Jean-Paul and Ernst St. Ives

[x-cynosure.livejournal.com]

Jean-Paul arrives in Quebec to face a murderer from his past.



It was well into morning, but the sky over Quebec City was oppressive and dark, threatening to storm. Staring out at the slate grey sky from the back of a Sûreté du Québec Impala was not helping Jean-Paul's state of mind. He did not want to wait to speak to the officer on the scene and the SQ's insistance on keeping things low-profile to the point of driving him out instead of letting him fly was maddening. He wanted the address where St. Ives was hiding and he wanted to finish what he'd been unable to so many years ago.

Ernst St. Ives. "Deadly Ernst". Just thinking the name made him want to take the man apart from the fingernails down. Now the murdering bastard was loose again and all he knew was that he was wanted to help with the issue for some reason he couldn't be told just yet.

"~We're here,~" the officer behind the wheel said, pulling the car in beside another just like it. There were more vehicles on the scene, of course; the house was surrounded by a cordon of police, sealing the situation off from the rest of the quiet neighborhood. They appeared to be doing a good job of keeping any curious civilians at a distance, as well. The HAZMAT truck parked a short distance away might be the explanation for that.

Jean-Paul didn't bother replying as he left the car, gloved hands stuffed into the pockets of his jacket as he scanned the scene. Single-story home, but worm's eye-view windows indicated a basement. Door kicked in and a darkened interior beyond. His impatience subsided as the anger that fueled it went cold. No ambulance. No body bags. Yet. He made a beeline for the man directing things.

"~Jean-Paul Beaubier, formerly of Alpha Flight.~" He managed to keep his voice level. "~You requested my presence. I'd like to know why.~"

"~Monsieur Beaubier. I'm Lieutenant Fortin.~" The officer gave him a brief nod, his gaze assessing. "~We received a call from inside this house from someone claiming to be Ernst St. Ives. We have no reason to doubt him - St. Ives escaped last night from detention.~"

"~And who thought...~" The speedster caught himself, filling in the answer to his own question. "~I am here at St. Ives' behest, then.~" He glanced at the door swinging on crooked hinges. "~And there's no reason to humor him unless he has hostages inside, is that right?~" He could feel his heart quickening, but the chill under his skin refused to dissipate. "~What has he asked for exactly?~"

"~You,~" Fortin said briefly, looking grim. "~To speak to you - he's got three hostages, Beaubier, a whole family. He's said that if he can talk to you, he'll let them go.~" Fortin's gaze moved quickly over the scene, the assembled police personnel. "~I know what he's capable of doing. If direct action can be avoided-~"

"~If all St. Ives wished to do was talk, Lieutenant, your people could have sent in a phone and been done with it. Whatever he has said, direct action is what he has in mind.~" Revenge, more likely. After fifteen years in prison, he'd be eager for it. "~But I do not see another option. Where is he keeping the hostages?"

"~The basement of the home,~" Fortin said. "~There are three in there with him - Amelia Voisine, her young daughter, and her father-in-law.~" He paused, his jaw tightening. "~It would be chancy for us to try and force entry, even if St. Ives was a simple hostage-taker.~"

Jean-Paul glanced over at the basement windows again. They were so obscured with years of built-up grime that it was impossible to see through them. "~And he's backed himself into a position where your people cannot pick him off from range.~"

'The man knows this already, Beaubier. You are wasting time.'

"~So there is no good option. Do you have a means to speak with him? Let him know I am coming in.~"

Fortin nodded slowly, and the look in his eyes, along with the tense worry, contained something that one might almost have termed pity.

"~He's waiting for you,~" he said simply, raising the phone in his hand.

---

It had taken only minutes for Fortin's people to equip Jean-Paul with a wire and earpiece, a few hasty warnings about negotiation, and then he had headed in.

Jean-Paul paused on the threshold of the Voisine home, peering into the dark. All the lights were off and the blinds drawn. The darkening sky at his back offered almost nothing in the way of light, just enough to see an indistinct shape sprawled on the floor of the living room. His stomach twisted and he stepped inside, more swift than cautious. His eyes adjusted to the dark as he drew close; the shape was not human, but the lifeless bodies of two large mongrel dogs, presumably the family pets, lying atop each other, their faces turned toward the door. There was no blood, no sign of violence, not even snarls on the lips of the animals -- just blank confusion, as if they were surprised to find themselves dead.

