The Orchid: The Chase

[x-cyclops.livejournal.com]

Jean and Chris track Haverford to Borneo, where Scott makes a sudden reappearance. (Too bad he's not himself.)


It hadn't taken Chris's contacts long at all to turn up Haverford's flight plan; he'd chartered a plane to Kota Kinabalu, the city closest to Mount Kinabalu, which only made sense if you were wanting a base from which to go orchid-hunting. It had taken Chris even less time to arrange a charter of his own, although the plane hadn't been ready for a few hours. In the interim, Chris had tried twice more to ask Jean about calling the mansion; her first reply had been brusque, her second a little alarming. He'd decided to leave it for now, mostly because he hadn't wanted to provoke some sort of eruption - and he got the distinct sense that if his daughter-in-law erupted, it would be volcano-like - but also because there wasn't much to be done with a team of X-Men right now. This was a search; Jean had her telepathy, he had his contacts. If neither bore fruit within the day, then he could insist on calling Xavier.

Kota Kinabalu was a tourist city, and an attractive one, studded with rainforest-covered hills and flanked by mountains on one side and the South China Sea on the other. Chris had prearranged their hotel as well, located nearly at the city center. A little extra cash had smoothed over the whole 'arriving before dawn' issue.

"Jean, you haven't eaten anything since yesterday," Chris said, pulling a small, leather-covered notebook out of his bag and heading for the table where the room phone sat. "You're not going to be any good to Scott if you keel over from exhaustion and low blood sugar."

"Not true," Jean said shortly, more or less pacing the far side of the room. "I had some energy bars while we were waiting for the charter. I'm not exactly going to sit here and cool my heels waiting for room service, Chris."

Chris paused, then sat down, opening the notebook and leafing through it to find the phone number he had in mind. "I'm not suggesting you do, Jean," he said. Carefully. "Just that if you're going to search your way - it's effort, I know that. And you're looking a little pale."

Jean glared, lips thin, then turned away. "There are a few upscale hotels in town - Haverford's predictable as anything. If he's here, he'll be checked in at one. I'm going looking."

"All right. Check back with me regularly, all right?" Chris asked, picking up the phone. His next words were a little calculated, but just a little. "I might turn up something myself, and you don't want to be out there out of contact if I do."

Her shoulders tensed, but she didn't turn, simply nodded. "I'll check in," she said, opening the door and stepping out into the hall. She didn't slam the door, but somehow the slow, careful click of the latch was almost as vicious.

---

Nothing. Chris set the phone down, again, and rubbed at his temples. Admittedly, he didn't have a lot of contacts here, and so he had a limited reach, even when he had his contacts put him in touch with theirs. But he should have been able to turn something up. Haverford would have needed equipment, guides, a vehicle, to go to Mount Kinabalu and search for these orchids. You didn't just walk out into terrain like that and wander around aimlessly.

He just hoped Jean was having more luck. Sighing, Chris rose from his chair, ignoring the twinge from his hip (a lucky shot by the member of a rival crew years ago, and he still felt it more often than not) and rubbing his eyes as he moved to the window. As the hours wore on, it was getting harder to keep the frantic worry under wraps. He'd just gotten his son back. He was not going to lose him to some crazed bastard with a hard-on for exotic flora...

A knock at the door drew him out of the troubled reverie. Chris's eyes narrowed, and he crossed to the bed, removing the gun in his bag before he went to the door. Jean had a key, she wouldn't be knocked... he peered through the peephole, and his eyes went wide for an instant before he threw the door open.

"Scott! Scott, where the hell have you been - are you all right?"

"You're a hard man to find," his son muttered, stepping around him and into the room. He was wearing the same clothes he had been when he'd disappeared, and didn't seem to be injured, not even a visible bruise. Upright, unhurt, moving under his own power - it was more than Chris had dared hope, given the circumstances. "Where is she?"

