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xp_logs2024-09-04 09:59 pm
xp_dominion) wrote in xp_logs2024-09-04 09:59 pm
Dixie Dead Shake - Log 11
MA and Jean bring Kane to the only place Amanda would run to in New Orleans and find more than they bargained for.
The stolen car bounced along the dirt roads, muddy from the recent rain, that penetrated into the swamp. They had no phones or GPS, but Marie-Ange drove with a grim certainty through the maze of vegetation in the bayou, following a route ingrained into her brain. In the back, Kane lay with his head in Jean's lap, ruined face turned towards the roof. His breaths had been coming shallower and shallower, even as Jean tried every trick of her medical knowledge and her formidable psionics to try and stabilize him. His consciousness was simply fading, flickering like a guttering candle wick at the bottom of the stick.
As Garrison's breaths grew shallow, Jean's own breathing took up the gaps. "Garrison. Hold on...just hold on. Okay?" she said, both hands on his cheeks, ignoring the blood that stained her fingers.
She glanced up to Marie-Ange. "Can you go faster, please?" she said. It wasn't anger, just an insistent focus to take her mind off of the dying man in her arms. To ignore the feeling of helplessness that had permeated the situation from the beginning.
"Not safely." Marie-Ange's voice was tight and almost on the verge of breaking. Her eyepatch was shoved up into her hair, tiny streaks of blood marked her face from her nose to her forehead, and her hands on the steering wheel were also gripping a pair of cards. As she drove, occasionally a bronze disc would splat into the road ahead of them, bridging mud holes that would have otherwise trapped the car. "It is close." she said, swiping at her face again to wipe away nosebleed and tears.
"How much farther?" Jean said. Her breathing seemed to match Garrison's for a few moments. "I can feel him slipping away," she said, a crack in her voice that she tried desperately to keep in check.
"A few minutes. Less if the road cooperates." Marie-Ange said, her sharp tone at odds with the leaking thoughts of abject grief that Jean could pick up. "I am trying to go... . I'm sorry. It's close, I promise it is close." She let go of the steering wheel long enough to wipe her face, smearing blood and tears. "If he... I will." She kept starting to talk, and stopped herself, stumbling from English to French and back, words that barely made sense, all wishes and apologies.
The swamp opened up in a way it hadn't in years. It was over a decade since Marie-Ange had been to Tante's cabin and yet, the dense foliage and ominous trees seemed to pull back for a moment. Her headlights finally found a building. It would have been celebratory if Kane suddenly hadn't bucked and coughed, blood streaming past his lips. For all of Jean's powers, she could sense his consciousness reach out, one last time, and then gutter, like a candle to a breeze. The Canadian's body sighed one last breath and sagged in her arms. The bare outline of his mind slipped away, leaving emptiness behind.
It felt to Jean as if all the air had been sucked out, the heavy touch of death settling in, his body slowly turning stiff. It was quiet. So quiet.
All of the windows in the car suddenly shattered outward, and Jean let out a wail.
"No. No, absolutely not." Marie-Ange slammed the car into park, and was at the door of the cabin in a few steps, leaving the sedan running. "Amanda! Amanda I need you, help!" Panic crisscrossed her thoughts, and guilt and grief and anger. "Amanda!" Both fists pounded on the door three times before it opened.
"I'm here!" The response came not from inside but from the open space outside the shack. The voice was Amanda's, but the figure that approached at a run was covered in mud and holding a shovel, as if she'd forgotten she held it. "Angie, love, I'm here. What's..." She cut herself off, seeing the grief in Marie-Ange's face, glancing over to the car and registering the sound of Jean's keening. "Oh, no. Not..." She dropped the shovel with a clatter and ran to the vehicle, broken glass crunching under her feet. She almost recoiled at the sight of Garrison's mutilated face. "Bloody fuck. No, not yet, don't you fucking dare..." The Brit glanced around her desperately, looking for a power source for a healing spell and finding only the swamp, the cabin, Marie-Ange, Jean... No, not them, they wouldn't be enough and she wouldn't compound one death with theirs. "FUCK!" She pushed herself away from the side of the car, dropping to her knees in the mud.
The moment was frozen, hanging in time. It wasn't until the heavy steps of Tante echoed in the mud that broke the paralysis. She stepped forward, close enough to see the body in Jean's arms. Her face was impassive, chin raising just slightly as she reached out imperceptibly with magic.
"Dat man is dead." She said finally, like a declaration from above.
Amanda looked up, tears cutting tracks in the mud on her face. "We have to do something. He can't..." She gulped back her sobs. "I promised I'd help him."
"Dat man is dead. Is dat what jah want for him?" Tante said quietly, but her expression turned thunderous. "What has he done to jah dat jah want what comes back in his skin?"
The witch jerked her face away from that look, almost as if she'd been slapped. She had no words to reply and instead bowed her head, the loose strands of hair that had escaped the pony tail obscuring her expression. Her shoulders shook.
"Jah want to honour him? Do right by him?" Her eyes flicked over to the other two shovels leaning against the bench. "Jah know what to do."
