.
It wasn't the woman Davey had chosen to take shelter behind that he was drawn to, or the one who had taken his arm in the quarry. It was the one who had stood right next to them on the sands of the San Diego beach, witness to potential attained for the first time in over a decade, and who had then forgotten. Older, male, and a psi.
Burrowed into Lorna's side Davey murmured, "He's close enough."
The green haired woman tightened her arm around the boy, automatically reacting to his clinging, and glanced down at him, confused, "Close enough to what?" But she didn't really need an answer. The EM fields in the park hummed for an instant and Lorna shuddered as the playground screamed with the twisting of metal and cracking of cement. "Oh. Well..." she left off the expletive in deference to the fact that she was standing with a 10 year old. Even if he really wasn't.
Well. Nathan raised an eyebrow as the playground equipment and chunks of cement and earth started to fly around. Some of it would make for quite lethal shrapnel - if they let it. It was an impressive display of power, something along the lines of a very disorganized telekinetic ground-burst. Unfortunately for Jack, there wasn't an ounce of precision about it. The energy flows were un-patterned, undisciplined.
He waited only long enough to make sure that Lorna had indeed thrown shields around all of them - this whole situation was more or less out of one of their training scenarios - before he reacted. "I'm getting very tired of this. Would you knock it off, please?" he asked conversationally as he caught and redirected each piece of debris, splitting his focus countless ways with ease, even without the psimitar.
Where there had been chaos, now there were interlocking, spinning spirals. The debris was still moving quickly but in very obvious patterns, leaving plenty of room for any of them to walk between the spirals if they chose. It would take a show of brute strength to force it all back to the ground, but one well within his abilities. He just wanted to give Jack one more chance to stop before he stopped him.
"Jack. Enough."
There was no response from the alter, however, and Nathan growled, temper sparking just for a moment. "Enough." This time he didn't slice through the lines of force, he smashed through them, hard enough that a flesh-and-blood telekinetic would have been left reeling, and possibly flat on his face on the ground bleeding from the nose. The debris sank back to the ground, falling in the same spiral patterns, well clear of Betsy, Lorna, and the boy.
Jack staggered back, snarling. There was an urgent tug on Lorna's sleeve. Davey was looking up at her, eyes wide.
"He's crazy!" the boy cried over the wordless scream of rage. The shrapnel around them was trying to jerk; weak, abortive efforts, instinctive as an animal lashing out from a corner. Davey's head whipped around to the others, his voice rising. "Please, he doesn't know what he's doing. He can't stop!"
"If this doesn't work..." Betsy muttered under her breath. She started walking over the debris field between herself and Jack. Calm and collected, she moved as each passing bit of metal twitched ineffectively on the ground until she was standing right in front of him. "Jack..."
The shattered debris seethed in its patterns as Jack struggled to raise it and only found himself undercut, his already reeling mind unable to find purchase under Nathan's power. Thrashing his head back and forth like a wounded animal one arm flung out at her, fingers clawed. He hissed, "Don't--"
She moved in, grabbed the front of his white t-shirt, and leaned in without any sign of fear, her eyes locked on his face as she kissed him with such force, saying everything she ever needed to say without uttering a word or thought in any direction.
Lorna gaped then covered Davey's eyes.
Betsy finally broke away. Jack stared down at her, whites showing all around his grey eyes. The force that had stirred the broken equipment and disrupted earth around them were conspicuously absent. The destruction lay in its swirls, dark and calm in the glow of the lone streetlight.
"You crazy bitch," the alter whispered, his voice a mingling of admiration and disbelief.
Davey, who despite Lorna's efforts had not been shielded nearly quickly enough, said: "EW!"
Lorna couldn't help but agree with Davey. That was a little too much literal beauty slaying the beast for her. "Do you think that it's going to work?" she asked the boy quietly. She might not approve but, you know, if it worked...
"Stop making it real!" Davey cried, mashing his hands over his ears.
Betsy pulled back and smiled sweetly just before decking Jack full on the jaw. "But that will," Betsy interjected, watching him fall.
It hadn't been a light punch. It had done more than spin him around -- he'd felt it. Not astral sensation, but pain. Real pain. As real as the pain of Nate's will slicing through his had been. A lazy smile spread across Jack's face. "Now that was unnecessary," Jack said, lifting himself from the dirt to rub his jaw. "Since you've got me on my knees I may just propose."
"It was a plan. Not a great plan, not even a good plan, but a plan. And hell, there was always Option B," Betsy winked at Jack. "But we never use that when children are about."
Nathan indulged himself with a few choice muttered Askani profanities. "Nice tactics, Braddock, thank you for the heart attack..." He couldn't have shielded her properly or stopped an attack from Jack in time, not when she'd been quite that close.
"Well, I do try to embarrass myself profusely whenever you're around, Nate. It's my secondary mutation, you know." Betsy chided. "C'mon, let's get back before the man I deeply care about decides he'd rather be a one-man show."
"Nice that she doesn't even bother to veil the threats. Don't worry. I'm done." Jack rose, brushing himself off. The dust coating his white shirt was ignored. The hits on all levels had cleared his head like a slap to a hysteric. The emotional, the physical, even the telekinetic straightjacket. Charles had never been able to match his power in that aspect. Not on his own terms. Somehow the eruption, for the first time matched by peers, had leveled him.
For now.
The immediate problem was done, but Jack knew better than to think it wouldn't build again. The cancer driving the rage was still there. He needed . . . help.
"In front of me people only get to fight with fists or brains. Not with tongue." Davey scrubbed at his eyes miserably, then did a double-take, registering Nate for the first time. He blinked, then waved enthusiastically from behind Lorna. "Oh. Hi!"
"Done. Fantastic." Lorna ruffled Davey's hair. "Let's go then before you get going again. What do you say, Davey-boy? Are we ready to head back to the mansion?" She felt strangely relieved. This all could have been so much worse. Some part of her still expected it to get there somehow.
"Home!" Davey agreed eagerly, then looked askance at his guardian.
Jack nodded. "Home."
Back at the brownstone and waiting for the rest to return, Snow Valley's resident profiler finds herself in the care of a familiar face -- and one who is less so.
His first words were: "I can't feel anything."