"Jean? She's out looking for you," Chris said, his tone still half-incredulous as he watched Scott move farther into the room, looking around carefully, clearly sizing up his new surroundings. He let the door shut and watched his son, eyes narrowing with worry. Doesn't look hurt, but he doesn't seem quite with it... "Scott," he said helplessly when no more information was forthcoming. "Where have you been?"

Scott sighed, shaking his head slightly. "Elsewhere," he said, and checked the bathroom. It was checking, Chris realized. As if he wanted to make sure they were alone. "It wasn't precisely planned."

"What wasn't?" Chris realized he was still holding onto the gun and laid it down on the table, grimacing. Scott's head half-turned towards him. "Come on, you owe me an explanation - you're sure as hell going to owe your wife one when she gets back..."

"Oh? When's that likely to be?" The question was almost absent-sounding.

"She promised she'd stay in touch." Chris reached out rather hesitantly to lay a hand on his son's shoulder. "Scott... are you all right? You should be able to get in touch with Jean yourself." She'd said there had been something wrong with the link, though.

Scott shrugged off his hand and turned, a faint, odd smile tugging at his lips. It was a strange, mocking sort of smile. Not an expression Chris had ever seen on Scott's face before.

And when he spoke, it was with an odd, un-Scott-like drawl. "Scott's not here right now. And you - you really should have stayed in Madripoor, Corsair."

The fist was coming at Chris's face before he could even begin to react, let alone duck.

---

The phone had been off the hook when she'd called to check it. Jean knew her father-in-law would be trying to find out anything he could, but with his limited contacts out here, she hadn't had a lot of hope and had been surprised when, five minutes later, the phone was still busy. It was odd enough, Jean decided, to merit investigation. After all, she was fairly certain she'd found Haverford's hotel - Chris would be good back-up.

That idea went straight out the window as she headed down the hallway to the room they'd taken. She heard the psychic noise of a disturbance first, but the sound of a body crashing into furniture was hard to ignore, too, and there was someone in the room with Chris.

As she burst into the room she yelled, "Get the hell away fr... Scott?" and the telekinetic move to pull Chris' attacker away from him was aborted. But something was terribly, terribly wrong, because the link was still silent and his mind was just. not. right.

"Jean!" Flushed, Scott staggered slightly under the aborted telekinetic push. "Don't - he pulled a gun on me when I came in, look, it's there on the table-" It was enough to get her to look in that direction, if only for a moment, and as she did, he cut loose with an optic blast, knocking her down.

"AH!" Jean cried out, flinging her hand towards him and just managing to get her shields to hold off his blast. "Scott!" There was something so very familiar about all of this, and as she forced herself to her feet, still staggering to hold her shield up, she frowned. "... not Scott," she said slowly, looking once more straight into the ruby glow of his blast and the link was quiet, and his mind felt wrong... "I know this story..."

"Oh, hell," the person wearing Scott's body said. And ran for it, through the open door.

Chris, lying against the shattered remnants of the dresser, pushed himself up to his hands and knees, coughing, pausing to spit blood. "Jean," he said raggedly. "Jean, we can't let him get away-"

But Jean didn't even hear him - was actually already heading after the man who wasn't entirely not her husband. It was Scott's body, and that meant she wouldn't break him when she caught him. Which just meant she got to be creative telepathically.

Down the stairs of the little hotel, and out onto the busy street. 'Scott' ran as if he knew the city like the back of his hand, but even with the link not right, it was easy enough for Jean to track him. He didn't turn on her until they were out of the crowd and into one of the many alleys, at which point another optic blast, one that wasn't even somewhat restrained, came at her.

It slammed into her shields and once again her hands flew out instinctively, Jean falling back on bad habits out of emotional turmoil, but her shields held, even pressed out a bit. "I'm going to get a hold of you, and once I do I'm not going to leave any bruises, I'm not going to break any bones, and by the time I'm done you will realize that you've never felt real pain before in your entire, worthless life," she snarled.