Amanda shuddered and looked to the hole she'd dug, the fresh dirt dark against the grass. Tante had known. Of course she had known. She gave Marie-Ange, still standing on the porch of the shack, an agonised look. "We have... we have to bury him."
"You made her dig a grave?" Marie-Ange's eye couldn't leave the shovel, the silt caking Amanda's hands, Tante's calm expression. "You knew this entire time and did... " She struggled to keep her hands still, to not pull at her hair or pluck a card from a hidden pocket. "More of the never change the future, don't use your precognition, you.. you've been telling me this shit for decades and now Garrison is dead, and we could have known. I saw it and you did and you made Amanda dig a grave for her friend, what right do you have to talk about honoring a man you've never met? To ask us to bury him here, as far from his home as possible, after he died trying to save us? No." She looked at Amanda, at Jean, at Tante. "We take him home, we tell his father, he's already grieved once, and now I have to tell him again that his son is dead and I cannot even give him a funeral? I cannot."
Tante's expression didn't so much as twitch while Marie-Ange tossed her words back at her, crashing against and washing away like a wave on a rocky shore. "De future isn't built on actions and events. It is built on choices. Changing it means taking dose choices away from someone else. Even for de best of reasons. Because den it stops being de future and starts being de future dat you and you alone want. Is dat de power jah want, Marie-Ange? Where de only person dat really ever chooses is you?"
Finally, she sighed, the first crack in her seemingly impenetrable serenity. "Dat man is dead and de three of you are marked by Candra's men. Jah chances of escaping are significantly less wit' carrying dat body along. Do jah want to risk wasting his sacrifice or will de three people dat love him give him dat final honour?" Her eyes moved from each of the three. "Dat's a choice only jah can make."
Jean hadn't spoken much after the dust had settled, or in this case, the blood had started to dry. She heard the arguments back and forth, staring down at Garrison's body in her lap. He had already started to go cold.
She brushed a few stray hairs away from his forehead, closing her eyes for a moment before letting out a breath. "She's right. There's too much heat right now. We can come back for him. Once we've gotten reinforcements," she said.
Amanda exhaled and climbed slowly to her feet, absently brushing the chunks of broken safety glass off her knees, ignoring the small cuts some left behind. Then she turned to her girlfriend, looking at her beseechingly. "Angie?"
"It's not right." Marie-Ange shook her head. "It's not right, we made choices, and they were all wrong. We can't leave him." She sat down abruptly on the edge of the porch, and crumpled her face into her hands. "He's been all wrong since Olivier, and everywhere we turn, we get nothing." Her shoulders shook - but her voice was steady, firm and furious. "Even if we leave, even without Garrison, Candra's men bring this nightmare back to the mansion."
"Then we don't go back to the mansion. But Tante's right. We can't take him with us. And we can't leave him to the system, just another John Doe." Amanda's voice was steady, but her expression was torn with grief. "I hate it too. But what other choice do we have?"
Marie-Ange looked up, rage and grief ravaging her face for a moment, and then went frozen, absolutely still. "None, all our choices have been neatly stolen from us. Garrison's choices were stolen from him, and now we are cemented here." She stood. "If we do this, we do it correctly. A proper burial, as much as we can." She glanced up at the sky, still heavy with clouds as though a storm could break any moment. "No Valhalla. He lifted that hammer once, I am fearful he will get caught up in some eternal warrior feast. How do we stop that?"
"Dis is my bayou. Any Gods or monsters come through Tante first before dey get to de dead. If dey have any sense." Tante said, and for a moment, the force of her personality rolled over them; the certainty of her words as absolute truth. She nodded at the shovels with her chin. "It time to get to work."
***
The last shovelfuls erased the hole - the grave that Amanda had dug. The wolf was crouched off to one side, making whining noises but not moving from his spot. The rest of them - muddy, bloody, watched Kane in his dress uniform disappear under the rich dirt. The first raindrops began to fall and it was clear that even a brief storm would erase any trace of the grave, as if the final resting place of Garrison Kane was nothing but a brief memory, ready to be forgotten.
Amanda leaned on her shovel, back aching and hands blistered and raw with the labour; despite having dug the hole, she'd insisted on taking on much of the work of filling it in. A type of penance for her failure to keep her promise to fix things. A doomed promise but one made out of hope and stubbornness and all for nothing. Now she looked at the grave of her friend with burning eyes and clenched jaw, grief and rage tearing through her. "Always the bloody hero," she muttered at last. "'M sorry, Gar. It shouldn't have come to this."
Marie-Ange's hands were busy with work and fury, patting down earth over - and over. Her shovel broke the dirt, turned it and patted it back down, leaving irregular dry patches soon darkened by the rain, all her fussy obsessive work gone almost the moment she completed each unnecessary motion. She kept shaking her head, silent and pale, unable to make more than the briefest of eye contact.
