xp_logs | Mark & Emma, Amahl. Backdated to Tuesday.

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After being kept in the dark for weeks, Mark learns about Esteban's death from Emma.

Emma stood in the doorway connecting the reception area to the rest of the offices, contemplating Mark's profile as he worked on his computer. If, she decided, she ever had the opportunity to do so, she would shoot Farouk and dump his body somewhere unspeakable. What was left of Srinagar, possibly. The hum of Mark's thoughts was cheerful and busy with music and blissfully, blissfully ignorant.

It was not fair, Emma decided, that she had to be the one to shatter that ignorance. That was Farouk's job and he had failed at it.

But life, in Emma's opinion, had never been fair so she made her way to Mark's desk.

"You're looking well, Mark" she said. "One could hardly guess you'd been frostbitten."

Mark looked up from his winning hand of online poker and smiled. "It's amazing what sitting around not drinking and not smoking will do to you," he said while trying to inconspicuously move his monitor so Emma couldn't see. "So how can I help you? Tea time already?"

"No," said Emma and sat on the edge of the desk, carefully not noticing Mark's maneuvering of the monitor. "Not yet. Perhaps not today. Mark, there's something I need to tell you. About the whole horrid stinking fucking mess that was Srinagar." She turned her head for a moment, ignoring Mark's sympathy as images of the shattered city flashed through her thoughts. She closed her eyes, cut the thoughts dead and turned back to face Mark.

This was not a look he was used to from Emma, but even if he'd never seen it before he'd know it was Bad. "What's up?" he asked carefully, his mind running through any possibility he could think of. She, Wanda, and Jubilee had returned apparently unscathed, and there had been no word about further political complications.
Emma had never been particularly interested in softening the blow, so her words were blunt. "Esteban Trotsky went to Pakistan to save his employer. Farouk came back. Trotsky didn't. I'm sorry, Mark, but Esteban died."

Mark blinked, and looked up at Emma as if she'd just spoken gibberish. "I'm sorry, what? I must be losing my mind, because I could've sworn you just said that Esteban was killed."

"There was a fight. In a village on the border of Pakistan. We were trying to get to Farouk's informant and a hired posse of mutant mercenaries were trying to stop us. Mark, you of all people know what Esteban was like about Farouk. How protective he was. He tracked Farouk down. He was trying to save him and he got himself killed for his pains. The others - didn't know. Not really. It all happened away from the main fight. I felt Esteban die. Not like you. Not missing. Just - dead." Emma looked down at her hands again, remembering Esteban's thoughts in those last moments. "I'm sorry."

"I see." Mark put a hand on Emma's and smiled thinly at her. "Thanks for the update, but it's not like he and I are friends anymore. Were friends anymore," he corrected himself. "Bullets aren't a great way to keep a friendship. So, you know, it's really no big deal to me, right?" The haunted look in his eyes belied the flippancy of his tone, though, and the raging shouting in his mind even more so.

"You can say that," said Emma. "You can even make people believe it, if you want. But is that the person you want to be?" She turned her hand within Mark's grip, touched his wrist lightly with fingers made of diamond. "It is not easy being so cold, Mark. You don't get to choose which feelings you turn off; in the end, all you are is ice. Be warm and alive and messy and loving and mourn someone you don't want to mourn, because it makes you real. It makes you human. And isn't that the whole point of what we're fighting for? To make the world remember that we are human, too?"

Mark shivered as Emma's skin hardened to diamond beneath his hand, and couldn't help but let out a little whimper when she brushed his wrist. "I can't just lose it here," he said, his voice quivering. "There's work to do. Evil to be vanquished. Money to be made. I can't let myself think about this now."

Emma nodded, the turmoil in Mark's mind washing against her. "Then don't," she said. "But remember that a stint on reception could assist Jubilee in expiating one or more of her multiple sins. If you need to not be here," she finished softly.

"We all have places we need to be." Mark rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand, and when he looked up at Emma again they were glistening. "Esteban's place was behind Professor Farouk. My place . . ." With a trembling hand, he took his mouse to drop the poker game, revealing a half-finished chart of connected names behind it, which looked more like a spiderweb than anything else. The nexus of the chart, in big bold letters, was the moniker KINGMAKER. "My place is here."

