Chapters 7/13 and 8/13 Cracked Diamonds
Title: Cracked Diamonds
Rating: M
Warnings: Graphic Sexual abuse of a minor, rape, domestic violence, implied violence, implied m/m sexual relations, and death.
Summary:
Emma Frost learned at her mother’s knee that if a woman wanted to get anywhere, she was the only person with the power to make that happen. Telepathy was quite helpful to those aims, including the manipulation of men. Cleavage or cortex, both helped her make her own way, often by changing the thoughts of others. She wanted to rule the world, but it is a man’s world. By playing with the minds of everyone, she thought she would take over the world.
Charles Xavier disagreed.
An AU-verse in which Xavier and Magneto are tempered by a diamond’s views of supremacy, and not a Mengele’s, even if they didn’t quite figure it out.
VII.
Cain had worked hard in the Army. It wasn’t that his step-brother had not worked hard, it was that he had never quite understood what or how Charles worked. Charles had been working with or for an Allied government, tracking criminals, and he had been in the same area as Charles for exactly fifty three hours.
That time spent in the same space was enlightening, and had started his migration from the Army and back into normal life. Someone had to help Raven with managing Charles, and while he might not be the best person to do so, he certainly didn’t mind. He was indebted to the little brat, which would be his name to him, at least for a few more years. Charles’ would always remind him of the first time that he’d met Charles, with Charles the youthful child holding tightly onto his mother’s housekeeper’s hands.
“Cain, I would like you to meet Charlie.” Father had said, and he had looked at Sharon with kind eyes, lying eyes, and he had felt it. Why lying eyes? Asked with shining blue eyes watching his face. “Charlie, Cain is going to be your big brother now.” Why Charlie? Daddy never calls me Charlie, and Mother doesn’t care.
“Come forward and give Cain a hug.” Sharon had said the words, and the housekeeper had glared at her. The little boy had come forward, and loosely wrapped his arms around him, eyes wide and frightened. He has thought for a moment that the child was correct to be frightened, especially of Father, and he had felt that questioning wave again.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you.” He had wrapped his arms around the little boy, feeling Father’s glare on his skin. No, Charlie was his to protect.
Now, so many years later, the little brother had disappeared again. He had heard that Charlie was in Oxford with Raven, but after that, they had been inconspicuous. Charlie was so rarely inconspicuous.
“KID!” There’s a little kid, sitting in the middle of his garage. “How many times do I have to tell you not to play underneath the engines!”
“But I want to know how they work!” The Long Island drawl is in the boy’s voice, and Cain looks around for the other hooligan that the kid hangs around with. Where Davey Rossi goes, Ray Finnegan wasn’t far behind. “Dad said,”
“Your Dad said that you could come by twice a week so I could show you how to change the oil, other things like that. Twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7 pm. Your father accompanies you and Ray with cookies that your mother has baked, or something like that lovely cake last week.” He could not cook, and while he and Charles had hidden in the kitchen a time or eight, only Charles had ever understood the cook’s lessons.
Father had fractured Charles’ jaw once, Charles having brought him a plate of cookies to try and please the man. The man had called him a sissy boy, even if the night before he’d called him his little whore. He and Raven had hugged together, frightened of the noises in Charles’ room, and the terror that was not their own, flooding their minds. “Today is not Tuesday or Thursday, and I am fairly sure it’s not 7 pm.”
“The man is right.” There’s a man in the doorway, slender and in black, what looks to be a cloak of crimson around him. Next to him is a woman, curved body, redhead, and eyes, familiar eyes. “Today is a Friday, young man, and it’s two in the afternoon.” Above the boy the car is moving, up and away from the child’s head and body. “You might want to leave.”
“Mister Marko?” Davey’s looking worriedly at him now, and Cain shakes his head. Another man like Charlie and himself and Raven, he understood, like another man in the program in which he had served just after they realized his skills. That blonde woman who had ridden his mind and body so long before, up in one of the houses in the mountains while he tried to hide himself from the damage his Father was doing to Charlie.
“Go find Ray, enjoy the weather.” It’s a rare sunny day, and the sun would have called the boy anyway. He steps backwards and down the ladder, watching the boy run out of the back of his garage. “Who are you?” He can feel the ground beneath his feet, and he’s tempted to start running, but the car is already settling down, back onto its stand. The wheels were off, and something’s now wrong with the chassis.
