A Bitter Pill

[the_new_shaman]

He couldn't find Rachel Summers. Granted, he hasn't been able to get in touch with her for a while, but this was the first time he had made an actual effort to look for her

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[webslingah]

"You didn't save her, Nate, you brought her back. Cable and Banshee and the others are trying to save Siryn. There is a difference. And Miss, I'm very sorry to be talking about you this way - I don't mean any insult, it's just a kind of unusual situation for me."

"You say Cable will murder Sonique to save Siryn - is that different from what you did to Siryn to bring back Sonique? Why is it okay for you, but wrong for him?"

He sighs.

"If someone told me that by killing a single innocent person, that I could bring back Gwen - I wouldn't do it. Why? Because, among other reasons, Gwen wouldn't want me to. Human lives aren't interchangeable commodities, and we're not allowed to pick and choose the people who get to live."

"I know you were confused, Nate, but - I believe you had more options before you took Siryn's body, you just didn't see them. You've always been so focused on being a loner, you don't consider where other people might help you. The Fantastic Four faced down Galactus; I have to think Reed Richards might know a way to make a body for Sonique. Of course, now that you've put her in Siryn's body.. "

Spider-Man shrugs.

"Well, I think your options are narrower now."

[red_sonique]

"My name is Terry," she mutters under her breath.

[webslingah]

"So is hers." comes the retort.

"Trying to keep things from being any more confusing than they already are."

[red_sonique]

"Really?" she asks with more spirit than she's shown since they landed. "You said earlier you don't get to pick and choose who gets to live. Don't you do that whenever you are trying to save someone? When you're patrolling one part of this city, what happens to everyone else?" She gestures at the many buildings all around them and the busy streets below. "The people who die because you aren't there--do you think they care that you were off saving someone else? What about the nights when you're where it's quiet and nothing happens, because you're in the wrong place?"

[webslingah]

"My inability to be in more than one place at a time is somehow comparable to psychically enslaving a person and installing the personality of one's dead girlfriend? Are you seriously suggesting that the two situations are similar?"

Spider-Man sounds incredulous.

"We're not talking about a situation where you and Siryn are both going to die, and he can only save one of you. You were dead. And my friend here may have effectively murdered an innocent woman to bring you back to life. Doesn't that bother you?"

[the_new_shaman]

"Siryn's not dead." There's a bite to his tone that wasn't there before. "I could've killed her, and the thought did cross my mind as a solution then. And now.

"I need better options."

[webslingah]

"I'm not an expert on telepathy, Nate - but burying someone in a fantasy world so deeply that they can't get out - they might as well be dead. But fine, we'll go with kidnapped. Or robbed. Or violated."

"One way or another, the woman's life has been stolen. They both have a right to live, Nate, I'm not arguing that, but only one of them has a right to that body."

[the_new_shaman]

He wrapped his arms a little tighter around Terry. Holding her closely, protectively.

He knew what Peter was trying to say.

"So what, then, for the one that doesn't?"

[red_sonique]

She is grateful for the shelter of his arms.

I don't want to die again....

[webslingah]

"We find another way. That's what heroes do - they help people without hurting others in the process. Maybe a cloned body would work?"

[the_new_shaman]

~That won't happen~

"Cloned bodies still tend to have their own personalities." Like Maddie... Stryfe.. "Which would lead us back to where we are right now."

Not to mention that there's only one person he knows that would be proficient enough with cloning to pull this off, and there's no way in hell he'd ever go to him for help.

[webslingah]

"A synthetic body, then. Or a mystic double. In a world where me, my clone, and my back-from-the-dead best friend had a fistfight with my evil twin and my best friend's deceased father, there are ways."

[the_new_shaman]

"We just need to find one before the Cable and his hoard find us."

Wait...

"You have a clone and an evil twin?"

[webslingah]

"Actually, the evil twin was supposed to be dead, too, but I guess it came back on a day-pass."

"My life is complicated."