"Tough talk, bitch!" 'Scott' said with a too-bright, almost manic smile that was so overwhelming not his own that the wrongness all but screamed at her. "What precisely do you think you're going to do to me that's not going to hurt him? I'm not p incorporeal, you know. I'm sitting in here with him, cell to cell. You try and yank me out of here, and I can kill him. Want to try and unsee your husband exploding at the cellular level?"

Jean chuckled, although the sound was more than a little hysterical, the air at the edges of her shields beginning to flicker with bright sparks as her agitation bled into her self-control. "Why not? I forgot my own death, once. Force enough trauma on a psi and who knows what we'll do. I promise you, though, you won't live to see me suffer if you hurt him. I can make you live through a thousand agonizing deaths in your own head before I stop your heart."

"This is what I get for working for a lunatic," 'Scott' muttered, not quite under his breath. His real eye regarded her coldly - but his hand rose, rubbed hard at the scars on the side of his face, a mannerism as familiar as the smile and the tone were foreign. "Here's the thing," he said, shifting to the left, eyeing the opening to the alley. "You can probably do all kinds of horrific things to me - I'll give you that. But if you try, I don't have anything to lose, do I? I might as well roll the dice, see what I can do with my hostage here to win myself a minute to shift out..."

Jean frowned, then took a deep breath, trying to reign her temper back in. "Give him back to me," she said after a moment, voice low. "Give him back and get out and I won't come after you. If you go back to Haverford I make no promises when we catch him, but if you leave now I'll give you the chance to not be suicidally stupid."

'Scott' smirked. "He's either lucky or insane," he said, giving her an up and down look that was both assessing and appraising. "Wish I could be sure I could trust you, but I guess I don't have a lot of choice. Here we go..." He threw himself back against the wall of the alley, hard enough to elicit a grunt at the impact.

What happened next was disturbing, to say the least. Scott's whole body convulsed, and something was moving under his skin, like an image straight of a horror movie. Thankfully the similarities ended there. The movement stopped, and there was a strange flickering around him, like an afterimage left behind after staring into the sun. It could have been a shape, maybe even a human form. It pulled away from Scott, and then faded. There was a flicker of something moving in Jean's peripheral vision, but by then, Scott was crumpling to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

If Jean had been tempted to renege on the deal, all thought of a double cross fled as Scott collapsed; he was back on the link, he was back, and nothing else mattered except to get to his side.

Scott didn't move as she reached him. For one horrifying minute, it didn't even look like he was breathing. Then his body convulsed again, a series of explosive coughs shattering the quiet in the alley. He nearly jumped out of his skin as Jean touched him.

"Scott..." Her voice caught on his name and she had to swallow before trying again. "Scott. Are you ok? Talk to me."

"Ngh-" was the other reply at first, as Scott pushed himself shakily up to his hands and knees. He was swallowing convulsively, fighting back nausea, and shivering violently. "F-Fuck," he finally rasped. "Hurts. What the fuck was that?"

Jean reached out to help him, hands rubbing soothing circles on his back. "Someone possessed you, Scott. Where does it hurt? Let me see."

It was like the days after he'd been rescued from Lyman. He hurt everywhere. It was easing already, though, fading to a throbbing ache instead of screaming pain. He took a deep, ragged breath, and then another, and then finally managed to raise his head and look at Jean. "You look awful," he muttered, sagging sideways into more of a sitting position.

Jean shrugged slightly, giving him a gentle half-hug. "The link was silent," she said. "And I lost you. I don't do so well when I lose you..." Which was possibly the understatement of the decade.

It turned into a proper hug, from Scott's end of things. Possibly with a little bit of clinging. He breathed in, then out, the pieces of his composure reassembling slowly. The haze in his head was still there, though, which was disturbing. Possessed, she'd said. So what the hell had...

A flash of something, out of the haze, and Scott sat bolt upright. "Dad!"

Jean was almost more startled by the motion, but the fact that Scott had actually called Chris 'dad' rather blew her mind, and she blinked at him for a second before standing up and offering him a hand. "Come on. We should go back. I... he might have been bleeding when I left the hotel to chase you. I wasn't really focused on that..."