Emma looked carefully at Mark, the tight control over the tears, the strength of cold will holding back his emotion for now. #Bitten by Frost,# she thought and wasn't quite sure whether she was being whimsical or mocking herself. "Yes," she said. "You need to be here. Where we need you." Surprising herself, she leaned forward and touched her lips to his cheek, a fleeting benediction driven by . . . she wasn't sure what. Sympathy, possibly. Or recognition. "Where I need you."

It would come as a shock to anyone who knew Mark at all to see such a simple affectionate gesture make him blush. But it did, and he tried to laugh to cover it up. "Times like this I wish I could still drink without sending myself back into a frostbitten coma," he said, wiping his eyes again.

"When you can, I'll have something special waiting for you. At least 18 years old. And sumptuous. Esteban deserves sumptuous," replied Emma. She disengaged her hand gently from Mark's. "I'll be in my office if you need anything."

~*~

Mark finds Amahl, who has just returned from an extended stay in Mexico, and they mourn together.

Farouk leaned farther back, the old leather of the seat squeaking slightly as he moved. His coffee sat untouched before him, cooling. Harry's was still empty, this early in the evening only a few of the extremely regular regulars sat scattered through the bar, coming off a deadman's shift or just having nowhere else to go.

"And I am both," Amahl whispered fighting back a chuckle, or perhaps a scream.

Farouk's travel bag sat uncomfortably under the table, cramping his legs, but the energy to move it just wasn't there. No energy to move, no energy to think, no energy to drink...

He couldn't even explain to himself why he stopped the taxi here, instead of going straight to the mansion. Sleep. He needed sleep, the image of falling into his bed still dressed and sleeping off the jetlag for days blossomed behind his yes and Farouk twitched his shoulders irritably. Sleep. It was the logical thing to do and necessary - he could feel the exhaustion dulling his mind even now. But there would be no sleep - he knew that too.

Farouk's fingers moved gently along the rim of his coffee cup and he thought back to just over 20 hours ago, to the dusty square in a sleepy Mexican town, where he went from India to destroy a life.

Maria Teresa Ramirez had been many things in her life; a mother, a nun, a guerrilla, a whore, a cartel's assassin and a nun again, and she excelled in all of those things except the first.

A mother should never outlive her son...

It was the eyes that stayed with him. The deep blue, almost black eyes that stared at him from the Church's steps. Stared knowing what he had come to say, stared holding all the grief and rage in the world as she waited for him to say it.

Farouk swallowed, the dry throat working painfully and gripped his cup.

Sleep. He cawed his laughter quietly, sincerely, madly.

Sleep...

Right.

The instant Mark stepped inside Harry's he felt out of place. This kind of bad was very much not his scene, made all the more obvious by the fact his nice black suit looked like something straight out of an Armani ad instead of the Sear's catalog. But the discomfort was not important enough to distract him. He'd mourned privately when word reached him that Esteban had been killed, and now he needed to talk to someone who actually knew him. He'd been told that Farouk would be gone for a while, but when he wasn't back at the mansion when he was supposed to be, Mark was sure he'd know where to find the other mourner.

"Professor," he greeted solemnly. "May I sit down?"

Farouk looked, the bleary eyes staring through Mark for a long second with blank incomprehension before a faint flicker of recognition made the older mutant kick his back farther under the table and extend his arm in mute invitation. "Be my guest, young man. The coffee is atrocious, but on the bright side the service is horrific."

"I don't know many people who come to a bar for coffee," Mark mused, smiling thinly as he took a seat opposite Farouk. "I . . . Emma told me. About Esteban. I'm sorry." He wrung his hands nervously, unsure of what to say next.

Amahl stared at his cup. "Sorry." He tasted the word, stretching out. "We are all sorry." He was sorry in Mexico too, so he knew how remarkably bankrupt it was, how pointless. He thought back to the Pakistani village to the fear and agony blossoming in his mind link. Was Esteban too slow, just a fraction off his speed? Did he lose the precious seconds, killed not by the mercenary but by this kid, the echoes of the concussion reaching him months after the fact?

