Christian and Marie: Choices

[x-traction.livejournal.com]

Christian and Marie question their suspect. Marie is forced to make a decision and learns a lesson about herself...and her companion.

"He'll use flame. Not weapons. That we can be sure of." Christian was leaning against the wall as Marie finished her last preperations. The time had come to collect Calley, and Kane had stressed the simplest plan possible; taking himat his apartment. Byron's habits included toying with younger students, and it had only taken a 'chance encounter' with Marie on the campus, obviously an American exchange student, to receive the offer of a brief introduction to Marseille and the school. She didn't know how he'd done it, but Kane had managed to slip in a falsified record of Marie's cover identity, including a spot in two of his classes for the next semester, in just a few hours, to cover all possibilities.

According to their own observations, Calley wasn't a sexual predator, but he did enjoy the ego massaging that the younger women provided, especially exchange students from North America, with a pre-conceived idea of what France should be like.

Marie nodded, tucking her hair behind her ear, fingering the usually white streak that had been dyed brown for the trip."Ah hate fire," Marie said with a sigh, hoping she'd manage to protect her one vulnerability. "Ok, lets get this over with," she added, taking the final steps to stand in front of Calley's apartment door and knocking.

There was a pause before the door opened, and Byron looked around it at her. Christian was hidden around the corner of the hall, out of sight. "Ah, you made it. Please, come inside." He said with an affiable smile.

"Ah was so happy for the invitation," Marie simpered in her best imitation of a besotten co-ed. As Byron opened the door wider, Marie smiled widely and took a step in to the apartment. After that one step, her fist shot out connecting with Byron's cheek and knocking him flat on his back. "As Ah was saying Mr. Calley, very flattered by the invitatiion."

Byron didn't hesitate, even stunned by the blow, and reached out to encircle Marie in fire. The air around her literally crackled, gone suddenly bone dry, as the flames emerged out of thin air and whipped around her, lashing at Marie's invulnerable form.

"Ah. Hate. Fire," Marie said, punctuating each word with another punch until the flames finally began to die down.

"It's not time to kill him yet." Christian's voice was suddenly at her shoulder, and Kane reached down to the stunned Byron, quickly lashing his hands behind his back. "This piece of garbage has a long afternoon ahead of him.

***

When Byron regained consciousness, he found himself tied to his kitchen chair, hands tightly secured behind his back and through the slats of the chair, and his feet thrust between the legs of the chair and tied to them. Short of breaking the wood apart, he had no option of escape.

"Wha--"

"Mister Calley. We have some questions for you. It would be best for you if you answered quickly, thoroughly, and without lying. This woman is an X-Man. She's very upset. If you'd like to retain your limbs, you will give us the information that we need." Kane nodded to Marie.


Marie started slightly at Christian telling Calley she was an X-Man. She had left the uniform and that particular job behind when she chose to travel with him. Pushing that thought aside, she crossed her arms and glared at the man in front of her. "We know who you work for, so there's no point in denying it. You're fairly good at tracking and knowing when you're being tracked. We're simply better."

"I don't know anything." Byron said, looking between Marie and Christian, trying to conquer his own fear. The X-Men were the bogeymen of the Brotherhood, and having his cover blown and them on his doorstop was too much to process all at once.

"Mister Calley, I'm not an unreasonable man. I can be a very impatiant one, and this young lady can easily rip out your fingers one by one from the bones with as much effiort as it takes to open a soda can. So, why don't you tell us all you can about your work with the Brotherhood, so I can be reasonable, instead of impatiant?"

Marie cracked her knuckles as Christian spoke, hoping to drive home the supposed threat. She hoped it wouldn't take too much more to get the man to tell them what he knew...the group had already been missing for so long that the long stake out had already been difficult for the Southern girl. "You don't even know our questions, so Ah'm afraid telling us you know nothing isn't particularly convincing. Now, Ah'd prefer to avoid any more unpleasantness, but as you've already gathered Ah'm willing to use the means necessary to get the answers Ah need. So tell us about Sabretooth's latest exploits."

Byron swallowed nervously, but there was no pity or mercy in either sets of eyes, just rage or cold willingness to do whatever it took. He'd seen eyes like that before, when Magneto had first recruited him to the Brotherhood, and he knew very well what his master was willing to do if necessary.

"I don't know anything about Sabretooth. We lost touch with him when he was captured, and I haven't had any communications that say he's back. Magneto doesn't tell everyone everything, you know." Calley knew that if it got out he'd talked to anyone, especially the X-Men, his chances were slim at best, but right now, immediate danger was motivating him. "If he or Mystique have some kind of special mission for him, they usually keep everyone else out of the loop."