Jean was silent during the entire process, hovering over the grave like an angel of death. Her attention never drifted from the body slowly being swallowed by the ground. Inside her mind, however, was a storm of emotions to rival the clouds covering the sky and yet--she also felt numb, blindsided and pulled in both directions, spiraling wildly between feeling nothing and feeling everything. Eventually tears blurred her vision and rather than brush them away they poured down her cheeks. She heard the others but it was muffled, feeling miles away.
Tante had stood silent, watching each shovel-full cover the man. Once they had finished filling in the hole, she leaned back for a moment, her eyes flickering to the sky and the light rain before she stood up.
"Dat is de way of things. Wit' life, dat which was taken - stolen, cannot be taken back by force. Stealing new life turns into de darkest magics. In de place dat de people jah mourn are lost to what comes back." She said, her deep voice sonorous and heavy, like a storm rolling in.
"But in his loss, dere was more den dat. Dere was more. Lives taken wit' his. Lives dat might live again." She said, crossing behind Amanda as she sobbed, holding on to her shovel. Her fingers touched her briefly as she passed. "One life lost and de start of more... and more hidden. Lives dat may have not been lived but deserved to be saved. Lives dat found redemption at de end. What is beyond de end?"
Tante turned and her eyes locked with Marie-Ange's one eyed stare and the basilisk fury behind it. "Anger. Hate. Injustice. De fact that de future is not fair. It is not righteous or right. But also de sense dat dere is something more." She brushed her hand on MA's cheek; a gesture she remembered as a teen when they were shielded in Tante's shack and had learned a lesson. "Something more. Some dat exists but also needs to be created. And dere so few dat can do dat."
"And den-" Tante stepped behind Jean and for the first time, her expression changed. Sympathy to her grief seeped through as the woman settled herself behind Jean. "Den dere is de unfairness of it. Dat man faced everything and his reward? Death and a grave dat is forgotten in weeks. Just a hole in de ground in de bayou. But- yet..." Tante paused. :What if what was stolen can't be stolen back, or taken. But given another way? What if de woman dat accepts de man in de ground gets angry? What if dat femme finds something in her, past de weakness and de trauma? But she not dat strong..."
Jean turned to her, eyes burning, but as her whole self was ready to challenge Tante, the old woman reached out and made a clawed shape with her hand.
"Dat was de rage Tante needed. Wanted." Tante waved her hand and suddenly made a grabbing gesture. From Jean, she snatched out the firebird, caught in her grip. "Dere jah are, jah fiery doom chicken!"
Jean opened her mouth to retort but instead, it turned into a wordless scream as the bright fires of the Phoenix shone from her eyes, caught up in whatever power Tante had tapped into.
Tante wretched the firebird over her head, atoning like it was a new church. "Dat which was taken can't be stolen back. Dat which was lost in one world cannot be found in another." She said, her voice suddenly echoed around them, as if the storm moving in was broadcasting it. "But dere is not one path. Dere is not just one way." She began to chant in an unrecognizable tongue, far removed from any language they knew. Her words reverberated, feeling each one in the bones as she spoke against the rising storm. Lightning flashed in the boiling clouds, contrasted by the firebird that continued to flare and writhe in her grip.
Tante thrust her hand aloft, the Phoenix firebird screaming in her grasp. "Tante call on de spirits - de primal spirits! De nameless ones of de blood, de bone and de head! Tanate call de storm and de fire and de swamp to her!" Lightning began to strike around her. "Tante call on de spirits of de dead dat not quite dead or not ever alive."
She prodded Amanda's head for a moment.
"Tante call on de possibility of life. De gestation of birth in de caul of a grave." She tapped Marie-Ange as she went past.
"And Tante call on de impossibility of de universe. To reach a million million and demand dat dey make a decision on who dey are. And who dey might be." She hoisted the Phoenix aloft again. Now the lightning found her, striking with searing light against the firebird, feeling the atmosphere with the smell of ozone.
"Tante call for some damn justice!" Her final words, screamed over the roar of the storm brought the Phoenix flaring over them all, awash with the greasy tinny taste of magic and energy that worked across every sense.
There was a flash and the firebird suddenly wilted in her grasp. Jean was suddenly released from her possession, dropping to the ground in a heavy heap as the Phoenix dissipated from Tante's grip. Even the storm, booming tempest a moment before, was quickly clearing, as the lightning retreated and the rain dropped quickly back to the thin drizzle it had been before.
There was silence; only Jean's deep breathing in a dead sleep, as those remaining stared at Tante and each other. Tante resumed her Sphinx-like expression, giving away nothing, including the answers to the question none of them dared ask. The wolf looked up for a moment and suddenly raced forward, digging at the grave. They were frozen for a moment as the plumes of dirt were ejected behind him. But, then, suddenly, an arm broke out of the grave.
With a tremendous effort, Kane emerged with a fountain of dirt around him, holding on to the wolf's neck. He gasped for a moment, dirt streaking his dress uniform. The wolf had grabbed on to the jacket with his teeth, pulling Kane from the dirt. He looked at the wolf and then up at the rest of them with an expression of astonishment. "He says his name is Gord." He choked out.