"Yeah, well, I have a cranky stranger and an attractive young man I'm not allowed to take advantage of, you can decide who is who in a minute, to babysit. Considering all your limbs are intact, I think I win." The voice came from the chair beside David, dry, but otherwise not out of the norm. Sofia had tucked herself up into it, a sketchpad resting on her knee, and various pencils neatly balanced on the upholstered arm. "Ahah. Don't even think about it," she continued sharply, obviously addressing the other person in the room but not taking her eyes off of David. "I just swept in here. You will stay right there where I can contain whatever is falling off you."
The shabby, dusky-skinned young man by Sofia's spotlessly clean window started a little, then lowered his arm from where he'd almost raised it to lean on the wall. His first word since coming entering Sofia's apartment was: "Sorry."
David pulled himself up against the sleek white cushions, feeling only the nagging unease that he was staining them by proximity. "My head's empty," he said. There was no weakness or disorientation in his voice. It was level, almost conversational, and stripped of any sense of emotional investment at all.
The stranger looked at him, then returned his gaze to the city night outside the window. "What a change," he muttered.
Something, something seemed to strike her, as if it walked right across her vision, and Sofia cautiously turned her gaze over to him, to not David, eyes narrowed. She stared at him a moment, as if debating something, before returning to her "patient", if not reluctantly. "There was a bit of an... exodus. Elton has left the building. Along with everyone else."
David nodded. "The professor sent people to find them." It wasn't a question. The man by the window was silent. Lost in his thoughts. David frowned a moment, searching, and realized, Or somebody's.
His mind briefly coincided with reality. David blinked and turned to Sofia, one eyebrow raised. "Um, why are you coma-sitting?"
"Haven't you heard? There was a petition after I did such a wonderful job defending Doug's honor. And on Thursdays I rescue kittens from trees," she returned, a lie, as easy as the breath she took in. "Boy by the window, could you turn a little to your left, please?"
The man half-turned to look at her, startled at the abruptness of the request. His brown eyes fell to the sketchpad on her knees.
The shift in his posture was minute, almost unnoticeable. "Just keep the kittens away from me," he said.
David glanced at him, his face blank. This wasn't right. He looked for some kind of emotion. The inside of his chest seemed just as hollow as his mind. Scoured. Stripped.
"I didn't know you drew," David said aloud to the woman sitting next to him.
Giving her subject a lazy salute with her pencil, Sofia continued, the dark grey smudge along the side of her hand evidence that they'd all been there a while. "My lack of soul is multifaceted. I'm also not very good. I always preferred watercolours." She swallowed. "It was my minor."
David nodded, distant and slow. "Watercolors are more expressive. They bleed. You don't get the control you can get with other things, but that's part of the medium. People don't pick it for its preciseness. They do it because it lets them work to the imperfections." Her hand began moving across the paper, the pencil-strokes quick and light. David's eyes followed her hand. "Sofia, can I ask you something?"
"Mhm?" she hummed, feigning casual as she filled in the lines on the knuckles of the other man's hands, awkwardly balanced off the pocket of his jeans.
"What was your family like?"
The man at the window made no move.
Sofia sucked in her lowed lip, wetting it. "Dead, mostly."
Blue eyes never lifted from the hidden sketch. "Is that good or bad?"
"You tell me." She winced as her pencil broke, closing her eyes. This was getting too close. A small pocket on a linen pencil roll held an even smaller one-blade sharpener; Sofia watched the curl of wood and lead emerge, seeing how long she could keep it one continuous piece. "Seems odd to ask a question that you would already know the answer to."
David's lips twitched in a smile, reassuring, automatic. "I'm okay at analysis, but I can't make massive background assumptions in a void. The intuitive leaps miss sometimes, so I try not to make them with no evidence. I really didn't know."
The statement was nothing but the truth, but just those two brief sentences from her had been enough to say everything the older woman seated on the chair beside him wouldn't. Or couldn't.
Sofia looked up as the tiny spiral finally tore, brown to blue. "What about making them on personal experience?"
David smiled slightly. "I try not to project the reality in my head onto other people, either."
From his spot by the window the other man said, "Too late for that."
"You're like a little girl," Sofia snapped, narrowing her eyes fiercely at the last commenter. "A little junior high girl making pitifully boring, under breath observations about the cheerleader who's dating the boy she likes but never gave her a second glance. Either get some pig tails, be quiet or, or, grow a bear."
"It's okay, Sofia," David said.
The young man at her window stared at her, turning over the outburst in his mind. A frown creased his forehead as one part stuck to the pan.
". . . a bear?"
Done, Sofia squeezed her eyes shut, taking a breath. "My father is a rich, unethical bastard and my mother was killed by her own brother before he shipped me off to live with a stranger. I'm not... I don't have warm feelings regarding them."
"I see." David fingered the taut scar-tissue of his right hand, a flat echo of the old nervous habit. Something in the stream of information, already carrying more than enough horrible fascination in itself, seemed to catch what meager shreds of attention were still capable of being engaged.
"Why do you think he did that?" he asked quietly. "Ship you off? After all that."
Trying for a short, unaffected laugh, it came instead brittle and already cracked, Sofia's eyes too bright and too sad. She shook her head, as one might wave away smoke from a burned meal. "My uncle was a thief, a murderer, a drug lord. But he was also a good Catholic man and I, was a mutant. A mutant child, already born out of wedlock."
The man by the window turned again, the only betrayal of expression a slight widening of his eyes. David's head dipped again. Acknowledgement without judgment, only a faint smile tinged with something that wasn't a smile at all.
"My parents died when I was seven." His voice was indifferent, neutral. "I lived with my grandparents before Uncle Andrew took me. Whenever they saw me cry they would move differently. Fast. Short. When my grandmother would wipe my face it hurt. They never said anything. Just look. And it was like they were saying: 'We didn't want you, and now we have to deal with this.'"
David's hand fell away from the scars. Instead it traveled to one of the pristine cushions. Touching the cloth, searching. Seeking connection.
"I made myself change," he said, fingering a seam. "Act better. Happier. Like a normal kid. But no matter what I did, somehow they'd always end up moving that same way. Because they knew things I didn't. And I couldn't fix them just by being good." Blue eyes lifted from the exploration of the pillow. "It's not good enough to change yourself to be what someone wants. Sometimes they never even see you. Just what you represent."
There was a long, silent pause, as Sofia stubbornly stared at the beginnings of her sketch -- brief outlines but detailed hands, mouth, and a lock of stray hair -- before she finally inched her left hand out, across the arm of her chair, and gently linked her smallest and ring finger around his thumb. She couldn't quite bring herself to look up, still for all purposes but that one hand solely concentrated on the pad of paper in her lap, but a warm breeze snaked around the room, ending with a tickle against the man by the window's cheek.