---

"Scott, for the love of God - stop looking that guilty."

Scott twitched at his father's grumble, looking away for a moment before he turned his attention back to Chris, who was sprawled on the bed holding an ice pack to the side of his face. There was another tucked along his ribcage. "You're sure you're okay?" he asked, for about the third time since he and Jean had gotten back to the hotel. "I mean, maybe we should-"

"Scott," and Chris gave him a very direct look, quickly-developing black eyes - black eyes, plural! - or not, "once more with the fretting, and I'm going to get off this bed and take you over my knee. Seriously." He grumbled something inaudible, and adjusted the ice pack. "Jean, distract him or something before he literally turns into an old woman."

"We still don't know where Haverford's heading," she put in, reaching over to touch Scott's shoulder - as much to reassure herself he was there as to get his attention. "Do you remember anything?"

Scott jumped as she touched him, but gave her a quick, apologetic look, laying a hand over hers. "I just... I don't know, it's all so hazy," he said uncertainly. The pain of those first few minutes in the alley had died to a dull ache, like the first symptoms of a flu bug, but he was still a little shaky. "I don't think I was right out of it, but almost." His other hand rose, rubbed at the scars on the side of his face, the same old mannerism that had cropped up in the alley, possessed or not.

"I know," Jean said gently, "but anything would help. I found his hotel but he's left to get wherever he's going and we have no idea where that is."

"Just 'Mount Kinabalu', and that's not all that helpful," Chris added. Despite the pain he was obviously in - he'd still been woozy when Scott and Jean had gotten back to the room - he was watching his son as intently as he could manage under the circumstances.

Scott rubbed at his eyes, next. "It was like being on a plane or something, and dozing," he muttered, keeping his eyes closed as he let his hand drop back to his lap. "You know how you wake up part of the way, every so often..." It was the 'awake' parts he needed to focus on. "I was with Haverford. That I'm pretty sure of." A pause. "I think he wanted whoever was, uh, in me, to come back here and take the two of you out. He didn't want to be chased... not just for the obvious reasons, either. There was..." Scott grimaced. "He needed time. Why did he need time?"

Jean frowned. "A lack of certainty, maybe?" she suggested. "I mean, all we have is the whole mountain to search. What if he's narrowed it down to an area of the mountain, but not a specific site? Whatever this orchid is, it can't be easy to find - either it'd be well known, or it's abilities would have been disproved already."

There was something else, Scott thought, concentrating hard on another of those fragmentary memories. It just wouldn't clear up, however, and he grimaced again, reaching out almost involuntarily for Jean's hand. "There was someone else there... or we were with this other person at some point. Help?" A female voice. Enthusiastic about something.

Jean caught his hand but hesitated briefly, worried about the effect she might have upon him as he was recovering from the possession, but they didn't have a lot of time. Finally she nodded, moving to sit closer. Her mental touch was gentle as she slipped inside, helping him focus into the memory much the way she had helped Chris earlier.

And they were standing somewhere else, a room that was still hazy around the edges, as if a fog bank had moved inside. A second Scott was leaning against the wall, arms folded across his chest and a look of sardonic amusement on his face as he watched Haverford peering over the shoulder of the woman sitting at the desk. She was small and dark-haired, her features indistinct. Delicate hands shuffled photographs as if they were playing cards. Pictures of flowers - no, orchids.

Their voices were muffled, as if they were in a different room entirely. Scott took a step closer, straining to listen.

--resembles almost a Vanda , by the description--

One of the smaller families, isn't it?

You've done your reading, Mr. Vargas!

And then he remembered, all at once. She's a botanist, Scott said, shaking his head. Part of him wanted to understand why his memory was patchy, what wrinkle of the other mutant's powers had accounted for that. Most of him really didn't want to know. Local specialist - she does research in the national park.