Before anyone could react, Kane's expression flipped from astonishment to alarm. He turned back, driving himself back under the now loosen dirt of the grave, pushing aside the loam in massive waves, until most of his upper body was back underground. One hand came up to brace on the edge of the grave and he pulled himself up and out from the grave. His other hand emerged, locked around the upper arm of a second person. Kane slowly pulled a man from the ground, naked, covered in a thick coat of dirt and mud. The man took a breath, choked at the mud in his mouth, and coughed it out to pull in air. As he gasped, hands braced on the edge, Kane swiped down, removing the thickest coating of loam, making it easier for him to breathe. As he did, the face that emerged from the muddy layer was instantly familiar: Adam Destine.
"I swear to fuck, Tante..." Whatever remonstrance Amanda had been about to say to her teacher as she moved to check on Jean was interrupted by the appearance of not one, but two men from the grave. She'd been about to rush forward to Garrison, to make sure they were whole, but the appearance of the second man and the revelation of his identity made her freeze in place. "Oh, fuck no..." Instinctively she moved in front of Marie-Ange.
Marie-Ange's hands bristled, a knife appearing in each one, and she did take one step forward. It felt like running in a dream, like sprinting through thick water, gooey and tangled with algae, like fighting through invisible cobwebs, and it took far too long for her foot to touch the ground. She nearly snarled, all the fury of the day that she had tried to let run off her back dozenfold, and blinding her with outrage.
"What the fuck..." Kane said, breathing heavily. Adam was gasping, still wiping the dirt from his face and coughing it out. Garrison caught sight of Jean and scrambled over to her, pulling her up on to his lap, instinctually checking to make sure her vital signs were fine. He looked up from his seat in the mud, ignoring the rain that started to cut streaks down the dirt caking. "Amanda, MA... some lady... what is going on?"
"Jah died. Or were killed. Take jah pick which jah prefer." Tante said, settling her hands. "Jah were honoured by dese women wit' a proper grave. Dat was de end of jah life here." She shook her head. "At least, would have been. But Tante bet on jah. Bet dat if we couldn't taken back what was stolen, maybe we could convince people to give to replace it. Dat woman in jah arms? Something primal lives in her; wit a million million universes in it. So Tante took it and used it to reach into dose million million universes and ask a million million Garrison Kanes if each one would give just one second of dere life to jah. Make dere lives a second shorter for a version of demselves dey'd never know or meet. Even Tante surprised how few said no." She raised her chin slightly, regarding Kane with a look that seemed impressed.
She waved her hands towards Adam, who was just starting to get his bearings. "As for him... de life force of Garrison Kane in potential, even if currently stolen, needed somewhere to go. And dat soul trapped inside 'manda's head was screaming to get out. Screaming to be heard. Colbert had de ability to create a body for it to use 'manda's magic to seek out, and was fused when Tante brought jah back."
Adam's head snapped up and cleared for the first time. "Wait... Mandy? The... " He suddenly pushed back, trying to get to his feet while his hands made intricate patterns, calling on spell after spell to wrap himself in shields against the assault he was sure was coming. Tante made a gesture and his magic fizzled out in a shower of sparks.
"Jah safe now, childe. Dis may be complicated and messy but jah safe. For now."
"But what about us? Are we safe? This is the bastard who spent years trying to kill one of my students. He took Angie's eye," Amanda spat. "He was safe in my head. Why'd you let him out?"
"Was he?" Tante said, expression not wavering.
Adam pulled himself to his feet, looking faintly ludicrous, nude save for the heavy streaks of mud. "I'm not going to beg. And I swear, no matter what you do to me, I'll find a way to make you pay for Strange."
"Is he?" Tante said quietly.
“I… He…” Confusion replaced the anger and Amanda looked from Tante to the naked Destine. “Stephen’s one of my students. I would never do anything to hurt him. And why would you care?”
"The Black Court is really reaching this time, Mandy. The 'I'm not a psychotic disciple of Selene despite all the shit you've seen' gaslighting is- Jean!" He scrambled over next to Kane and the unconscious Jean Grey. "What did you fucks do to her?"
"Simmer down." Kane said, stopping the man at arm's length. "She's just out for now, as far as I can tell."
Marie-Ange shook herself, and then grabbed at her eyepatch, trying not to scratch at the headache that felt like it was growing out of her sinuses. She took off the patch, revealing a eyesocket and scars that plastic surgery could not quite remove. "We are not doing vague nonsense. Look at me, Adam. Really look. Do we look like them? Do whatever magical aura... nonsense you must, this is not your world. Amanda is not in Selene's clutches, Belladonna Bourdreaux does not own me, Doug Ramsey never shot you, and Remy LeBeau has been dead for years. Check for yourself."
Adam made a few gestures, the golden complex designs appearing and disappearing with each motion.
"I... what is this? What-"
"Dat's enough." Tante stepped in. "Dere's work to be done. Adam is... unfinished. Wit'out bringing down Candra, he won't last more den a day or two. We need to get de power she stole back, even if jah all think dat she was killed. It's still trapped somehow, so dere must be a second player involved. Let get dese two cleaned up, find some clothes and put some damn tea on. Den we figure out de next steps."