The basement entry was just off the kitchen. Fortin had said that Amelia Voisine had been spotted through the kitchen windows, but had been in a poor position for extraction and had made no effort to escape herself. There was an open loaf of bread and a half-empty carton of eggs of the counter. A recently used frying pan sat on on the stove. Drawers and cabinets had been left open.

The door at the back of the kitchen had light spilling out from under it. Opening it revealed the actual entry to the basement, through the pantry. The only spot of illumination in the house hung overhead -- a bare bulb on a pull-chain dangling from the ceiling. The door leading down to the basement was open, and Jean-Paul's shadow proceeded him down the stairs as he paused at the landing.

"Ernst." He spoke down into the dark. "You wanted to see me." He managed to keep his voice calm and without inflection. He did not know how long he could keep that up. Long enough.

There was a hoarse laugh, from deeper in the basement. It came from the huge - literally huge; the man's obesity was pronounced - figure standing between Amelia Voisine and her daughter. His prison-issue jumpsuit was riddled with bullet holes, bloody, and peeled down to the waist, exposing his arms and much of his chest. Each meaty hand rested on an innocent shoulder. The girl was crying silently, while her mother merely looked numb.

"They didn't waste any time, did they?"

Jean-Paul stepped cautiously onto the stairs, holding his tongue until the momentary shock of the man's girth had passed him by. He recalled St. Ives as heavyset, but it had been mostly muscle back then.

"You have created a situation that cries out for attention." He took a step closer. "You asked for me and here I am. If you let these people leave, then we can talk."

"You had better be wearing a wire," St. Ives said, instead. His hooded gaze seemed to bore into Jean-Paul. "Because if you don't take it off and destroy it..." His hand tightened slightly on the girl's shoulder. She whimpered. "I will. Just like the dogs upstairs."

Jean-Paul's mind flickered through possible rescue plans in a fraction of an instant. The only path to St. Ives was through the girl and her mother. He could get the girl out from under St Ives' hand before his fingers touched her bare neck -- the speed of the rescue would leave her bruised and she would likely suffer a broken arm or fractured ribs, but she would live. But in the moments it would take to do so, her mother would be dead, and possibly the old man standing pale and stoic at St Ives' elbow. He could take St Ives' hands off at the wrists. It would not be clean, but the pain and shock would stun the man long enough to get all three people clear. Or the resultant confusion could mean that one of the hostages fell against...or even just brushed...the deadly mutant's exposed bulk.

"All right." Jean-Paul slipped a hand beneath his turtleneck, pulling the listening device from his chest and thumbing the earpiece loose. He held the devices up as he removed them, unsure of how much St. Ives could even see in this light. He snapped the casing on the wire and dropped them both, grinding the electronics underfoot before holding up his empty hands again. "Satisfied?" God help them if the man's paranoia extended to assuming he'd been sent in with a back-up.

"Satisfied." St. Ives's voice was low and bitterly amused. He moved abruptly, with a speed surprising for his size, and suddenly he was holding on to the old man only, one large hand on his upper arm, the other grasping his collar. The girl crumpled to the floor, shaking and crying, and her mother moved to her instantly, arms going around her.

"~Get out,~" he said to them in French. Neither moved instantly, and he shook the old man. "~Go, unless you want to watch him die.~"

St. Ives' actions kept Jean-Paul rooted to his spot in surprise. He hadn't expected a murderer to keep his word, but why was he letting go of the more valuable hostages--?

The reason came to him between one breath and the next, and any conflicting emotion was extinguished by a cold, razor-edged anger. The woman and her daughter were stumbling up the stairs toward him, but they were safe and had ceased to be significant.

"Monsieur..."

He didn't look her way, but he could feel her eyes on him, pleading, and he couldn't think on that now. Not if he did not wish to do something stupid.

"~You're fine. Keep walking.~" He took another step into the dark. "I thought you wanted privacy, Ernst. Keeping this one defeats that purpose."

"I only need one hostage now, Beaubier," St. Ives said. "And you want to keep him alive, I think. You'll need him as a witness. Besides," and there was a definite edge of mockery in his voice now, "I don't think you want to stand by and watch another old man die. Do you?"

