RP: Winter Solstice
[With the always wonderful john_movinon. Takes place in the (possible) future!]
The little house in the middle of the French country side actually fits a lot more people and high tech equipment then one would think looking at it with a glance from the outside. But that's what happens when you have superpowered people working as an underground resistance unit - a lot more good shit then you'd ever expect.
"I don't know, it's not working," Jones says, still looking every bit the wide-eye geeky boy with huge glasses as he did way back in the day at Xavier's.
John Allerdyce runs a hand through his still-there-but-thinning hair, and scrubs it over his face. There are age lines there, now, and scars, both from burns and sharp-edged objects. Still, he looks every bit as handsome and rugged as he did in his youth. More so, even. He's still as infamous as then, but for many different reasons, though he is more recluse then in even his Brotherhood days.
The leader of the Resistance has to take much care, and spend a lot of time in secrecy.
"Well, fucking make it work!" he yells, pushing a rolling-chair across the room, where it crashes into the wall.
His temper - well, that's the same.
"Just fucking find her!" John yells.
Illyana Rasputin is even better at hiding than him. But, then again, she gets to do it in another plane of existence. The lucky bitch.
He knew that finding Illyana this time of year was impossible - any time of year, really, as she only showed up in this plane four times a year. But he knew it was soon, it was closing in; Peter Rasputin - the young one, from the past - should be showing up sometime soon. It's just that no one knows exactly when, probably not even Illyana. It's all theory, based on the little bits of information that has passed down through the years, but they have it calculated, and it should be soon. Very very soon.
John has to get to Peter before, well, Peter does. Colossus. The Ruler of the Now.
That much John knows, that this time he has to be the one that finds Pete, not Colossus, or else the world would end up just as terrible, all over again.
Several hours later, and with a very frustrated leader, John gives everyone their leave for the night. They head to their bunk rooms, glad to have the reprieve, but John wouldn't be able to sleep, he knows. He stays at his desk, and pours over his papers. It has to be soon, it just has to.
Finally, when his eyes wouldn't focus any more, John gets up and starts to walk to his own room.
Suddenly, there was a gold disk underneath his feet. "Shit," he mutters, knows exactly what's happening, and within a second, is gone from that plain of existence.
He's in Illyana's domain now. He's in Limbo.
The darkness is sentient. There are sounds, sounds alien to human ears, and the air is heavy and fetid and stinks of old pennies and stale incense. The horizon seems wrong - the sky comes down too low, the ground rises too high; they meet in an awkward line that defies geometry. A huge red rock juts out of the ground, casting its shadow over John and hurting his eyes with its angles. There is a constant wind, screaming softly, ruffling John's clothes and throwing grit in his eyes.
Illyana's voice comes from everywhere, although she is sitting in the shadow of the rock.
"Ivan. John."
John nods. "Illyana."
She giggles, and the sound is completely devoid of sanity. "Lady of Situations, yes," she says. "How ARE you?" She does not move, but the shadow thrown by the rock does, rotating slowly away so the sun (although there is no sun here, but. There is light? When She says so, sometimes.) illuminates her form. It isn't human.
"You were looking for me." A statement, not a question. "So. Start talking." She throws her head back at laughs up at the bruised and shifting sky. "Or I will eat you up! Yes. Joy! Joy! Joy! His little bones, they come on their own... shall I add you to my fence of skulls, John? Speak. Speakspeakspeak. Speak to me. What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?" She blinks inhuman eyes and her tail curls around her.
"Is it Piotr?" she asks, and her voice is both sad and mercifully lucid.
John isn't afraid of Illyana, not really. He's faced too much in his lifetime to get spooked by some crazy demon woman. He tries to think of her back when they were young, when she hadn't quite fallen of her rocker, when she still hero-worshiped him. It's too hard to grasp - it's been so long ago, and she's so different now. They both are.
He's been to many strange places too, none as strange as this. He could feel the supernaturalness of it surrounding him, air thick and stifling, trying to crush him as he stands there.
He focuses on breathing evenly. It's all he can do.
"Yes," he answers, forward and simple. "It's Peter. He's coming soon. I know he is." He tilts his head to the side, looking at her, watching her tail move around her as she sits completely still. It's as if it is a creature on it's own.
"You know it too," he says. "Where? When exactly? I need to know."
He does not sound desperate, he is not begging - he has a powerful force about him now, years of being that soldier that people in his youth told him he didn't have to be. They had been foolish to think that; the world now was nothing but a war zone.
He states, simply again, "I need to change it. Change it all."