The stolen car bounced along the dirt roads, muddy from the recent rain, that penetrated into the swamp. They had no phones or GPS, but Marie-Ange drove with a grim certainty through the maze of vegetation in the bayou, following a route ingrained into her brain. In the back, Kane lay with his head in Jean's lap, ruined face turned towards the roof. His breaths had been coming shallower and shallower, even as Jean tried every trick of her medical knowledge and her formidable psionics to try and stabilize him. His consciousness was simply fading, flickering like a guttering candle wick at the bottom of the stick.
As Garrison's breaths grew shallow, Jean's own breathing took up the gaps. "Garrison. Hold on...just hold on. Okay?" she said, both hands on his cheeks, ignoring the blood that stained her fingers.
She glanced up to Marie-Ange. "Can you go faster, please?" she said. It wasn't anger, just an insistent focus to take her mind off of the dying man in her arms. To ignore the feeling of helplessness that had permeated the situation from the beginning.
"Not safely." Marie-Ange's voice was tight and almost on the verge of breaking. Her eyepatch was shoved up into her hair, tiny streaks of blood marked her face from her nose to her forehead, and her hands on the steering wheel were also gripping a pair of cards. As she drove, occasionally a bronze disc would splat into the road ahead of them, bridging mud holes that would have otherwise trapped the car. "It is close." she said, swiping at her face again to wipe away nosebleed and tears.
"How much farther?" Jean said. Her breathing seemed to match Garrison's for a few moments. "I can feel him slipping away," she said, a crack in her voice that she tried desperately to keep in check.
"A few minutes. Less if the road cooperates." Marie-Ange said, her sharp tone at odds with the leaking thoughts of abject grief that Jean could pick up. "I am trying to go... . I'm sorry. It's close, I promise it is close." She let go of the steering wheel long enough to wipe her face, smearing blood and tears. "If he... I will." She kept starting to talk, and stopped herself, stumbling from English to French and back, words that barely made sense, all wishes and apologies.
The swamp opened up in a way it hadn't in years. It was over a decade since Marie-Ange had been to Tante's cabin and yet, the dense foliage and ominous trees seemed to pull back for a moment. Her headlights finally found a building. It would have been celebratory if Kane suddenly hadn't bucked and coughed, blood streaming past his lips. For all of Jean's powers, she could sense his consciousness reach out, one last time, and then gutter, like a candle to a breeze. The Canadian's body sighed one last breath and sagged in her arms. The bare outline of his mind slipped away, leaving emptiness behind.
It felt to Jean as if all the air had been sucked out, the heavy touch of death settling in, his body slowly turning stiff. It was quiet. So quiet.
All of the windows in the car suddenly shattered outward, and Jean let out a wail.
"No. No, absolutely not." Marie-Ange slammed the car into park, and was at the door of the cabin in a few steps, leaving the sedan running. "Amanda! Amanda I need you, help!" Panic crisscrossed her thoughts, and guilt and grief and anger. "Amanda!" Both fists pounded on the door three times before it opened.
"I'm here!" The response came not from inside but from the open space outside the shack. The voice was Amanda's, but the figure that approached at a run was covered in mud and holding a shovel, as if she'd forgotten she held it. "Angie, love, I'm here. What's..." She cut herself off, seeing the grief in Marie-Ange's face, glancing over to the car and registering the sound of Jean's keening. "Oh, no. Not..." She dropped the shovel with a clatter and ran to the vehicle, broken glass crunching under her feet. She almost recoiled at the sight of Garrison's mutilated face. "Bloody fuck. No, not yet, don't you fucking dare..." The Brit glanced around her desperately, looking for a power source for a healing spell and finding only the swamp, the cabin, Marie-Ange, Jean... No, not them, they wouldn't be enough and she wouldn't compound one death with theirs. "FUCK!" She pushed herself away from the side of the car, dropping to her knees in the mud.
The moment was frozen, hanging in time. It wasn't until the heavy steps of Tante echoed in the mud that broke the paralysis. She stepped forward, close enough to see the body in Jean's arms. Her face was impassive, chin raising just slightly as she reached out imperceptibly with magic.
"Dat man is dead." She said finally, like a declaration from above.
Amanda looked up, tears cutting tracks in the mud on her face. "We have to do something. He can't..." She gulped back her sobs. "I promised I'd help him."
"Dat man is dead. Is dat what jah want for him?" Tante said quietly, but her expression turned thunderous. "What has he done to jah dat jah want what comes back in his skin?"
The witch jerked her face away from that look, almost as if she'd been slapped. She had no words to reply and instead bowed her head, the loose strands of hair that had escaped the pony tail obscuring her expression. Her shoulders shook.
"Jah want to honour him? Do right by him?" Her eyes flicked over to the other two shovels leaning against the bench. "Jah know what to do."