David looked down to study her hand on his. A small touch. Minimal, wordless -- but needing none. The posture of the man by the window tightened at the ruffle to his face and hair, like an animal startled into the moment before flight, and then relaxed.
"Your father," David said, looking up. "When your uncle sent you away. Did he know about you?"
"Well, yes. Barely." Sofia looked up a moment, finding herself caught in the gaze of the man by the window and immediately ducked her head again. Suddenly the spirals of her sketchbook were very interesting. "He was the stranger I was sent to live with."
David's eyes flickered, but it was the other man who spoke.
"He didn't know," he said, no trace of question in his tone, "until then."
"No." Sofia's jaw tensed as she forcibly pulled herself away from the sound of her pencil against the coiled tin. A million explanations ran through her head as she looked at them, defensive and accusations both, but it was, like always, not enough. "No."
His mind rolled with questions, spilled beads scattering to every corner. He managed to cup his hand around one. One that had been slipping through his fingers for a month, now unavoidable.
Do you think your father was disappointed when he found out what he got?
But once again he thought Sofia had already given him the answer.
Now it was David's turn to reach out a hand. He lay it over hers, squeezing once, gently.
"Thank you," David said at last, "for helping Lorna look for her sister. I don't know if it was right to tell her she should. So many families are screwed up. Kurt's, and Nate's. Wanda's. Betsy's parents are dead and one of her brothers is schizophrenic. For Lorna I just . . ."
"Hoped," the man by the window finished.
Then his head twitched up, almost imperceptibly, as the psychic assurance he'd been waiting for arrived. He turned to the other two, a mingling of relief and trepidation caught in the look.
"They have them. They're coming back."
Cain frowned, Charles' voice sounding almost like mental static in his head. "Jesus, Chuck, I'm trying to drive here..." he grumbled, steering the old pickup down the Manhattan street past the lines of BMWs and Escalades. Laying on the horn, he leaned his head out the window, bellowing "GET OUTTA THE WAAAAY!" as he glanced over at Wanda.
The coin glinted faintly in Wanda's hand as she laughed a little, shaking her head. "Remind me to get a recording of that to play the next time I'm in traffic," she said, patiently waiting until Charles was done talking. The use of her powers would disrupt him and that was, well, slightly rude. And headache inducing. The cab of the truck lit up in a brief burst of red as she flipped the coin up in the air and then caught it, turning it on her palm so that it was now on the back of her other hand. She lifted her left hand and glanced down at the head before turning to Cain. "Right. Now."
"Right on Bleecker," Cain repeated, hauling the wheel sharply, bumping the oversized truck against the curb as he took the corner sharply. As the loud engine backfired, car alarms went off up and down the block. He looked left and right at the next stoplight, frowning down at a convertible stopped next to them, loud bass music booming. Smirking, Cain shifted into neutral and floored the gas, drowning out the stereo momentarily and earning looks of ire from the vehicle's occupants. The light turned green, and Cain dropped the clutch, spinning the truck's back wheels and leaving the expensive convertible behind in a cloud of foul-smelling burnt rubber and dark exhaust.
Wanda oofed as she was pressed back into her seat but she couldn't contain a grin. Her evening was turning out better than she'd hoped...more exciting, at least. And no moping about Stephen for her, not that night. Once she felt safe to let go of the handle above her head, she flipped the coin again. "Now a left..." She squinted in an attempt to make out the street signs. "Looks like Lafeyette. And watch out for the old lady with her bag of groceries. I know she only has a few years left but still...oouf."
Cain turned onto Lafeyette, then swerved wildly to avoid an oncoming car. "One way street! One way street, asshole!" He shook his fist, then glanced at a roadsign. "One way street and I'm on the wrong way! Watch out, asshole coming through!"
Another series of loud bass thumps caught Cain's attention as he crossed Houston Street. Pulling the truck up onto the sidewalk, he looked to where a group of youths were gathered outside a nightclub, the music seeping out the doors and to the streets. "Silver?" he asked with a confused look. "Now what's that even supposed to mean?"
"Totally-unnecessary-tattoo-having ass monkey!" The indignant yelp was punctuated by a stamp of a foot by the door. A young girl with spiky black hair and enough piercings that the laws of gravity dictated the left side of her face should have been pulled off by now was holding up the sparse line by confronting a completely unimpressed bouncer.
"This is blatant height-bias," she ranted, throwing up her arms in a jingle of bracelets and exasperation. "I've been in there a ton of times without any of this song and dance because I am twenty-freaking-four. I am so not in the mood for thwarting. My day has been cracked out so far beyond belief I can't even see it with a telescope. Can I get one thing that's not a hassle right now?"
The bouncer just shook his head. "No ID, no club. Next!" he drawled, repeating the familiar line for the twentieth time that night. His psychometry was picking up something odd about her, anyway. Something off. It worried him, but now like there was anything a little girl could do to him here anyway.
"You guys got a seniors discount menu or anything?" Cain stood behind the girl, over two feet taller than her, even with the spiked hair. He looked down, grinning widely. "Heya, Dave. You're out past curfew. Time to come on home."
Cyndi looked back. And up. And up. . . . Noooooo.
This was so not happening. Cyndi hastily backed away, scrambling to recover her composure and snap her jaw off the sidewalk. Dodge! Dodge! Make shit up! Dodging meant a cover. Dammit, what was cover? She pointed an accusing finger at Cain. "Uh, uh . . . demon! Demon! Unclean spirit!"
The few others present gave no response other than confirmation that the world at large now considered itself to have proof of her total lack of sanity. Goddammit. That would totally have worked at the school. She tried not to panic. The cover could still be salvageable. Cyndi held out her hand, fingers poised to snap. It'll be more convincing if I add fire.
Mark crushed the cigarette filter with his shoe as he meandered up to Silver. Another night, another hangover. The bouncer briefly waved at him and stepped aside to let him in, but he stopped when he saw the little girl flail at the huge guy three times her size. And Wanda stood next to them. "'Evening, Wanda. Friends?"
Wanda snorted under her breath. "Hello, Mark. Yes, friends that...should be behaving themselves." Her gaze went to the girl's fingers, poised to snap and frowned deeply, taking a quick looksee through the chaos strings before going back to her normal vision. "Darling, I really, really would not do that if I were you." Her eyes shifted back to Mark. "It is simply amazing how many interesting things get drawn to your club these days."