“My name is Magneto, and this is Mystique.” She’s melting into a far more familiar form, and he can feel her wrapping her arms around him. “I can see you’ve met in the past.”
“You need to go home.” She whispers into his ear. “Charles needs you, needs family.” She is pulling away from him, bringing the man closer to him with her other hand. “Magneto, Juggernaut. Or rather, Erik Lensherr, I would like to introduce you an old family friend. Cain Marko. Cain, Erik is looking for recruits.”
“Recruits?” He’s watching her more closely. “You want more of us with you, don’t you?”
“We do. As we are naturally superior to humans, the mutants must ascend to their rightful place, above the humans, perhaps even without the humans.” The words make him cringe, and he doesn’t want to say what he thinks, not immediately, and he looks at Raven. Raven, the sister that Charles had found in their kitchen late one night, and brought to him, showing her off. Cain, Cain, isn’t she pretty. She’s like us! Those words had frightened him for a moment, another one like them, victimized by Father, ignored by Sharon. Charles’ enthusiasm had almost bled into him, and for moments his joy had shown within Cain, a warm sun burning in his chest, trying to displace the pain of the bruised ribs with love and care.
Raven, do you believe what he is saying? It slips into her mind on the paths that had grown around Charles’ constant presence in both their minds, in the years that it took him to grow his own walls. This talk of superiority?
Cain, we are superior, that is certain. Charles wishes for peaceful co-existence, but Magneto knows that peaceful co-existence comes only at the end of a war. Charles…
Charles hates fighting. Cain thinks the words, remembers the birth of them. Magneto is watching them, continuing to breath his rhetoric, rhetoric that sounds wrong out of a body that has pushed up sleeves and a tattoo that he remembers from that meeting with his brother so many years before. I cannot find Charles, Raven.I know not the way to find him to go to him.
“No.” He says the words to the man, ignoring his sister. “I may agree with you about peaceful co-existence, Mister Lensherr, but I learned my lesson about subjugation before I could legally vote in this country.” Cain knew what the answer that he had for them now would be. “Worry first about those in the government that know about us, Mister Lensherr. Then worry about subjugating others, being mutants and supreme.”
“Who do you mean, when you say that?” There’s a metal bar around his neck, and all Cain can do is raise an eyebrow. “The Central Intelligence Agency?”
“Army, Mister Lensherr. Air Force. Navy. The military industry loves and fears us, and is certainly quite interested in mutation, for their personal ends.”
VIII
She holds them in her hand, their lives, loves, and thoughts. She owns them now, and she could resume her place at the head of their society. Men were weak, that was the thing that she had learned from her mother. Hazel had married well, and proceeded to be ruled by Winston and his violence. The family had followed her lead, but she, she had decided to be something more.
Emma’s first husband had been named Alexander Hood, and he had like to dress her in diamonds. They sparked, he had said, sparkled like her eyes. He had thought that they decorated her, his whore, so very well. He had eventually thought of her, thought and thought and thought of her. Alexander Hood had thought enough about his wife with the silken legs and the inviting eyes so much that he put her into his will, leaving her the whole of the moneys, and not even naming his sons or grandsons. He then thought about her as he proceeded to walk into traffic, managing to get himself run over by three buggies.
She had worn white to his funeral, and Emma had continued to wear it through the next three funerals. Meeting the Xaviers had been a stroke of luck on her part.
Brian Xavier loved his wife Sharon immensely. Sharon was a lush. That was Emma’s first impression of the pair, followed by the curiosity at the woman’s burgeoning belly. It was practically cooing in her mind, all wrapped up in warmth, coddled by its father. Barely even conceived, she can feel the little bits of the baby forming together, and wonders that she can. Looking back, she nudged a bit. A tiny push to make sure that the egg was fertilized, not by one sperm, but by two. A secondary plan never hurt a woman intent on experimenting.
She’d been in and out of the child’s life, and was practically infatuated with the child’s mind. Her interference, perhaps, with his conception had created what she thought to be the child’s gifts. Meeting Francis Xavier proved her thoughts to be erroneous. Hovering around a century of age, Francis Xavier’s hair had completely fled his head years before. Rumor had it that when he had come home from the Civil War, his title of General had replaced the luxurious head of hair that he had once sported. She attributed it to a gift of his own, the man simply not aging like so many did, like her diamond form prevented her from doing.