"Not good enough," Marie said, picking up a vase from a nearby table. She paused for a moment, then threw it towards Calley. It missed slightly, breaking into tiny pieces against the wall. "Next time, Ah might not misjudge when Ah throw if you keep up the lies."

"Only Magneto knows what everyone is doing!" Calley said, his voice rising. "They compartmentalize the Brotherhood so that if someone is captured, they can't bring down the whole structure. I just organize the European assets!"

"Just? The fact that Magneto thinks you're only useful as a low level manager doesn't mean he can hide everything from you. You think you're a smart man, Byron. Smart men have a way of finding things out." Kane's voice was untouched by the scene. "The attack on the car would have taken additional men, trained ones, experienced in ambushes and ready to escape quickly. Sabretooth led them. There must have been some hints as they were preparing it. Make this easy on yourself."

"I-- what car? What attack?"

Marie paused. Either the man was a fantastic actor or that was real surprise in his voice. Looking closely at Calley, Marie saw pure fear in his eyes. "Christian," she said softly, pulling the man aside, "Ah...Ah think he might really not know anything."

"You're right." After years of professional experience, Christian could tell a liar by sight, and Marie was correct. Calley had things he was hiding, but not about the attack. The man couldn't know and hide it that well. "Obviously Magneto is keeping this operation close to the vest. That means that there's another stage to it, something for the future. We need to find another member of the Brotherhood, hopefully one that was in on the operation."

Kane looked back at the man. "And I don't think we have any further use for this one. He might not have been involved in this operation, but he's got blood on his hands from a dozen others, and a hundred more that could not have happened without his help and support. Whether he knew it or not, he was part of what enabled Magneto to kill my son. Here's where we start to make him pay for that."

"Ah'm sure the local authorities can get him in to the right hands," Marie said, shoulders slumping at yet another trail gone cold.

"You wanted blood, Marie. He shares just as much guilt as Magneto. Is it him you're waiting for?"

Marie stared blankly at Christian for a moment before her eyes drifted over to Calley, tied and helpless in the chair. He looked exhausted and the bruises from her punches were taking on an ugly black color. "It's not the same."

"No, this is where it is exactly the same. Where does it start, Marie? Magneto? Sabretooth? The ones who were on his strike team that killed Garrison and Pete? The ones who provided the intelligence to ambush them?" Kane said logically. "The Brotherhood killed them, Marie. Are you willing to do the same to them?"

Marie turned to face Calley, her mind racing. Wasn't this what she had said she wanted? But it didn't feel the way she had thought it would. It felt...wrong. "Ah...Ah can't."

Surprisingly, the look on Kane's face changed, but not to any sort of harshness. Instead, it showed warm support, an expression uncanny in similarity to his son. "Good girl. There are people in this world that have it in them to be killers, and people who don't. Those who don't realise that they aren't until after the fact find that it destroys them. Be honest with yourself on this, Marie. No matter how personal it might get, don't try to change who you are. In the end, you'll end up defeating yourself."

Kane turned his head, and with a deceptively lazy looking gesture, calmly shot Byron Calley between the eyes. His head snapped back at the impact of the silenced round, and he was dead before it had time to loll forward.

Marie was barely able to avoid a scream, instead inhaling suddenly and turning her head. "Why?" she asked, refusing to allow this man to see her cry. "Why offer me the choice if it didn't even matter." She knew then that her time with Christian was over. She was just as responsible as he was for this man's death and she would not allow it to happen again.

"The choice was not to spare his life. It was whether or not you would be the one to kill him. I told you before we left, Marie, they killed my son, and in return, I will kill every one of them I can find until Magneto himself pays." Christian holstered the weapon, speaking calmly.

"As for your authorities, for all his guilt, there's nothing to charge him with. We broke into his apartment, tortured a confession out of him; nothing admissible in a court of law. More likely, we'd be the ones arrested, since we are in France illegally under fake passports." He pointed out, stating simple fact. "This is a shadow world, Marie. Here, you create your own justice. You made the decision you had to for yourself, as did I."

"And with your ability to whip up those false identities, there was nothing you could do to come up with some legal charges. There had to be another way Mr. Kane. This can't be the solution," she replied. "Ah can't be a part of this."

"No, you can't. As I told you, Marie, I will make sure they are dead. I'm happy to take their blood for my son's." Kane wiped his hands on a cloth, and then the doorknob carefully. He picked up the file of information that Calley had and passed it over."There's a ticket waiting at the airport under your current identity to New York. Take the files for your X-Men. It may help determine the Brotherhood's next move. I have my own resources to find the next one."

Marie accepted the the file silently. She knew she shouldn't be surprised that Christian had planned for this to happen. He was, after all, trained to read people and understand them better than they even understood themselves sometimes. She stood for a moment, her eyes trained on the file in her hands. And then she left.