#Well, if we still had any doubts about what he was after, this pretty much proves it...#

The body thief folded and unfolded his arms, managing to look more bored than anything else. Haverford looked at him, then shrugged and turned his attention back to the young botanist. -give me some idea of where to look?

Her response was unintelligible. The maps that she pulled out, however, were not. Scott lurched forward, staring hard at the blurry images. He couldn't tell fine details - he hadn't had the best view, obviously. But the outlines were there, and if he could just figure out which direction on the map was north...

She's pointing at an area to one side of a ridgeline, Scott sent to Jean. We need a map of our own. I might be able to figure this out.

---

By the time they'd gotten said maps and reconstructed, as much as possible, what particular part of the north slope Haverford was likely to be searching, it was getting dark. More to the point, it had started to rain - quite heavily, as a matter of fact. Chris had pointed out that it was monsoon season, after all. Since the weather and the darkness made it unlikely that Haverford would be doing much searching overnight - far more likely that he was holed up in one of the chalets inside the national park - the three of them had made the somewhat risky decision to get a few hours of sleep before heading out. Chris had arranged for a small plane, come sunrise, and shooed Scott and Jean back into the other room, muttering something about how old men needed their rest.

"Low's Gully," Scott muttered, moving restlessly around the room. "I hope I'm right." The deep ravine running along either side of the peak was roughly in the spot the botanist had been indicating on the map - and this all would have been much easier if he'd been able to remember her name! - and certainly, according to the guidebook they'd bought downstairs in the lobby, it was full of all kinds of exotic plant species. But it was still a big area to search, even from the air and with a telepath.

Jean watched him somewhat worriedly from where she sat on the bed. "Scott, you need to rest. There's really not anything more we can do right now..."

He gave an oddly quizzical-sounding laugh, shaking his head. "I feel like I've been asleep for a day," he said, remembering the way he'd described the experience of possession from his end, only a few hours before. After a moment's hesitation, however, he came over and sat down beside Jean, taking her hand in his again. "You, uh, didn't blow up anything important while I was gone, did you?" He managed a smile, to show that it was a joke (mostly).

Jean glanced aside, managing not to blush. "Important... no. Haverford's hotel back in Madripoor is missing a window and probably there's some alarming word of mouth going on. And I think your father's almost as worried about me as he is you right now."

"You know I'd never leave you deliberately." Scott reached out with his other hand, brushing it against her cheek gently. "And I'm back... I think I'm pretty much okay..." She was right, there wasn't much to be done right now. Which meant that focusing on her was okay. More than okay, really. He leaned in to kiss her, and wondered just who he was reassuring.

"Mmmm, I know," she said after a moment. "I was... I knew you hadn't left by choice, which meant whoever'd made you leave was going to suffer. But now you're here. It's all ok."

"You scare me sometimes." Scott's voice was very slightly hoarse as he stroked her hair, then pressed another kiss to her temple. "What's going to happen to you if something does happen to me one of these days?"

"Nothing is going to happen to you," Jean replied firmly, sliding an arm around him and pulling him closer.

This was maybe not one of those conversations they could actually... well, have. Still. That didn't remove the worry. "Well," he said, wrapping his arms around her tightly, "I could always promise to blast the next person who tries to steal my body in the face. I think I could probably manage that."

"Yes, I think that would definitely be a good plan," Jean said, reaching up to kiss him again. "A plan I could get behind."

"Mmm - we're going here again, are we?" They were awfully predictable at times, Scott thought. Not that he was complaining. Heck of a way to prove that your body's back under your own control...

Her hands slid down his sides, fingers teasing out the lower edge of his shirt. "We don't have to... I mean, if you're against the idea..." Jean said, then kissed him deeply.

"You've got to be kidding," Scott said huskily, once she let him up for air. "Fully in favor. Fully. Stake your claim all over my... uh, I should just stop there, shouldn't I?"

Jean chuckled. "Yes. You stop with the babbling, and I won't stop with anything else. Plan."