He was married, to a woman, his second or third wife. She had given the Xavier patrician no children, but Niamh Xavier’s love of her family was legendary, and she had taken to Emmeline Neige with great adoration. Francis had agreed, and it was through the pair that she was introduced to the power of the Hellfire Club.
Looking back, she had abandoned her pursuits into creating a pet out of a fellow gifted human for the Hellfire club and the power inherent there. She had removed Francis’ claim on a seat quite steadily, having to resort to the indignities of poisons. Apparently those that could breed a telepath were less likely to be influenced by one, and she hadn’t wished to warn his family that his death was both imminent and at her hands. They might get suspicious, with such a change in the man, that he would have a fatal accident. Experience taught her that men who had fatal accidents and left something of import to someone near them meant that the aforesaid heir was then annoyed. Irritated by unhappy former benefactors.
No, poison had gotten the job done satisfactorily, and she had stepped into a seat at the New York Hellfire table.
Emma had left in a hurry, several years later. The reason was immaterial.
His name was Sebastian Shaw, his ideology was perfect. Of course mutants should rule the Earth. Her gifts made her the most superior thing on Earth. It was his vision that was problematic.
Interest in why things ticked, tocked, and continually spun the way that they did was certainly a valiant pursuit that helped the need for supremacy, but this consummation of energy, this complete obsession with it was taking away from the ability of Shaw to use the ruthlessness that he applied in service to his beliefs. It started, for him, with the seed of an idea.
What about seeing if I could make a mutant out of someone? Multiple someones?
He had already realized that given the appropriate trigger, he could trigger latent mutations. Erik had proven that mutations other than his own existed, Erik, and Tanya, and Tzipporah, and other names. Leah, Avraham, and Benjamin had been three who had helped him prove that he could trigger latent mutations, and they all had proven that he could identify them once he had them. The problem was the trial and error. Were there things that made certain people more likely to become mutants, similar to the ways that certain illnesses ran in certain families?
Like hemophilia in the line of Queen Victoria, it had flashed in his brain. Mutations in bloodlines, superior bloodlines. Perhaps the bloodlines are proof that the man is fit to rule? Emma had triumphed as the wording, calling back to the Aryans and their silly beliefs that they would inherit the Earth based on the merits of their past knocked on the walls of Shaw’s mind. You’re able to use any force used against you against your enemies, use it to power yourself. You deserve to rule them. If he had not failed she would have ruled through him, and now her plans changed. With Erik, she would have access to Charles, heir and experiment together and she might rule in truth, enemies disintegrated by Charles’ strength of mind.
Shaw was a sanctimonious idiot, who thought she looked gorgeous in a cocktail dress, and gave her pretty things. Shaw just wanted to rule the world, proof of the superiority of mutants. What would he get out of it, other than the stroking of ego?
The White Queen would rule the world.
William had already started her war for her, his anger and arrogance brewing into a stew of attack, and he would bring her Charles, even if he did not know it yet.
Emma snorted into her cocktail, the sweetness of the cherry in the grenadine sweetening this moment. William Stryker did her bidding. The thought had been Shaw’s, to research on ways of manipulating and creating mutations, on being able to track those mutated through genetics. She was the one who thought of how it could be used. If Magneto won the world, following in Shaw’s footsteps, she would be the one to bring him a way to find all those who needed protection from the rabble, the humans. If the humans, Stryker’s ilk, won, they would help eliminate her rivals.
Magneto had been speaking the night before, the others listening to him, and she could let her mind try and prod. She had found that she could sneak through the helmet, spinal cord and nerves pulling her along. Shaw had been easy, his arrogance making her job so easy. Erik was also glaring at her, as if paranoia made him know that she prodded at him.
“Emma, I thought that you had ideas on which mutants we should recruit?” He had tested her, and she had known that she would fail, not knowing what was said. Her memory was imperfect. It was why that she, in the here and now worked so hard to commit the words that William and his hatred said to her memory.
Erik Lensherr’s beliefs were in the protection of mutants from the humans, and for that, she would keep him stolen from Charles Xavier. Francis’ grandchild, her little creation was stronger than she was already, and she wondered for but a moment on that. If she could go around that helmet with Shaw underneath, did that mean that he could have gone through with time? With Erik?
“Sebastian had found a young gentleman in New York City. The young man flies, and will inherit a sizeable fortune from his rather healthy father. The man would bring funding and influence among the elite for our cause.” Warren Worthington the Third would bring her a great deal of power, and they had already met several times. Worthington Junior, his father, had thought her gorgeous and a gorgeous lay. He would be easy enough to seduce into death.