Cyndi did a double-take at the newcomer. "Mark? Oh, dude, Mark! Wow," she said, the grin momentarily interrupted by a blink as their relative eyelevel sank in, "I thought it was the dorkbody but you are totally short. Well, whatever." She waved at Wanda and Cain in a flash of metal. "Look, doesn't matter. Don't believe their lies. The big one falls into holes all the time and Wanda's run around in the woods behind a private school naked and evil before. You got to consider the source."
"Five foot eight is average for guys my height. And do I know you?" The mannerisms were familiar to Mark, but he couldn't quite place her. She wasn't a regular, and he'd have remembered if he'd hooked up with a teenager. "I swear, I really can't take the special around here anymore. Wanda, you'll make it go away if you love me."
Reaching down, Cain placed one massive hand on Cyndi's shoulder. "Ain't going to say this twice, Haller. You're coming back with us, and Chuck's gonna help set you right." The tone of his voice gave no doubts that if the pyrokinetic girl wasn't going to cooperate, that he had no problem carrying her bodily all the way back to the mansion.
The look Wanda gave Mark was priceless. "It is a very long story," she said. "Though now we will take the special away from Silver since, really, I doubt the bouncer would let her in at all at this point." She glanced over to Cyndi with a wry grin. "You should try running through the woods naked, it invigorates the soul. Though I would pass on the evil again."
"Lady, you better be glad the guy made of right angles skips the outdoors fetish." Cyndi ducked out from under the hand Cain had fortunately only seen necessary to lay on her shoulder rather than clench. Sticking her tongue out at him, the girl sprang back up and turned to Mark. "The story ain't long at all. I'm Cyndi. I'd be insulted you didn't remember making out with me except I was inside David Haller's head and I get that some things you leave off the scorecard." She touched two fingers to her forehead in mock-salute. "Yo. They are totally oppressing me."
An alternate personality had found its way out of a person and made itself flesh. Mark nodded slowly. It seemed par for the course, really. "Why not? I mean, really. If we're going to fuck up people I know, then let's literally split their brains." He sighed and reached into his pocket for another cigarette, then paused and held it out. "Care to give me a light, at least?"
"Don't you dare," Cain said, squeezing Cyndi's shoulder lightly. "Bad idea to ask her that, kid. Him. Her. Dammit!"
Cyndi hissed through her teeth. "Oh, sure, now question my gender because I don't wear a bustle like the girls you used to date!" A shin-kick was attempted and then encountered the reality that was Cain's leg. Cyndi swore, drawing the foot up into both hands, and only failed to hop because of the pressure on her shoulder. Fire started to flash in the air around her. "God! I just got that foot, dammit!"
Hands shoved into her pockets, Wanda tilted her head. "Feel better?" she asked calmly, watching the look of pain pass across Cyndi's foot. And she eyed the flare of fire but didn't comment. After all, it wasn't like Cain could burn, that was the reason they sent him out to get her, one of many. She just happened to be standing nearby. "Would you mind coming back to the mansion with us?" Everyone looked at her and she shrugged. "I figured asking could not hurt."
The change was immediate. Cyndi gaped at Wanda, then smacked her palm against her forehead.
"Dude, I think I just heard a chorus of angels. Somebody finally bothered to ask." The defensive, combative posture dropped, as did the alter's foot. The girl blew her bangs out of her eyes; a totally affected gesture since her hair broke as many laws of physics as her body of origin's. "Geez. I know going crazy on a beach does not help with the illusion I'm susceptible to reason, but I'm not a crazy person. I just live in one. And, y'know, like my schedule was gonna be so heinously packed fresh out of David's brain."
A thought made its way into the stream of consciousness ranting and Cyndi slapped a fist against her hand. "Oh! And 'cause we're all being adults here, for the only guy here who did actually bother to phrase in the form of a request--" She turned briefly to Mark and winked at his cigarette, a considerably smaller fire glowing now. "Wish granted. Because I'm that big a person."
Mark coughed violently as the end of his cigarette flared up. "Damn. Well, thanks." He flicked the stick to let the ash fall to the ground. "Yo, you know, if you're going to leave his brain and set up your own shop, you could've at least made yourself not jailbait. I've been to prison once. Can't say I have any interest in doing it again."
"And this time, you wouldn't get a spiffy hat out of it." Wanda clapped her hands together. "Alright, let's go, shall we? There was a nice glass of wine, some good food and activities not meant to be said in mixed company tonight. In my apartment. And not out in front of Silver." An eyebrow quirked. "I think that might get me arrested."
"Woman, I can't know that!" Cain protested, shaking his head at Wanda. He glanced down at Cyndi and clenched his jaw tightly before he spoke. "Now, would you please come back with us, without any fuss, so we can get you all put back together again?"
Cyndi worked hard on inducing amnesia about Wanda and Cain's exchange. She had no idea what they were talking about. It was probably better that way.
"Well, since you said 'please'," the alter replied to the groundskeeper, using the sweet smile to distract her from a mental image that was mercifully mostly fuzz. "Which means a lot coming from you. Since it's not like we don't have that special bond of you throwing me into an ocean. Which I am in no way holding against you." She glanced at Mark and waved one hand in a consoling way. "Don't beat yourself up for the spiritual statutory, man. I got an old soul. Several. But at least three out of five still would like to know what the hell's going on."
"Good luck with that." Mark raised his cigarette in an odd sort of salute. "When you're back in one piece, take the reins from the boys and come tell me about it. I'm sure you'll be able to get in with his ID, even if it's only kinda you. First drink's on me." He glanced at Wanda and Cain and raised an eyebrow. "What? Technically she'd be twenty-one. It counts enough."
There was a sigh. "What am I going to do with you?" Wanda asked. "No, actually, Mark, do not answer that. I think there has been enough scarring for one evening. We will save the rest for another time." Tilting her head, she looked up at Cain. "Shall we?"
"Okay, back in the truck," Cain said with a wave and a nod to Mark. "Wanda, if you don't mind, I think Dave... Cynd... Haller can ride up with me. If you're nice," he said with a genuine smile at Cyndi, "I'll even let you pick the radio station."
Of course, he wasn't about to tell her the truck only had an AM radio.
Cyndi gave Cain an appraising look. She suspected she was being suffered. She enjoyed that.