Amanda shuddered and looked to the hole she'd dug, the fresh dirt dark against the grass. Tante had known. Of course she had known. She gave Marie-Ange, still standing on the porch of the shack, an agonised look. "We have... we have to bury him."
"You made her dig a grave?" Marie-Ange's eye couldn't leave the shovel, the silt caking Amanda's hands, Tante's calm expression. "You knew this entire time and did... " She struggled to keep her hands still, to not pull at her hair or pluck a card from a hidden pocket. "More of the never change the future, don't use your precognition, you.. you've been telling me this shit for decades and now Garrison is dead, and we could have known. I saw it and you did and you made Amanda dig a grave for her friend, what right do you have to talk about honoring a man you've never met? To ask us to bury him here, as far from his home as possible, after he died trying to save us? No." She looked at Amanda, at Jean, at Tante. "We take him home, we tell his father, he's already grieved once, and now I have to tell him again that his son is dead and I cannot even give him a funeral? I cannot."
Tante's expression didn't so much as twitch while Marie-Ange tossed her words back at her, crashing against and washing away like a wave on a rocky shore. "De future isn't built on actions and events. It is built on choices. Changing it means taking dose choices away from someone else. Even for de best of reasons. Because den it stops being de future and starts being de future dat you and you alone want. Is dat de power jah want, Marie-Ange? Where de only person dat really ever chooses is you?"
Finally, she sighed, the first crack in her seemingly impenetrable serenity. "Dat man is dead and de three of you are marked by Candra's men. Jah chances of escaping are significantly less wit' carrying dat body along. Do jah want to risk wasting his sacrifice or will de three people dat love him give him dat final honour?" Her eyes moved from each of the three. "Dat's a choice only jah can make."
Jean hadn't spoken much after the dust had settled, or in this case, the blood had started to dry. She heard the arguments back and forth, staring down at Garrison's body in her lap. He had already started to go cold.
She brushed a few stray hairs away from his forehead, closing her eyes for a moment before letting out a breath. "She's right. There's too much heat right now. We can come back for him. Once we've gotten reinforcements," she said.
Amanda exhaled and climbed slowly to her feet, absently brushing the chunks of broken safety glass off her knees, ignoring the small cuts some left behind. Then she turned to her girlfriend, looking at her beseechingly. "Angie?"
"It's not right." Marie-Ange shook her head. "It's not right, we made choices, and they were all wrong. We can't leave him." She sat down abruptly on the edge of the porch, and crumpled her face into her hands. "He's been all wrong since Olivier, and everywhere we turn, we get nothing." Her shoulders shook - but her voice was steady, firm and furious. "Even if we leave, even without Garrison, Candra's men bring this nightmare back to the mansion."
"Then we don't go back to the mansion. But Tante's right. We can't take him with us. And we can't leave him to the system, just another John Doe." Amanda's voice was steady, but her expression was torn with grief. "I hate it too. But what other choice do we have?"
Marie-Ange looked up, rage and grief ravaging her face for a moment, and then went frozen, absolutely still. "None, all our choices have been neatly stolen from us. Garrison's choices were stolen from him, and now we are cemented here." She stood. "If we do this, we do it correctly. A proper burial, as much as we can." She glanced up at the sky, still heavy with clouds as though a storm could break any moment. "No Valhalla. He lifted that hammer once, I am fearful he will get caught up in some eternal warrior feast. How do we stop that?"
"Dis is my bayou. Any Gods or monsters come through Tante first before dey get to de dead. If dey have any sense." Tante said, and for a moment, the force of her personality rolled over them; the certainty of her words as absolute truth. She nodded at the shovels with her chin. "It time to get to work."
***
The last shovelfuls erased the hole - the grave that Amanda had dug. The wolf was crouched off to one side, making whining noises but not moving from his spot. The rest of them - muddy, bloody, watched Kane in his dress uniform disappear under the rich dirt. The first raindrops began to fall and it was clear that even a brief storm would erase any trace of the grave, as if the final resting place of Garrison Kane was nothing but a brief memory, ready to be forgotten.
Amanda leaned on her shovel, back aching and hands blistered and raw with the labour; despite having dug the hole, she'd insisted on taking on much of the work of filling it in. A type of penance for her failure to keep her promise to fix things. A doomed promise but one made out of hope and stubbornness and all for nothing. Now she looked at the grave of her friend with burning eyes and clenched jaw, grief and rage tearing through her. "Always the bloody hero," she muttered at last. "'M sorry, Gar. It shouldn't have come to this."
Marie-Ange's hands were busy with work and fury, patting down earth over - and over. Her shovel broke the dirt, turned it and patted it back down, leaving irregular dry patches soon darkened by the rain, all her fussy obsessive work gone almost the moment she completed each unnecessary motion. She kept shaking her head, silent and pale, unable to make more than the briefest of eye contact.
Jean was silent during the entire process, hovering over the grave like an angel of death. Her attention never drifted from the body slowly being swallowed by the ground. Inside her mind, however, was a storm of emotions to rival the clouds covering the sky and yet--she also felt numb, blindsided and pulled in both directions, spiraling wildly between feeling nothing and feeling everything. Eventually tears blurred her vision and rather than brush them away they poured down her cheeks. She heard the others but it was muffled, feeling miles away.