“I shouldn’t see a problem, then.” Magneto’s voice had served as a rebuke. “Emma, if you don’t care to be here, would you prefer to leave?” She had left for her trip to Washington, where Warren was on business with his father, ostensibly to scout out the man. She was really here for William.
She had extended an apology last night, a demure rejection of his thought, but hoped that Magneto is soon less than his current position at the head of their table. The man is not as pliable as she had first thought, planting the seeds of rejection in his mind, training him to disdain pacifism.
Is his telepathy my creation? She thought of Charles, retreating from the conversation again. He wasn’t normal, he wasn’t. He had dived into her mind, not bothering with persuasions, or even brute force, and his presence had tingled. Is his telepathy stronger than mine? Certainly, but is he more skilled? Erik lived on her whim now, believing in her need for superiority. Well, she wanted superiority for herself.
The woman at the top of the table was the most powerful woman, and she now sat at the hand of the man who had taken the seat that Sebastian Shaw had once created. Her work on William Stryker, his eyes mesmerized by her and mind bewitched burned new pathways for her agendas.
Wind rustled through the trees overhead, and the street outside the café was filled with cars. Emma scanned briefly. Curiosity! Oh, this sex is horrible. What did my wife make for dinner? Some blank spots, but some men and women were idiots, and she had learned years before that the idiots of the world did not bear further investigation. It would only bore her.
Pressed pant legs of the waiter returned, their dinners in his hands and an apology on his lips about the length of time that it took him to deliver the salads. Apparently there was some sort of situation in the kitchen, Mary’s sobbing into Raul’s shoulder, Lana was horrible to the girl. Woman should not be working as a hostess if she is that mean to, and Emma pulls away. “Your entrees should not take more than fifteen minutes,” he assures them. “And would you like your drinks to be refreshed?” No more thoughts of Erik and his obsession, they served as too much distraction from her goal.
“Yes, I would. Would you put a splash of vodka in mine as well?” It danced along the lines of being Un-American, but at times she found herself missing the cold of Russia. Besides, today she celebrated. “William, would you like another glass of wine?”
“Yes, I would.” Marcy would have just had them pour me another, William is thinking now of his wife, swollen stomach and crazy ways. He’d bruised her arm this morning.
“Do you like the salad?” It’s crisp, with a taste of something new, and again, something catches her attention out of the corner of her eye.
There, in the crowd, there’s someone watching, and she cannot tell for the moment their identity. Perhaps Cain? She would remain thankful that the man had not taken up Magneto’s offer.
He had been a mistake, the older stepbrother of the Xavier telepath, and she had taken him into her bed for a time. Unable to control him for lengthy periods of time, perhaps if he spent much time around her, he would have realized what she had done to his mind in the past, the incident that triggered him enlisting in the war.
No, it was better for her personal cause, that Marko never be around her for too long again. If he realized what she had done to him, well the man had been great fun in bed, and breaking him in had given her insight on Charles. Big, muscular, aggressive. The fun had been that she would not be able to control him if he got too angry, and she supposed, it would be best if she rarely tested it.
Unfortunately, she had a suspicion of what would happen should she test it. That kind of mental violence could be interesting, physically. Not aimed towards her, though. Diamonds would not keep her safe from the Juggernaut.
“Are you well?” The human is asked, and Emma nodded, absentmindedly. “You look, distracted.” Of course she was distracted, she thought to say.
“My apologies.” She placed her hands upon his. “I find myself much to pieces now that I no longer have Sebastian to help me, help give form to my life.” William Stryker is a fit man, and she supposes that the Army will create that of a man, no matter his original physical shape. He also thinks that women need help, and she can use that. “I try my best to continue in his footsteps, keep doing the work that he wanted me to do.”
“Mutants.” Pffah! William’s voice makes the noise of disgust and she echoes it at him. He is a tool, unable to realize that he is being used. “Your nation thanks you for your patriotism.” Saving us all from the mutant threat, both foreign and domestic. “Your husband’s belief in our cause was well placed. We are making such steps forward. Even the research that we’ve done on mutants, things that we’ve found that haven’t led us towards mutants have helped us more than mere science for science’s sake.”
“But we won’t be safe until your accuracy improves.” It’s quite true. He’s also found other things, more interesting things.