"Suuuure. Uh, hey, so where'd the dork end up parked?" A hand fluttered again, vaguely. "Not that I'm worried. Or, like, slightly guilty because I left him in lying in a gutter." At the looks she just put her hands up in the air. "What? You only live once, and me never. Timesharing does not count."
"No worries," Wanda assured her. "Instead of a gutter, they're parked in Sofia's apartment." She thought about that for a second and snickered softly to herself. "And trust me, no one is going to get out of line over there. And woe to any man who attempts to."
Cyndi choked as they made for the truck. "Sofia? Dude, David's brain already exploded and ran all over New York. No wonder he's not getting any better. People keep throwing him at the pretty white jacket." She grinned and ignited a sequence of small, brief bursts of flame in the air just behind Cain's left ear. It was fuzzy because they'd been pretty thoroughly crazy and all she really remembered was something about herrings, but some mission report had said light had given Marie a seizure. Jim hadn't wanted to let her test this because it was mean. Cyndi decided this was a good opportunity as any to try because Cain was invulnerable, impact into the ocean had stung, and, most importantly, because she could. "Hey, Cain. Not touching, can't get maaaad . . ."
Cain swatted at his ear, then reached out to pick Cyndi up by the back of the collar and throw her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. "All right, brat. Chuck asked us to bring you in so he could fix Dave's brain. I don't see anywhere that means you gotta have all your fingers and toes still attached, you get me?" He reached up and squeezed Cyndi's ankle gently between two fingers, not enough to hurt, but enough to let her know that he was done playing around. "You want to throw fire at me, fine. Pick a time when my friend's mind ain't at stake. Next time he lets you out or whatever, you can drop a big ol' inferno on me. But goddammit, kid. Quit playin' around."
"Brutality! Brutality! ARGH!" She attempted a kick at Cain's head, and then after a few seconds that involved determining her leg couldn't bend that way and finally went sullenly limp. It was all for show. David's doctors had referred to it as 'attention-seeking behavior.' Or, as Cyndi thought of it, what happened when the screaming inside his head finally found a way to make it out.
Davey did it too. Whether it was conscious for him or not, Cyndi had never thought of it as anything but what it was: the only way to make sure someone was listening.
She slumped, her arms hanging down Cain's back in defeat. "Fine, fine. I give up. You win, okay? Geez. Not like it was even a contest." She gave Mark a forlorn wave and placidly allowed herself to be hauled to the car. "So if Chuck threw you guys at me, who drew the short straw with the others?"
Lorna, Betsy, and Nate find themselves with slightly less cooperative targets. Violence happens.
Suburban neighborhoods at this time of night were vaguely creepy things, Nathan thought, his eyes scanning their surroundings even as his mind stayed locked on the images that Charles had given them. "You know," he said to Betsy and Lorna, keeping his voice low in deference to the quiet (and the fact that they didn't want the pursued catching onto the fact that they were being pursued just yet), "having had my own mental voices that used to decide to stretch their legs on a regular basis really doesn't make this any less alarming." At least the Askani had been guests, so the desire to occasionally take a stroll had been at least semi-logical.
Their search had led them to a neighborhood playground. There were no syringes, but the dirt was scattered by litter and cigarette butts. Though the equipment was inexpensive it was in good repair: a sandbox, a few spring-mounted animals, a jungle gym, a set of monkey bars, a swing set. It was quiet, isolated. A good place to stop and regroup. Only one streetlight was close enough to serve as any illumination, but it was enough to trace the shapes of the park's sole occupants: a young boy on the swings, and a man seated on a graffiti-scored bench.
The swing creaked with each pump of the boy's legs. The man only sat and watched.
Betsy stopped walking. She stopped everything. Her eyes transfixed on the scene as she heard a child's laughter filling the air and watched as the guardian looked gloomily on. It was too surreal to speak, watching them together outside of the protection of Haller's mind. It was as if she could hear the ripping of flesh, the force of psychic disconnection, and the pain of it had never felt more evident. "Oh god."
Lorna touched Betsy's arm lightly then moved a bit in front of her. "This is a little bit horror film, isn't it? I probably should go first. Davey likes me and Jack...well, there's not really anything he can throw at me and it's not like he hasn't already dislocated my shoulder once." She tucked her hands into the pocket of her coats and shrugged. "Unless you're feeling stupidly overprotective or something, Nate."
"I'm not feeling anything but cautious. I've had my shoulder dislocated once already this month, remember?" Nathan muttered, eyeing the two figures. "You go. I'll back you up from here." If Jack lashed out, he could see it and stop him, Nathan told himself as he let his vision slide towards to where he could see the lines of force. Very different from that beach in San Diego - from what he understood, at least, as he still didn't remember the moment Jack had attacked.
"No," Betsy's voice resonated firmly. "I'll go," she said with a sad smile. "And this way, we can see how far this will actually go without hurting the two of you more than absolutely necessary." The telepath made her way toward the swing set and said over her shoulder as she moved away. "Besides, I think it's time I had a tete a tete with old grey eyes."
Betsy's assertion had not been soft. As they spoke the pump of the boy's legs slowed, then stopped.
Creak, creak. Creak . . . creak . . .
Feet scuffed on the dirt; the swing halted. "Hello?" Davey called into the darkness, his voice uncertain.
Jack's head turned.
Betsy cleared the edge of darkness as the aura from the park lights reflected off her bowed head. She wore a dark black longcoat and tightened it around her as she stopped just shy of the swings. Betsy lifted her head and brushed back her purple tresses and kept eye contact with Jack as she spoke. "Hello, Davey. Jack."
From his place on the swing the boy blinked at the woman who stood pale and strange in the darkness. Davey's forehead creased.
Who's she?
The tall, unkempt man on the bench stiffened. His eyes widened slightly as the speaker's voice registered, then leaned back on the bench with exaggerated care.
"Well," Jack said quietly, the soft Texan drawl pulling at the words. "It would be you that came, wouldn't it." His eyes glanced past Betsy to touch on Lorna, then Nate. He smirked at the last. "With some other choices that're more interesting. Think the preemptive sling on one's going to save time?"
"No one's going to be breaking anything today," Nathan said mildly, his expression level. He wasn't about to let Jack goad him. "Bones or anything else."
Lorna ignored Jack and smiled at Davey. She continued up to the swing, dropping down to her knees in the soft playground sand to bring her eyes level to the boy's, "How are you doing, Davey? We've been looking for you." Without turning away from him, she gestured to Betsy to come over and meet Davey properly. "This is Betsy."