Tante had stood silent, watching each shovel-full cover the man. Once they had finished filling in the hole, she leaned back for a moment, her eyes flickering to the sky and the light rain before she stood up.
"Dat is de way of things. Wit' life, dat which was taken - stolen, cannot be taken back by force. Stealing new life turns into de darkest magics. In de place dat de people jah mourn are lost to what comes back." She said, her deep voice sonorous and heavy, like a storm rolling in.
"But in his loss, dere was more den dat. Dere was more. Lives taken wit' his. Lives dat might live again." She said, crossing behind Amanda as she sobbed, holding on to her shovel. Her fingers touched her briefly as she passed. "One life lost and de start of more... and more hidden. Lives dat may have not been lived but deserved to be saved. Lives dat found redemption at de end. What is beyond de end?"
Tante turned and her eyes locked with Marie-Ange's one eyed stare and the basilisk fury behind it. "Anger. Hate. Injustice. De fact that de future is not fair. It is not righteous or right. But also de sense dat dere is something more." She brushed her hand on MA's cheek; a gesture she remembered as a teen when they were shielded in Tante's shack and had learned a lesson. "Something more. Some dat exists but also needs to be created. And dere so few dat can do dat."
"And den-" Tante stepped behind Jean and for the first time, her expression changed. Sympathy to her grief seeped through as the woman settled herself behind Jean. "Den dere is de unfairness of it. Dat man faced everything and his reward? Death and a grave dat is forgotten in weeks. Just a hole in de ground in de bayou. But- yet..." Tante paused. :What if what was stolen can't be stolen back, or taken. But given another way? What if de woman dat accepts de man in de ground gets angry? What if dat femme finds something in her, past de weakness and de trauma? But she not dat strong..."
Jean turned to her, eyes burning, but as her whole self was ready to challenge Tante, the old woman reached out and made a clawed shape with her hand.
"Dat was de rage Tante needed. Wanted." Tante waved her hand and suddenly made a grabbing gesture. From Jean, she snatched out the firebird, caught in her grip. "Dere jah are, jah fiery doom chicken!"
Jean opened her mouth to retort but instead, it turned into a wordless scream as the bright fires of the Phoenix shone from her eyes, caught up in whatever power Tante had tapped into.
Tante wretched the firebird over her head, atoning like it was a new church. "Dat which was taken can't be stolen back. Dat which was lost in one world cannot be found in another." She said, her voice suddenly echoed around them, as if the storm moving in was broadcasting it. "But dere is not one path. Dere is not just one way." She began to chant in an unrecognizable tongue, far removed from any language they knew. Her words reverberated, feeling each one in the bones as she spoke against the rising storm. Lightning flashed in the boiling clouds, contrasted by the firebird that continued to flare and writhe in her grip.
Tante thrust her hand aloft, the Phoenix firebird screaming in her grasp. "Tante call on de spirits - de primal spirits! De nameless ones of de blood, de bone and de head! Tanate call de storm and de fire and de swamp to her!" Lightning began to strike around her. "Tante call on de spirits of de dead dat not quite dead or not ever alive."
She prodded Amanda's head for a moment.
"Tante call on de possibility of life. De gestation of birth in de caul of a grave." She tapped Marie-Ange as she went past.
"And Tante call on de impossibility of de universe. To reach a million million and demand dat dey make a decision on who dey are. And who dey might be." She hoisted the Phoenix aloft again. Now the lightning found her, striking with searing light against the firebird, feeling the atmosphere with the smell of ozone.
"Tante call for some damn justice!" Her final words, screamed over the roar of the storm brought the Phoenix flaring over them all, awash with the greasy tinny taste of magic and energy that worked across every sense.
There was a flash and the firebird suddenly wilted in her grasp. Jean was suddenly released from her possession, dropping to the ground in a heavy heap as the Phoenix dissipated from Tante's grip. Even the storm, booming tempest a moment before, was quickly clearing, as the lightning retreated and the rain dropped quickly back to the thin drizzle it had been before.
There was silence; only Jean's deep breathing in a dead sleep, as those remaining stared at Tante and each other. Tante resumed her Sphinx-like expression, giving away nothing, including the answers to the question none of them dared ask. The wolf looked up for a moment and suddenly raced forward, digging at the grave. They were frozen for a moment as the plumes of dirt were ejected behind him. But, then, suddenly, an arm broke out of the grave.
With a tremendous effort, Kane emerged with a fountain of dirt around him, holding on to the wolf's neck. He gasped for a moment, dirt streaking his dress uniform. The wolf had grabbed on to the jacket with his teeth, pulling Kane from the dirt. He looked at the wolf and then up at the rest of them with an expression of astonishment. "He says his name is Gord." He choked out.