Rating: M
Warnings: Graphic Sexual abuse of a minor, rape, domestic violence, implied violence, implied m/m sexual relations, and death.
Summary:
Emma Frost learned at her mother’s knee that if a woman wanted to get anywhere, she was the only person with the power to make that happen. Telepathy was quite helpful to those aims, including the manipulation of men. Cleavage or cortex, both helped her make her own way, often by changing the thoughts of others. She wanted to rule the world, but it is a man’s world. By playing with the minds of everyone, she thought she would take over the world.
Charles Xavier disagreed.
An AU-verse in which Xavier and Magneto are tempered by a diamond’s views of supremacy, and not a Mengele’s, even if they didn’t quite figure it out.
VII.
Cain had worked hard in the Army. It wasn’t that his step-brother had not worked hard, it was that he had never quite understood what or how Charles worked. Charles had been working with or for an Allied government, tracking criminals, and he had been in the same area as Charles for exactly fifty three hours.
That time spent in the same space was enlightening, and had started his migration from the Army and back into normal life. Someone had to help Raven with managing Charles, and while he might not be the best person to do so, he certainly didn’t mind. He was indebted to the little brat, which would be his name to him, at least for a few more years. Charles’ would always remind him of the first time that he’d met Charles, with Charles the youthful child holding tightly onto his mother’s housekeeper’s hands.
“Cain, I would like you to meet Charlie.” Father had said, and he had looked at Sharon with kind eyes, lying eyes, and he had felt it. Why lying eyes? Asked with shining blue eyes watching his face. “Charlie, Cain is going to be your big brother now.” Why Charlie? Daddy never calls me Charlie, and Mother doesn’t care.
“Come forward and give Cain a hug.” Sharon had said the words, and the housekeeper had glared at her. The little boy had come forward, and loosely wrapped his arms around him, eyes wide and frightened. He has thought for a moment that the child was correct to be frightened, especially of Father, and he had felt that questioning wave again.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you.” He had wrapped his arms around the little boy, feeling Father’s glare on his skin. No, Charlie was his to protect.
Now, so many years later, the little brother had disappeared again. He had heard that Charlie was in Oxford with Raven, but after that, they had been inconspicuous. Charlie was so rarely inconspicuous.
“KID!” There’s a little kid, sitting in the middle of his garage. “How many times do I have to tell you not to play underneath the engines!”
“But I want to know how they work!” The Long Island drawl is in the boy’s voice, and Cain looks around for the other hooligan that the kid hangs around with. Where Davey Rossi goes, Ray Finnegan wasn’t far behind. “Dad said,”
“Your Dad said that you could come by twice a week so I could show you how to change the oil, other things like that. Twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7 pm. Your father accompanies you and Ray with cookies that your mother has baked, or something like that lovely cake last week.” He could not cook, and while he and Charles had hidden in the kitchen a time or eight, only Charles had ever understood the cook’s lessons.
Father had fractured Charles’ jaw once, Charles having brought him a plate of cookies to try and please the man. The man had called him a sissy boy, even if the night before he’d called him his little whore. He and Raven had hugged together, frightened of the noises in Charles’ room, and the terror that was not their own, flooding their minds. “Today is not Tuesday or Thursday, and I am fairly sure it’s not 7 pm.”
“The man is right.” There’s a man in the doorway, slender and in black, what looks to be a cloak of crimson around him. Next to him is a woman, curved body, redhead, and eyes, familiar eyes. “Today is a Friday, young man, and it’s two in the afternoon.” Above the boy the car is moving, up and away from the child’s head and body. “You might want to leave.”
“Mister Marko?” Davey’s looking worriedly at him now, and Cain shakes his head. Another man like Charlie and himself and Raven, he understood, like another man in the program in which he had served just after they realized his skills. That blonde woman who had ridden his mind and body so long before, up in one of the houses in the mountains while he tried to hide himself from the damage his Father was doing to Charlie.
“Go find Ray, enjoy the weather.” It’s a rare sunny day, and the sun would have called the boy anyway. He steps backwards and down the ladder, watching the boy run out of the back of his garage. “Who are you?” He can feel the ground beneath his feet, and he’s tempted to start running, but the car is already settling down, back onto its stand. The wheels were off, and something’s now wrong with the chassis.