"Betsy Braddock," she announced, leaning forward and offering her hand to Davey. With a smile, she said. "It's a pleasure to meet you, young squire. You know, a dashing young lad like yourself should be out fighting dragons and saving the world instead of protecting old grumpy Jack from us girls. Isn't that right, Jack?"
Davey looked askance at his guardian, but Jack's eyes were already on Betsy's. He turned his eyes from her to where Nathan stood, growing hard again as he fixated on the most obvious threat, but the silence of his turn carried tacit consent.
"Say hello, kid," Jack said.
The youngest alter's eyes flicked to where Lorna knelt, green hair haloed with gold from the streetlight behind her, and then to the woman beside her. The bottom of one blue eye narrowed.
"Betsy," Davey repeated, the word almost a question as he scrutinized the pale face set above the black coat and framed by hair almost swallowed in the darkness. A memory trickled through. He said slowly, the connection dawning for the first time, "The butterfly lady."
She smiled with a grin that lit up her face from within, the very smile she always had whenever Haller was too oblivious to notice her staring. "Yes, that's right," she ducked her head slightly at her eagerness. "The butterfly lady." With her hand still extended, she stared curiously at the child. "Nice to meet you."
"Nice to meet you," Davey said. He took the hand with more than usual tentativeness, but the smile he gave her in return wasn't Davey's normal childish grin.
Jack ignored the boy and women, focused instead on the large man beyond them. Hanging back was doing nothing to divert Jack's attention. They were of equal height, almost equal mass. Threat. An empty wrapper skittered away from his boots.
"So the gimp sent the expert on astral escapees to collect," Jack said, rising from the bench with lazy ease. "Bad call. Guess I'm not worth the redhead."
Nathan made a mental note to ask Charles just why he had sent him out after Jack. Later, of course. "We can skip the posturing," he said calmly. "It gets a little tedious, especially when you sound like one of the kids trying to sound tough." Perhaps a little much there, but he would give Jack a little of what he expected.
Jack turned to the side and spat casually. "Now I'm talking essential judgment. Sending out the biggest gun makes sense. Except when it'll hit all David's triggers." His eyes lighted briefly on Betsy before returning to Nathan. "I think maybe the prof's a little compromised."
"If that were the case," Betsy said, giving Davey's hand a slight squeeze and then moving into Jack's line of sight. "I doubt we'd be here now would we, David? Or at least I wouldn't be here..."
The name brought a flicker, quickly recovered from, but Jack's tone was soft, almost calm.
"I know why you're here. He called you, didn't he?" The emphasis on the 'he' indicated they were no longer talking about Charles. He gestured sharply at Lorna and Nathan. "This isn't about you. This is about the gimp deciding to make our business everybody else's because, once again, he knows what's best."
The playground's plastic animals mounted a few feet away began to rock gently, creaking under unseen force. Davey pulled his hand over his face.
"Aw, man." The utterance was both distressed and resigned. The boy retreated to the safety of Lorna, slipping around her in a way that wasn't subtle whatsoever. "Okay," he said as he secured her between him and everyone else in the park, "I'm using you for a human shield."
Lorna curled her arm back behind her, slipping it around the boy who felt perfectly solid and safe but not living not really like a person at all. She stood, getting to her feet without hurry. "That's a good choice. If he throws something at me, I can stop it." What she would do if he threw her she wasn't sure. The question of their relative strength had never come up. "Jack, you're scaring Davey. Just quit with the chest beating and let's all head back to the mansion, okay? We get that you're eternally cranky but geez."
"Nate," Betsy called back warningly. "If he just so happens to kill me, you promise you'll make him regret it." The hair on the back of her neck stood on end as she took a precarious step forward. "Jack, now we wouldn't want to scare the others. Be a good manifestation and calm down."
"Jack," Nathan said, very calmly. "I feel the need to point out that I'm not burnt out and reeling at the moment. Nor do I have my back turned. You're not going to get very far here." He reached out and... flattened the telekinetic disturbance, meeting each surge of power with careful precision, slicing through the jumbled lines of force like a surgeon. The ominous movement of the playground animals stopped, suddenly and immediately. It was done fairly gently - he didn't want to provoke Jack into anything more violent - but firmly, at the same time.
Just as in his sessions with Jean, Jack didn't even attempt to get into a telekinetic tug-of-war. Rather than jerk he released the power, letting the force slip through his mind like a line let slack. Around the small group the empty park went still, waiting.
Reasonable. Everyone was trying to be reasonable here, but Jack wasn't looking for reason. Someone had made him hurt.
It wasn't the woman Davey had chosen to take shelter behind that he was drawn to, or the one who had taken his arm in the quarry. It was the one who had stood right next to them on the sands of the San Diego beach, witness to potential attained for the first time in over a decade, and who had then forgotten. Older, male, and a psi.
Burrowed into Lorna's side Davey murmured, "He's close enough."
The green haired woman tightened her arm around the boy, automatically reacting to his clinging, and glanced down at him, confused, "Close enough to what?" But she didn't really need an answer. The EM fields in the park hummed for an instant and Lorna shuddered as the playground screamed with the twisting of metal and cracking of cement. "Oh. Well..." she left off the expletive in deference to the fact that she was standing with a 10 year old. Even if he really wasn't.
Well. Nathan raised an eyebrow as the playground equipment and chunks of cement and earth started to fly around. Some of it would make for quite lethal shrapnel - if they let it. It was an impressive display of power, something along the lines of a very disorganized telekinetic ground-burst. Unfortunately for Jack, there wasn't an ounce of precision about it. The energy flows were un-patterned, undisciplined.
He waited only long enough to make sure that Lorna had indeed thrown shields around all of them - this whole situation was more or less out of one of their training scenarios - before he reacted. "I'm getting very tired of this. Would you knock it off, please?" he asked conversationally as he caught and redirected each piece of debris, splitting his focus countless ways with ease, even without the psimitar.
Where there had been chaos, now there were interlocking, spinning spirals. The debris was still moving quickly but in very obvious patterns, leaving plenty of room for any of them to walk between the spirals if they chose. It would take a show of brute strength to force it all back to the ground, but one well within his abilities. He just wanted to give Jack one more chance to stop before he stopped him.
"Jack. Enough."