He smiled crookedly, bitter and resigned, and reached out, placing his dry palm on Mark's hands, quieting them.

"Such is life. It ends.”

"I know, but . . . he meant a lot to you and I think you were important to him." Not that Mark had known him very well during their brief liaison. They'd rarely talked, actually. "And for a while, he was important to me, too. So . . . yeah."

Farouk's lips twisted in subtle self-mockery, and he drew back into his seat, grasping the cup with both hands. "Did he ever tell you how we met?"
Mark just shook his head, silently urging Farouk to continue.

Amahl's smile widened fractionally, and he inhaled the the scent of coffee slowly, savoring it. "He mugged me, outside of a Paris cafe."

A scrawny teenager then, but the gun looked comfortable in his hands and he frisked Farouk with quiet competence, unhurried even as the police siren flared into life a few blocks away from them... A decade ago, now. Another world.

La illaha ill Allah, Muhammadur Rasul Allah.

The is no God, but God and Muhammad is His Prophet. And I believe in neither. But my son, my son... Why him?!

The exhaustion pressed down on him again, driving out self-control, drying the tears before they appeared; the muzzy mind wandering, lost and uncertain. The thoughts slipped from his grasp, unfocused, random.

So, this is what being old is...

The memories assaulted Mark's unfocused and unprepared mind, but despite the danger he didn't fight them off immediately, and let himself be swept up by the psychic tide. He couldn't help but chuckle at the sight of a younger Esteban relieving Farouk of his possessions, his hands as quick and frisky as Mark remembered. Then he "heard" Farouk's thoughts, and gasped across the psychic landscape. "Your son?" he repeated incredulously.

Macabrely Amahl felt the incongruous laughter bubble somewhere in his chest at the expression on the younger man's face, and he was tempted for a moment to lie, just to see what would happen. "Not in flesh."

Mark snapped out of the psychic reverie and shook his head as if to clear out mental cobwebs. He looked suitably embarrassed for coming to such a hasty conclusion. "Ah. Metaphor. Gotcha. I guess I'm looking for random connections to him."

Some of the usual shrewdness glinted in Farouk's eyes as he glanced at the man who tried to kill him for the 'greater good' not so very long ago. Sitting before him, trying to make sense of death. Looking for random connections, trying to make patterns and logic.

"Found many?"

"Our relationship was completely physical. I wouldn't know what connections to really look for in the first place." Mark shook his head. "I really don't know why I'm here to be honest, Professor. We knew each other briefly, weren't friends in a real sense, and we ended without any fanfare besides a bullet to the hip and a pistol-whip to the head. I guess . . . well, he didn't really know many people up here, did he? He was always with you or doing his own thing away from everyone else. How many people does he have to mourn him? Our, er, disagreements aside, he deserves this."

Farouk squinted thoughtfully at his cup. "I'm not an especially religious man, Mr. Sheppard, but I'd like to believe that if there's an afterlife, Esteban is beyond caring about getting his due from us, one way or another. Mourning is for the living..."

He looked back at Mark again, the eyes unexpectedly kind. "Whether or not Esteban will be remembered or will pass from the world easily forgotten - ultimately it's not up to us. He had lived his life, and made his mark, whatever it might be. You are still alive, still part of the world, still making your own trail. I will not presume to guess what brought you here. We do not know each other nearly well enough for that. But I suggest you do try to puzzle it out."

The door clanged, briefly drawing the attention of the both mutants as the boisterous clamor of already inebriated college students filled the bar.

"Self-knowledge is a powerful thing," Farouk said turning back to his cold coffee. "And it would be neither selfish nor profane to use his death for a look inside." Farouk's lip quirked. "As soup-operaish as that advice may sound."

A knot in his gut that Mark didn't know was there loosened at Farouk's words, and he smiled at the older man. "Well, I do like soap operas. Shawn finally woke up from his coma on Days of Our Lives, can you believe it? After his daughter married his step-brother, I didn't think his life could get any worse."