“My name is Magneto, and this is Mystique.” She’s melting into a far more familiar form, and he can feel her wrapping her arms around him. “I can see you’ve met in the past.”
“You need to go home.” She whispers into his ear. “Charles needs you, needs family.” She is pulling away from him, bringing the man closer to him with her other hand. “Magneto, Juggernaut. Or rather, Erik Lensherr, I would like to introduce you an old family friend. Cain Marko. Cain, Erik is looking for recruits.”
“Recruits?” He’s watching her more closely. “You want more of us with you, don’t you?”
“We do. As we are naturally superior to humans, the mutants must ascend to their rightful place, above the humans, perhaps even without the humans.” The words make him cringe, and he doesn’t want to say what he thinks, not immediately, and he looks at Raven. Raven, the sister that Charles had found in their kitchen late one night, and brought to him, showing her off. Cain, Cain, isn’t she pretty. She’s like us! Those words had frightened him for a moment, another one like them, victimized by Father, ignored by Sharon. Charles’ enthusiasm had almost bled into him, and for moments his joy had shown within Cain, a warm sun burning in his chest, trying to displace the pain of the bruised ribs with love and care.
Raven, do you believe what he is saying? It slips into her mind on the paths that had grown around Charles’ constant presence in both their minds, in the years that it took him to grow his own walls. This talk of superiority?
Cain, we are superior, that is certain. Charles wishes for peaceful co-existence, but Magneto knows that peaceful co-existence comes only at the end of a war. Charles…
Charles hates fighting. Cain thinks the words, remembers the birth of them. Magneto is watching them, continuing to breath his rhetoric, rhetoric that sounds wrong out of a body that has pushed up sleeves and a tattoo that he remembers from that meeting with his brother so many years before. I cannot find Charles, Raven.I know not the way to find him to go to him.
“No.” He says the words to the man, ignoring his sister. “I may agree with you about peaceful co-existence, Mister Lensherr, but I learned my lesson about subjugation before I could legally vote in this country.” Cain knew what the answer that he had for them now would be. “Worry first about those in the government that know about us, Mister Lensherr. Then worry about subjugating others, being mutants and supreme.”
“Who do you mean, when you say that?” There’s a metal bar around his neck, and all Cain can do is raise an eyebrow. “The Central Intelligence Agency?”
“Army, Mister Lensherr. Air Force. Navy. The military industry loves and fears us, and is certainly quite interested in mutation, for their personal ends.”
VIII
She holds them in her hand, their lives, loves, and thoughts. She owns them now, and she could resume her place at the head of their society. Men were weak, that was the thing that she had learned from her mother. Hazel had married well, and proceeded to be ruled by Winston and his violence. The family had followed her lead, but she, she had decided to be something more.
Emma’s first husband had been named Alexander Hood, and he had like to dress her in diamonds. They sparked, he had said, sparkled like her eyes. He had thought that they decorated her, his whore, so very well. He had eventually thought of her, thought and thought and thought of her. Alexander Hood had thought enough about his wife with the silken legs and the inviting eyes so much that he put her into his will, leaving her the whole of the moneys, and not even naming his sons or grandsons. He then thought about her as he proceeded to walk into traffic, managing to get himself run over by three buggies.
She had worn white to his funeral, and Emma had continued to wear it through the next three funerals. Meeting the Xaviers had been a stroke of luck on her part.
Brian Xavier loved his wife Sharon immensely. Sharon was a lush. That was Emma’s first impression of the pair, followed by the curiosity at the woman’s burgeoning belly. It was practically cooing in her mind, all wrapped up in warmth, coddled by its father. Barely even conceived, she can feel the little bits of the baby forming together, and wonders that she can. Looking back, she nudged a bit. A tiny push to make sure that the egg was fertilized, not by one sperm, but by two. A secondary plan never hurt a woman intent on experimenting.
She’d been in and out of the child’s life, and was practically infatuated with the child’s mind. Her interference, perhaps, with his conception had created what she thought to be the child’s gifts. Meeting Francis Xavier proved her thoughts to be erroneous. Hovering around a century of age, Francis Xavier’s hair had completely fled his head years before. Rumor had it that when he had come home from the Civil War, his title of General had replaced the luxurious head of hair that he had once sported. She attributed it to a gift of his own, the man simply not aging like so many did, like her diamond form prevented her from doing.