There was no response from the alter, however, and Nathan growled, temper sparking just for a moment. "Enough." This time he didn't slice through the lines of force, he smashed through them, hard enough that a flesh-and-blood telekinetic would have been left reeling, and possibly flat on his face on the ground bleeding from the nose. The debris sank back to the ground, falling in the same spiral patterns, well clear of Betsy, Lorna, and the boy.
Jack staggered back, snarling. There was an urgent tug on Lorna's sleeve. Davey was looking up at her, eyes wide.
"He's crazy!" the boy cried over the wordless scream of rage. The shrapnel around them was trying to jerk; weak, abortive efforts, instinctive as an animal lashing out from a corner. Davey's head whipped around to the others, his voice rising. "Please, he doesn't know what he's doing. He can't stop!"
"If this doesn't work..." Betsy muttered under her breath. She started walking over the debris field between herself and Jack. Calm and collected, she moved as each passing bit of metal twitched ineffectively on the ground until she was standing right in front of him. "Jack..."
The shattered debris seethed in its patterns as Jack struggled to raise it and only found himself undercut, his already reeling mind unable to find purchase under Nathan's power. Thrashing his head back and forth like a wounded animal one arm flung out at her, fingers clawed. He hissed, "Don't--"
She moved in, grabbed the front of his white t-shirt, and leaned in without any sign of fear, her eyes locked on his face as she kissed him with such force, saying everything she ever needed to say without uttering a word or thought in any direction.
Lorna gaped then covered Davey's eyes.
Betsy finally broke away. Jack stared down at her, whites showing all around his grey eyes. The force that had stirred the broken equipment and disrupted earth around them were conspicuously absent. The destruction lay in its swirls, dark and calm in the glow of the lone streetlight.
"You crazy bitch," the alter whispered, his voice a mingling of admiration and disbelief.
Davey, who despite Lorna's efforts had not been shielded nearly quickly enough, said: "EW!"
Lorna couldn't help but agree with Davey. That was a little too much literal beauty slaying the beast for her. "Do you think that it's going to work?" she asked the boy quietly. She might not approve but, you know, if it worked...
"Stop making it real!" Davey cried, mashing his hands over his ears.
Betsy pulled back and smiled sweetly just before decking Jack full on the jaw. "But that will," Betsy interjected, watching him fall.
It hadn't been a light punch. It had done more than spin him around -- he'd felt it. Not astral sensation, but pain. Real pain. As real as the pain of Nate's will slicing through his had been. A lazy smile spread across Jack's face. "Now that was unnecessary," Jack said, lifting himself from the dirt to rub his jaw. "Since you've got me on my knees I may just propose."
"It was a plan. Not a great plan, not even a good plan, but a plan. And hell, there was always Option B," Betsy winked at Jack. "But we never use that when children are about."
Nathan indulged himself with a few choice muttered Askani profanities. "Nice tactics, Braddock, thank you for the heart attack..." He couldn't have shielded her properly or stopped an attack from Jack in time, not when she'd been quite that close.
"Well, I do try to embarrass myself profusely whenever you're around, Nate. It's my secondary mutation, you know." Betsy chided. "C'mon, let's get back before the man I deeply care about decides he'd rather be a one-man show."
"Nice that she doesn't even bother to veil the threats. Don't worry. I'm done." Jack rose, brushing himself off. The dust coating his white shirt was ignored. The hits on all levels had cleared his head like a slap to a hysteric. The emotional, the physical, even the telekinetic straightjacket. Charles had never been able to match his power in that aspect. Not on his own terms. Somehow the eruption, for the first time matched by peers, had leveled him.
For now.
The immediate problem was done, but Jack knew better than to think it wouldn't build again. The cancer driving the rage was still there. He needed . . . help.
"In front of me people only get to fight with fists or brains. Not with tongue." Davey scrubbed at his eyes miserably, then did a double-take, registering Nate for the first time. He blinked, then waved enthusiastically from behind Lorna. "Oh. Hi!"
"Done. Fantastic." Lorna ruffled Davey's hair. "Let's go then before you get going again. What do you say, Davey-boy? Are we ready to head back to the mansion?" She felt strangely relieved. This all could have been so much worse. Some part of her still expected it to get there somehow.
"Home!" Davey agreed eagerly, then looked askance at his guardian.
Jack nodded. "Home."
Back at the brownstone and waiting for the rest to return, Snow Valley's resident profiler finds herself in the care of a familiar face -- and one who is less so.
His first words were: "I can't feel anything."
"Yeah, well, I have a cranky stranger and an attractive young man I'm not allowed to take advantage of, you can decide who is who in a minute, to babysit. Considering all your limbs are intact, I think I win." The voice came from the chair beside David, dry, but otherwise not out of the norm. Sofia had tucked herself up into it, a sketchpad resting on her knee, and various pencils neatly balanced on the upholstered arm. "Ahah. Don't even think about it," she continued sharply, obviously addressing the other person in the room but not taking her eyes off of David. "I just swept in here. You will stay right there where I can contain whatever is falling off you."
The shabby, dusky-skinned young man by Sofia's spotlessly clean window started a little, then lowered his arm from where he'd almost raised it to lean on the wall. His first word since coming entering Sofia's apartment was: "Sorry."
David pulled himself up against the sleek white cushions, feeling only the nagging unease that he was staining them by proximity. "My head's empty," he said. There was no weakness or disorientation in his voice. It was level, almost conversational, and stripped of any sense of emotional investment at all.
The stranger looked at him, then returned his gaze to the city night outside the window. "What a change," he muttered.
Something, something seemed to strike her, as if it walked right across her vision, and Sofia cautiously turned her gaze over to him, to not David, eyes narrowed. She stared at him a moment, as if debating something, before returning to her "patient", if not reluctantly. "There was a bit of an... exodus. Elton has left the building. Along with everyone else."
David nodded. "The professor sent people to find them." It wasn't a question. The man by the window was silent. Lost in his thoughts. David frowned a moment, searching, and realized, Or somebody's.
His mind briefly coincided with reality. David blinked and turned to Sofia, one eyebrow raised. "Um, why are you coma-sitting?"
"Haven't you heard? There was a petition after I did such a wonderful job defending Doug's honor. And on Thursdays I rescue kittens from trees," she returned, a lie, as easy as the breath she took in. "Boy by the window, could you turn a little to your left, please?"
The man half-turned to look at her, startled at the abruptness of the request. His brown eyes fell to the sketchpad on her knees.