Jean-Paul reached the last of the stairs and stepped onto the cement floor of the basement. St Ives had cornered himself at the room's southeastern point, protected on three sides as he loomed over his hostage.

'Just give me a second, you sneering beast -- there's more than enough of you to make a decent target now. A sneeze, a moment of distraction, and I will leave you limbless and bleeding again.'

"I do not wish to see anyone die. Why do we need a witness?"

"Because this is not what you think it is. This is not revenge, at least not of the sort you probably think." A bitter, rumbling laugh. "You know, the first few years in prison, while I was waiting for an opportunity to escape - I dreamed about what I would do to you, and the bitches, both of them..."

There was something white and crumpled on the ground near St. Ives' feet, but he seemed to be paying it little mind. The old man was thin and had the look of someone who had lost a great deal of weight to illness recently. He seemed to be having trouble standing upright for so long. Jean-Paul shifted his position slightly, trying to find a better angle for an attack.

"I could have done it, you know. Such plans, I had. Except that it wouldn't have changed anything!" St. Ives's voice roar to a muted roar, then dropped again, almost to a whisper, as he continued. "I could have killed all three of you, killed everyone who wronged me, and still, I would be a prisoner in my own body. Do you have any idea what that's like?"

That -- the very idea that St Ives would try to invoke any kind of pity after what he'd done -- knifed past Jean-Paul's calm.

"Do you expect me to feel sorry for you? To tell you that you're just a victim of your genetics?" He only just managed to not snarl. "The court did not believe it then and I do not believe it now." He saw the hostage flinch and managed to rein himself in. It would not happen again. It could not. "You did not have to end up where you are now."

"I don't want your pity, Beaubier!" St. Ives growled, shaking the old man, who tottered. "I'm telling you this so that you understand what you're going to do. You're the solution to my problem."

Jean-Paul managed to identify the object at the large man's feet: a paper plate scrunched around cutlery.

"And just what do you think I can do for you, Ernst?" Keep him talking. Every second he bought was another chance to end this on his terms.

"I want you to end this pointless existence of mine," St. Ives said, sounding as if he regained his composure. The look in his eyes put the lie to his words, though. "I can't do myself in, Beaubier. Perils of the healing factor. I can't do enough damage. Or do it quickly enough." The smile somehow managed to be bitter and amused at the same time. "And so we come back to you."

"You're making an enormous fuss for no reason, then. Let the old man go and I'll be happy to take my pound of flesh."

"Liar," St. Ives said, half-mockingly, half-angrily. "You're lying through your teeth, Beaubier, and we both know it. The minute I let the old man go, you do your best to take me into custody. Not because you're a noble idiot, but because you won't give me what I want. Your form of revenge, for what I did to Belmonde."

Hearing Raymonde's name spoken by his murderer brought the memories that Northstar had been trying to keep at bay into clear focus. That moment of willful inability to comprehend as the man he loved as a father fell limp from St Ives' grasp, his features slack in death.

"I was not the one who saved you last time," Jean-Paul said, his voice quieter and colder. "It was my sister who kept me from finishing the job of pulling you to pieces. Give me a clear path to you and there will be no problem this time." God help him, he could no longer tell if he was just saying what St. Ives wanted to hear, or if he were telling the truth. No. Just a lie. He could not make things that easy for St. Ives.

"I don't believe you. Why do you think I went to such trouble, Beaubier? Because I know I couldn't depend on you to do it. Not when you know it would be a blessing." St. Ives' grip on the old man tightened. "So. I believe they call this suicide by cop. You can kill me, or you can watch me kill him. One old man is the same as another to me."

St. Ives shifted his weight --

"Ernst!"

-- lifted his hand toward the old man's face --

There wasn't time to think this time, just to react. In the next instant, Jean-Paul was at Ernst's shoulder, the edge of his hand stinging from where it had impacted the now-chipped brick just beyond Ernst St. Ives' neck. His glove was frayed, blood was just starting to soak into cuff of his sleeve. St. Ives' head was very loose on his shoulders, lolling, then falling...

Jean-Paul caught the decapitated head with its stunned, slack expression by the hair before it could hit the floor, then dropped it. Reflex. Both times.

He turned and headed for the stairs again not looking at the man he had saved as St. Ives' body, so much harmless meat, continued to twitch.

Very tight, very quiet, "~Come with me, please.~"