He was married, to a woman, his second or third wife. She had given the Xavier patrician no children, but Niamh Xavier’s love of her family was legendary, and she had taken to Emmeline Neige with great adoration. Francis had agreed, and it was through the pair that she was introduced to the power of the Hellfire Club.
Looking back, she had abandoned her pursuits into creating a pet out of a fellow gifted human for the Hellfire club and the power inherent there. She had removed Francis’ claim on a seat quite steadily, having to resort to the indignities of poisons. Apparently those that could breed a telepath were less likely to be influenced by one, and she hadn’t wished to warn his family that his death was both imminent and at her hands. They might get suspicious, with such a change in the man, that he would have a fatal accident. Experience taught her that men who had fatal accidents and left something of import to someone near them meant that the aforesaid heir was then annoyed. Irritated by unhappy former benefactors.
No, poison had gotten the job done satisfactorily, and she had stepped into a seat at the New York Hellfire table.
Emma had left in a hurry, several years later. The reason was immaterial.
His name was Sebastian Shaw, his ideology was perfect. Of course mutants should rule the Earth. Her gifts made her the most superior thing on Earth. It was his vision that was problematic.
Interest in why things ticked, tocked, and continually spun the way that they did was certainly a valiant pursuit that helped the need for supremacy, but this consummation of energy, this complete obsession with it was taking away from the ability of Shaw to use the ruthlessness that he applied in service to his beliefs. It started, for him, with the seed of an idea.
What about seeing if I could make a mutant out of someone? Multiple someones?
He had already realized that given the appropriate trigger, he could trigger latent mutations. Erik had proven that mutations other than his own existed, Erik, and Tanya, and Tzipporah, and other names. Leah, Avraham, and Benjamin had been three who had helped him prove that he could trigger latent mutations, and they all had proven that he could identify them once he had them. The problem was the trial and error. Were there things that made certain people more likely to become mutants, similar to the ways that certain illnesses ran in certain families?
Like hemophilia in the line of Queen Victoria, it had flashed in his brain. Mutations in bloodlines, superior bloodlines. Perhaps the bloodlines are proof that the man is fit to rule? Emma had triumphed as the wording, calling back to the Aryans and their silly beliefs that they would inherit the Earth based on the merits of their past knocked on the walls of Shaw’s mind. You’re able to use any force used against you against your enemies, use it to power yourself. You deserve to rule them. If he had not failed she would have ruled through him, and now her plans changed. With Erik, she would have access to Charles, heir and experiment together and she might rule in truth, enemies disintegrated by Charles’ strength of mind.
Shaw was a sanctimonious idiot, who thought she looked gorgeous in a cocktail dress, and gave her pretty things. Shaw just wanted to rule the world, proof of the superiority of mutants. What would he get out of it, other than the stroking of ego?
The White Queen would rule the world.
William had already started her war for her, his anger and arrogance brewing into a stew of attack, and he would bring her Charles, even if he did not know it yet.
Emma snorted into her cocktail, the sweetness of the cherry in the grenadine sweetening this moment. William Stryker did her bidding. The thought had been Shaw’s, to research on ways of manipulating and creating mutations, on being able to track those mutated through genetics. She was the one who thought of how it could be used. If Magneto won the world, following in Shaw’s footsteps, she would be the one to bring him a way to find all those who needed protection from the rabble, the humans. If the humans, Stryker’s ilk, won, they would help eliminate her rivals.
Magneto had been speaking the night before, the others listening to him, and she could let her mind try and prod. She had found that she could sneak through the helmet, spinal cord and nerves pulling her along. Shaw had been easy, his arrogance making her job so easy. Erik was also glaring at her, as if paranoia made him know that she prodded at him.
“Emma, I thought that you had ideas on which mutants we should recruit?” He had tested her, and she had known that she would fail, not knowing what was said. Her memory was imperfect. It was why that she, in the here and now worked so hard to commit the words that William and his hatred said to her memory.
Erik Lensherr’s beliefs were in the protection of mutants from the humans, and for that, she would keep him stolen from Charles Xavier. Francis’ grandchild, her little creation was stronger than she was already, and she wondered for but a moment on that. If she could go around that helmet with Shaw underneath, did that mean that he could have gone through with time? With Erik?
“Sebastian had found a young gentleman in New York City. The young man flies, and will inherit a sizeable fortune from his rather healthy father. The man would bring funding and influence among the elite for our cause.” Warren Worthington the Third would bring her a great deal of power, and they had already met several times. Worthington Junior, his father, had thought her gorgeous and a gorgeous lay. He would be easy enough to seduce into death.