The shift in his posture was minute, almost unnoticeable. "Just keep the kittens away from me," he said.
David glanced at him, his face blank. This wasn't right. He looked for some kind of emotion. The inside of his chest seemed just as hollow as his mind. Scoured. Stripped.
"I didn't know you drew," David said aloud to the woman sitting next to him.
Giving her subject a lazy salute with her pencil, Sofia continued, the dark grey smudge along the side of her hand evidence that they'd all been there a while. "My lack of soul is multifaceted. I'm also not very good. I always preferred watercolours." She swallowed. "It was my minor."
David nodded, distant and slow. "Watercolors are more expressive. They bleed. You don't get the control you can get with other things, but that's part of the medium. People don't pick it for its preciseness. They do it because it lets them work to the imperfections." Her hand began moving across the paper, the pencil-strokes quick and light. David's eyes followed her hand. "Sofia, can I ask you something?"
"Mhm?" she hummed, feigning casual as she filled in the lines on the knuckles of the other man's hands, awkwardly balanced off the pocket of his jeans.
"What was your family like?"
The man at the window made no move.
Sofia sucked in her lowed lip, wetting it. "Dead, mostly."
Blue eyes never lifted from the hidden sketch. "Is that good or bad?"
"You tell me." She winced as her pencil broke, closing her eyes. This was getting too close. A small pocket on a linen pencil roll held an even smaller one-blade sharpener; Sofia watched the curl of wood and lead emerge, seeing how long she could keep it one continuous piece. "Seems odd to ask a question that you would already know the answer to."
David's lips twitched in a smile, reassuring, automatic. "I'm okay at analysis, but I can't make massive background assumptions in a void. The intuitive leaps miss sometimes, so I try not to make them with no evidence. I really didn't know."
The statement was nothing but the truth, but just those two brief sentences from her had been enough to say everything the older woman seated on the chair beside him wouldn't. Or couldn't.
Sofia looked up as the tiny spiral finally tore, brown to blue. "What about making them on personal experience?"
David smiled slightly. "I try not to project the reality in my head onto other people, either."
From his spot by the window the other man said, "Too late for that."
"You're like a little girl," Sofia snapped, narrowing her eyes fiercely at the last commenter. "A little junior high girl making pitifully boring, under breath observations about the cheerleader who's dating the boy she likes but never gave her a second glance. Either get some pig tails, be quiet or, or, grow a bear."
"It's okay, Sofia," David said.
The young man at her window stared at her, turning over the outburst in his mind. A frown creased his forehead as one part stuck to the pan.
". . . a bear?"
Done, Sofia squeezed her eyes shut, taking a breath. "My father is a rich, unethical bastard and my mother was killed by her own brother before he shipped me off to live with a stranger. I'm not... I don't have warm feelings regarding them."
"I see." David fingered the taut scar-tissue of his right hand, a flat echo of the old nervous habit. Something in the stream of information, already carrying more than enough horrible fascination in itself, seemed to catch what meager shreds of attention were still capable of being engaged.
"Why do you think he did that?" he asked quietly. "Ship you off? After all that."
Trying for a short, unaffected laugh, it came instead brittle and already cracked, Sofia's eyes too bright and too sad. She shook her head, as one might wave away smoke from a burned meal. "My uncle was a thief, a murderer, a drug lord. But he was also a good Catholic man and I, was a mutant. A mutant child, already born out of wedlock."
The man by the window turned again, the only betrayal of expression a slight widening of his eyes. David's head dipped again. Acknowledgement without judgment, only a faint smile tinged with something that wasn't a smile at all.
"My parents died when I was seven." His voice was indifferent, neutral. "I lived with my grandparents before Uncle Andrew took me. Whenever they saw me cry they would move differently. Fast. Short. When my grandmother would wipe my face it hurt. They never said anything. Just look. And it was like they were saying: 'We didn't want you, and now we have to deal with this.'"
David's hand fell away from the scars. Instead it traveled to one of the pristine cushions. Touching the cloth, searching. Seeking connection.
"I made myself change," he said, fingering a seam. "Act better. Happier. Like a normal kid. But no matter what I did, somehow they'd always end up moving that same way. Because they knew things I didn't. And I couldn't fix them just by being good." Blue eyes lifted from the exploration of the pillow. "It's not good enough to change yourself to be what someone wants. Sometimes they never even see you. Just what you represent."
There was a long, silent pause, as Sofia stubbornly stared at the beginnings of her sketch -- brief outlines but detailed hands, mouth, and a lock of stray hair -- before she finally inched her left hand out, across the arm of her chair, and gently linked her smallest and ring finger around his thumb. She couldn't quite bring herself to look up, still for all purposes but that one hand solely concentrated on the pad of paper in her lap, but a warm breeze snaked around the room, ending with a tickle against the man by the window's cheek.
David looked down to study her hand on his. A small touch. Minimal, wordless -- but needing none. The posture of the man by the window tightened at the ruffle to his face and hair, like an animal startled into the moment before flight, and then relaxed.
"Your father," David said, looking up. "When your uncle sent you away. Did he know about you?"
"Well, yes. Barely." Sofia looked up a moment, finding herself caught in the gaze of the man by the window and immediately ducked her head again. Suddenly the spirals of her sketchbook were very interesting. "He was the stranger I was sent to live with."
David's eyes flickered, but it was the other man who spoke.
"He didn't know," he said, no trace of question in his tone, "until then."
"No." Sofia's jaw tensed as she forcibly pulled herself away from the sound of her pencil against the coiled tin. A million explanations ran through her head as she looked at them, defensive and accusations both, but it was, like always, not enough. "No."
His mind rolled with questions, spilled beads scattering to every corner. He managed to cup his hand around one. One that had been slipping through his fingers for a month, now unavoidable.
Do you think your father was disappointed when he found out what he got?
But once again he thought Sofia had already given him the answer.
Now it was David's turn to reach out a hand. He lay it over hers, squeezing once, gently.
"Thank you," David said at last, "for helping Lorna look for her sister. I don't know if it was right to tell her she should. So many families are screwed up. Kurt's, and Nate's. Wanda's. Betsy's parents are dead and one of her brothers is schizophrenic. For Lorna I just . . ."
"Hoped," the man by the window finished.
Then his head twitched up, almost imperceptibly, as the psychic assurance he'd been waiting for arrived. He turned to the other two, a mingling of relief and trepidation caught in the look.
"They have them. They're coming back."
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