Before anyone could react, Kane's expression flipped from astonishment to alarm. He turned back, driving himself back under the now loosen dirt of the grave, pushing aside the loam in massive waves, until most of his upper body was back underground. One hand came up to brace on the edge of the grave and he pulled himself up and out from the grave. His other hand emerged, locked around the upper arm of a second person. Kane slowly pulled a man from the ground, naked, covered in a thick coat of dirt and mud. The man took a breath, choked at the mud in his mouth, and coughed it out to pull in air. As he gasped, hands braced on the edge, Kane swiped down, removing the thickest coating of loam, making it easier for him to breathe. As he did, the face that emerged from the muddy layer was instantly familiar: Adam Destine.
"I swear to fuck, Tante..." Whatever remonstrance Amanda had been about to say to her teacher as she moved to check on Jean was interrupted by the appearance of not one, but two men from the grave. She'd been about to rush forward to Garrison, to make sure they were whole, but the appearance of the second man and the revelation of his identity made her freeze in place. "Oh, fuck no..." Instinctively she moved in front of Marie-Ange.
Marie-Ange's hands bristled, a knife appearing in each one, and she did take one step forward. It felt like running in a dream, like sprinting through thick water, gooey and tangled with algae, like fighting through invisible cobwebs, and it took far too long for her foot to touch the ground. She nearly snarled, all the fury of the day that she had tried to let run off her back dozenfold, and blinding her with outrage.
"What the fuck..." Kane said, breathing heavily. Adam was gasping, still wiping the dirt from his face and coughing it out. Garrison caught sight of Jean and scrambled over to her, pulling her up on to his lap, instinctually checking to make sure her vital signs were fine. He looked up from his seat in the mud, ignoring the rain that started to cut streaks down the dirt caking. "Amanda, MA... some lady... what is going on?"
"Jah died. Or were killed. Take jah pick which jah prefer." Tante said, settling her hands. "Jah were honoured by dese women wit' a proper grave. Dat was de end of jah life here." She shook her head. "At least, would have been. But Tante bet on jah. Bet dat if we couldn't taken back what was stolen, maybe we could convince people to give to replace it. Dat woman in jah arms? Something primal lives in her; wit a million million universes in it. So Tante took it and used it to reach into dose million million universes and ask a million million Garrison Kanes if each one would give just one second of dere life to jah. Make dere lives a second shorter for a version of demselves dey'd never know or meet. Even Tante surprised how few said no." She raised her chin slightly, regarding Kane with a look that seemed impressed.
She waved her hands towards Adam, who was just starting to get his bearings. "As for him... de life force of Garrison Kane in potential, even if currently stolen, needed somewhere to go. And dat soul trapped inside 'manda's head was screaming to get out. Screaming to be heard. Colbert had de ability to create a body for it to use 'manda's magic to seek out, and was fused when Tante brought jah back."
Adam's head snapped up and cleared for the first time. "Wait... Mandy? The... " He suddenly pushed back, trying to get to his feet while his hands made intricate patterns, calling on spell after spell to wrap himself in shields against the assault he was sure was coming. Tante made a gesture and his magic fizzled out in a shower of sparks.
"Jah safe now, childe. Dis may be complicated and messy but jah safe. For now."
"But what about us? Are we safe? This is the bastard who spent years trying to kill one of my students. He took Angie's eye," Amanda spat. "He was safe in my head. Why'd you let him out?"
"Was he?" Tante said, expression not wavering.
Adam pulled himself to his feet, looking faintly ludicrous, nude save for the heavy streaks of mud. "I'm not going to beg. And I swear, no matter what you do to me, I'll find a way to make you pay for Strange."
"Is he?" Tante said quietly.
“I… He…” Confusion replaced the anger and Amanda looked from Tante to the naked Destine. “Stephen’s one of my students. I would never do anything to hurt him. And why would you care?”
"The Black Court is really reaching this time, Mandy. The 'I'm not a psychotic disciple of Selene despite all the shit you've seen' gaslighting is- Jean!" He scrambled over next to Kane and the unconscious Jean Grey. "What did you fucks do to her?"
"Simmer down." Kane said, stopping the man at arm's length. "She's just out for now, as far as I can tell."
Marie-Ange shook herself, and then grabbed at her eyepatch, trying not to scratch at the headache that felt like it was growing out of her sinuses. She took off the patch, revealing a eyesocket and scars that plastic surgery could not quite remove. "We are not doing vague nonsense. Look at me, Adam. Really look. Do we look like them? Do whatever magical aura... nonsense you must, this is not your world. Amanda is not in Selene's clutches, Belladonna Bourdreaux does not own me, Doug Ramsey never shot you, and Remy LeBeau has been dead for years. Check for yourself."
Adam made a few gestures, the golden complex designs appearing and disappearing with each motion.
"I... what is this? What-"
"Dat's enough." Tante stepped in. "Dere's work to be done. Adam is... unfinished. Wit'out bringing down Candra, he won't last more den a day or two. We need to get de power she stole back, even if jah all think dat she was killed. It's still trapped somehow, so dere must be a second player involved. Let get dese two cleaned up, find some clothes and put some damn tea on. Den we figure out de next steps."