“I shouldn’t see a problem, then.” Magneto’s voice had served as a rebuke. “Emma, if you don’t care to be here, would you prefer to leave?” She had left for her trip to Washington, where Warren was on business with his father, ostensibly to scout out the man. She was really here for William.
She had extended an apology last night, a demure rejection of his thought, but hoped that Magneto is soon less than his current position at the head of their table. The man is not as pliable as she had first thought, planting the seeds of rejection in his mind, training him to disdain pacifism.
Is his telepathy my creation? She thought of Charles, retreating from the conversation again. He wasn’t normal, he wasn’t. He had dived into her mind, not bothering with persuasions, or even brute force, and his presence had tingled. Is his telepathy stronger than mine? Certainly, but is he more skilled? Erik lived on her whim now, believing in her need for superiority. Well, she wanted superiority for herself.
The woman at the top of the table was the most powerful woman, and she now sat at the hand of the man who had taken the seat that Sebastian Shaw had once created. Her work on William Stryker, his eyes mesmerized by her and mind bewitched burned new pathways for her agendas.
Wind rustled through the trees overhead, and the street outside the café was filled with cars. Emma scanned briefly. Curiosity! Oh, this sex is horrible. What did my wife make for dinner? Some blank spots, but some men and women were idiots, and she had learned years before that the idiots of the world did not bear further investigation. It would only bore her.
Pressed pant legs of the waiter returned, their dinners in his hands and an apology on his lips about the length of time that it took him to deliver the salads. Apparently there was some sort of situation in the kitchen, Mary’s sobbing into Raul’s shoulder, Lana was horrible to the girl. Woman should not be working as a hostess if she is that mean to, and Emma pulls away. “Your entrees should not take more than fifteen minutes,” he assures them. “And would you like your drinks to be refreshed?” No more thoughts of Erik and his obsession, they served as too much distraction from her goal.
“Yes, I would. Would you put a splash of vodka in mine as well?” It danced along the lines of being Un-American, but at times she found herself missing the cold of Russia. Besides, today she celebrated. “William, would you like another glass of wine?”
“Yes, I would.” Marcy would have just had them pour me another, William is thinking now of his wife, swollen stomach and crazy ways. He’d bruised her arm this morning.
“Do you like the salad?” It’s crisp, with a taste of something new, and again, something catches her attention out of the corner of her eye.
There, in the crowd, there’s someone watching, and she cannot tell for the moment their identity. Perhaps Cain? She would remain thankful that the man had not taken up Magneto’s offer.
He had been a mistake, the older stepbrother of the Xavier telepath, and she had taken him into her bed for a time. Unable to control him for lengthy periods of time, perhaps if he spent much time around her, he would have realized what she had done to his mind in the past, the incident that triggered him enlisting in the war.
No, it was better for her personal cause, that Marko never be around her for too long again. If he realized what she had done to him, well the man had been great fun in bed, and breaking him in had given her insight on Charles. Big, muscular, aggressive. The fun had been that she would not be able to control him if he got too angry, and she supposed, it would be best if she rarely tested it.
Unfortunately, she had a suspicion of what would happen should she test it. That kind of mental violence could be interesting, physically. Not aimed towards her, though. Diamonds would not keep her safe from the Juggernaut.
“Are you well?” The human is asked, and Emma nodded, absentmindedly. “You look, distracted.” Of course she was distracted, she thought to say.
“My apologies.” She placed her hands upon his. “I find myself much to pieces now that I no longer have Sebastian to help me, help give form to my life.” William Stryker is a fit man, and she supposes that the Army will create that of a man, no matter his original physical shape. He also thinks that women need help, and she can use that. “I try my best to continue in his footsteps, keep doing the work that he wanted me to do.”
“Mutants.” Pffah! William’s voice makes the noise of disgust and she echoes it at him. He is a tool, unable to realize that he is being used. “Your nation thanks you for your patriotism.” Saving us all from the mutant threat, both foreign and domestic. “Your husband’s belief in our cause was well placed. We are making such steps forward. Even the research that we’ve done on mutants, things that we’ve found that haven’t led us towards mutants have helped us more than mere science for science’s sake.”
“But we won’t be safe until your accuracy improves.” It’s quite true. He’s also found other things, more interesting things.