Ashes & Mist: Hope's Execution

[x-eidolon.livejournal.com]

The outcome of the mission is broadcasted live on Apocalypse's state media. Rachel and Kurt watch.




It had been a long time since the news had delivered anything but reports of victories for Apocalypse’s forces and the crushing defeats of all who defied him. Today, the broadcasted propaganda was no different. More destruction. More deaths. And a rapidly waning resistance. With the failure of their last mission, the future had become even bleaker.

The defeat weighed heavily on Rachel, and the girl found that she could not properly mourn the death of her beloved. Every moment she spent hiding out in her father’s old office was a moment spent away from her duties. Revenant knew her orders; knew that she would have to lead the remaining forces in an attempt to reinforce the broken seawalls. But surely Rachel deserved an hour, just one hour, to seek solitary solace and cry if she wanted to. For who knew how futile her mission would be too?

Bleak thoughts were interrupted as the door opened, and the redhead offered one of her oldest friends a watery smile as he entered.

Kurt limped forward to take her hand. "I saw on the other television. Thought perhaps you should not watch alone."

Rachel curled her fingers around his furred hand in a tight grip and drew him down to sit by her.

“Dead,” she whispered, afraid that her voice would crack if it rose any louder. “Kurt, they’re all dead.”

"Not all", he said quietly. "Did you not see there is one body missing? Perhaps, if he got away..."

“Perhaps.” Rachel nodded, afraid to hope but having no choice but to cling to that. For a while, they sat in silence, drawing strength from one another as the news played on uninterrupted.

Then the camera angle changed, panning across Apocalype’s gleeful face and the head of hair he had gripped painfully in his hand. Unbidden, a strangled gasp sounded in the room and Rachel leaned forward, crushing Kurt’s hand in a painful grip.

“No…”

"Years ago, I offered the world a chance to avoid the inevitability of destruction. Submit. Recognize that your superiors are now in charge of the planet, and in return, we would grant you life on your knees. Your leaders defied me, so confident in their weapons and unwilling to admit that their time and power were now over. A billion paid the price for that arrogance. I told my mutant brethren that your time had come; that the chains would no longer fetter you, and those who possessed the strength could join me and fight for their own place and power under me. Many agreed, and many did not." He yanked the head up, revealing LeBeau. The side of his face was swollen and bloody, a long gash having removed most of one ear.

"This was your assassin, and he failed. He and his men. Each one has died by my hand in front of him, and now he will die in front of you all. This is the lesson of Apocalypse, humans. We are the strong. I am the strong. And if you continue to resist, I will execute every last one of you in the same fashion." He pulled again, forcing Remy to face him. "You might have made a fine Horseman once."

Remy smiled painful and spat a gobbet of blood into Apocalypse's eye. "When de time comes you get sent to de Hell you belong, Remy be waiting for you, homme. I guarantee dat."

Apocalypse wiped away the blood and took the Cajun's neck in both hands, his forearms bulging as he slowly and painfully choked the life from LeBeau. As the cracking sounds began from the crushed throat, the camera panned over to Apocalypse's triumphant face, and the dull sound of the body hitting the floor.

"Submit, or this fate awaits you all." He said, and the broadcast ended.

Even with the broadcast over, Kurt was staring at the screen in silent horror - until he looked at the girl beside him, still holding his hand, and saw her face.

"Oh, Rachel, my child. I wish you had not seen that."

But the girl said nothing, unable to formulate a coherent enough response to convey the grief and the pure, unadulterated fury that boiled the blood in her veins and marked fresh tear tracks down her face. Everything. Apocalypse had taken everything from her parents to her boyfriend and adored uncle from her and she could only sit there on her couch and watch as he snuffed them out like mere irritating pests and continued to pillage the country.

Green eyes emitted an unholy glow. The television sparked, the picture flickering uncertainly before the glass cracked and the screen went blank. That was all the warning Kurt got before the damned contraction exploded with a spray of sparks that heralded the shower of melted plastic, metal and bits of glass.

The cracking glass had been enough, and forgetting Rachel's telekinesis for a moment, he had shifted and pushed her down to shield her with his own body.

As the explosion died down, Rachel physically shoved at Kurt's chest with a sharp glare.

"Don't do that," she hissed, and the room lights flickered with every punctuated word. A telekinetic shield had been raised around them the moment she had let her control slip. "We just watched Remy die.” She swallowed hard. “Do you think I'm about to put you in harm's way?"

"Not intentionally", was the quiet response, not rising to her anger, though his yellow eyes were aching with a mixture of many feelings of his own. "But accidents happen, and I would not have you harmed either."

Unable to hold his conflicting gaze for long, Rachel broke eye contact and maneuvered them into a sitting position, mindful of Kurt's leg. No apologies were forthcoming. She glanced around at her wrecked study, still breathing heavily as she fought to bring her rage to a simmer.

"Don't tell me you don't want to break things," she growled after a pause, although her powers were reigned back in the iron grip of her will once more. She wore her anger like a cloak – one that protected her from losing herself to despair. No matter how much Kurt tried to guard her and keep her safe, this was a man she had fought with on the battlefield. She had seen him at his ugliest, just as he was intimately acquainted with her inner suppressed monsters. "Don't use me as an excuse to bury your own feelings. I don't need your strong front, Kurt." She needed him. Needed to know she was not alone the endless sea of hurt.

"I do." His voice was low, and the scars on his face, harsh and so far from the delicate and deliberate patterns he'd once worn, stood out sharply against the drawn skin. "Oh, how I want to break things, and I want to kill him as you do. But my strong front is all I have left, except you."

"You don't need it around me," she insisted, voice gentling slightly. Fingers carded impatiently through short hair and the redhead sank her teeth into her bottom lip, worrying at it.

"It is not so easy to drop", Kurt returned wearily. "But for you, my niece, I will try." He paused, wrapping thick fingers around hers. "Does it ever seem to you that it might really be hopeless? That the only chance left to you and I is to disappear and pray he does not find us?"

“A personal dream of mine,” Rachel admitted, not without a trace of guilt. Her thumb subconsciously petted the fur on his fingers, taking comfort in the familiarity of the action. “Was for all of us to escape to some remote corner on this Earth and live out the rest of our natural lives in peace.”

She snorted and bowed her head. “S’a dangerous daydream to have.”

"And all of us became fewer and fewer." He looked down. "I do not think we are going to win this war, Rachel. What he did to my brother, my sisters, the children... how do you defeat a monster without being one?"

Those were dark thoughts. Ones that led to one of his personal hells in his head. She had neither strength nor will to pull him back from them. Rachel shifted closer and closed her eyes, exhausted but filled with a restless, anger-fueled vigour.

“I… don’t know.” In a way, Kurt had voiced her very own thoughts – the dark ones buried under layer after layer of denial, false hopes and an oft-flimsy moral code. “But I’m willing to become a monster, if it means that I get to drag that fucker into the depths of hell with me.”

Besides, who was to say that she was not already one?

He wasn't drawing himself back from the edge of the dark place, either. "If that is what it takes, I will be there beside you. And better perhaps that all three of us die together, than let him live or kill him then find we cannot turn back."

Rachel opened her eyes and took a moment to study Kurt. Then the teenager threw her arms around his shoulders in a fierce hug as she spoke into his shoulder. “Their sacrifices will not have been made in vain,” she swore. In her mind’s eye, Remy’s death was being played on an agonising repeat and Korvus’ last words were ringing in her ear like a tolling bell. “And if it makes any difference to you, I’d bet at least Remy is waiting in hell for us right now.”

He smiled faintly, his arms going tightly around her in turn. "At least we will not be alone."