"I tried that," Illyana says. "That is part of the PROBLEM, yes?"
She sighs hugely, shaking her head. "Should not fuck with the past," she says, mostly to herself. "Never ends well. Always wind up having to race the clock - hah! - and put things back as they were... at least there is no fucking M'Kraan this time..." she trails off, brooding.
"Peter," John prompts her.
Illyana sits up straight. "Yes, he is coming. When and where?"
She gestures for John to follow her, and she leads him away... somewhere. The journey is mercifully brief, a blind trip where distance doesn't really exist and all impressions are phantom. When John regains his senses properly, he finds himself standing in a stone room with high, vaulted ceilings. In the center of the room, black and white marble and gold and silver are inlaid on the floor in patterns: triangles, circles, pentagrams, hexagrams, lines connecting and intersecting over and over. Above this a huge rattling contraption turns the planets in miniature, all rusting brass and iron.
"I did not make it," Illyana confesses. "I was never very good with math. So!" She trips over to the machine on inhuman legs, tail swishing. "Piotr is coming to the NOW. Let me see... hmm." She studies the false universe, ducking to avoid being hit in the head by stray moons. "Tuesday," she says finally. "At... nine AM. I think."
"Are you fucking shitting me?"
John still has no control over that tongue of his. It has, in fact, gotten worse over the years. He doubts she minds much.
"Tuesday? This Tuesday?"
It is Sunday.
That wasn't a lot of time to prepare, though he felt as if he'd been preparing for this for years. Still, unless he got her to port him back right into Piotr's Land, he probably wouldn't make it in time. And he'd be fucking stupid to even try without getting his equipment and some back up - that's why they joined the resistance, for this event, he wasn't about to leave them out of it.
Still. Tuesday.
"Can you stop it yourself?" he asks. "Like, when your younger self and Peter come through Limbo in the first place. Just sent them the fuck back to where they belong. You could do that, right?"
But he knows the answer already. It's not something she can do. Or, perhaps, won't do.
Illyana gives John a withering look. "If it were that easy, would I not have done that ALREADY?" she snarls. "There are rules." She looks away. "I know that now."
She's silent for a moment, brooding. The only noise is the creaking and whirring of machinery, constant and unhealthy.
"Tuesday," Illyana says at length. She shakes her head and steps away, heading unerringly for a low table nearby. It is piled high with glasses and bottles and bowls and strings and dry withered husks of things best left unidentified. At one end there are small cages, and it is one of these that she opens and reaches into. Her taloned hand pulls out a pigeon, and she coos softly to it, keeping it calm.
"He will be in the desert," she says to John as she crouches, putting the bird on its back. "I remember that. A hundred miles from anywhere. I bet HE remembers, too." She sighs sadly and slits the pigeon open with one of her nails, letting go so it can flap uselessly about the floor. She watches it intently, nodding slightly when the animal's intestines slide from its body.
"Oh yes," she near whispers. "He remembers." She looks around at John, absently licking blood off her fingers. "Tuesday. Nine-oh-eight in the morning. Piotr always was an early riser. I can take us there." She taps one side of her head and smiles hugely. "I know where he will be. Up here. Exactly. Would you like some tea?"
"No, thanks," John declines casually, as if he wasn't completely disguested by Illyana licking blood of her fingers. He's seen a lot worse done to people then she did to that bird, but the way she did so as if it were a normal everyday thing, as if it weren't more then a little creepy, put him off.
But he's smart enough not to show that. Offending Magik would not be a very good idea at all. Not when he had to get back to Earth, and forward to Tuesday, to where and when he could find Pete.
He's not surprised to hear that Colossus remembered, that Colossus knew when his younger self will be appearing. John knpws that he should take care to not treat the young Peter from the past with the hatred he felt for his older self. John wonders if he would even be able to look at him kindly. He'd have to make sure he did; this Peter will not know of all the bad blood that went down between them.
"Thank you," John says. "For taking me there."
And he thought he shouldn't mention that they were totally fucking up the rules by doing so. That seems to be a sore subject with her.
"You're welcome." She sounds so prim it's laughable, all things considered.
"When do you want to go? Now? Later? And tea? Yes, no? I make it myself. It is very good."
"No tea," John says. He thought about what she asked him, about what would be best. He really should stop and get his crew...
"Now," he says. "Let's go now. Let's go to Tuesday."
John is a survivor, and a leader, and totally prepared for this. He'd be able to deal with just himself and Pete. He just needs to get there, asap.
Illyana shrugged. Boys were so impatient.
But she stalked over to John's side and nodded, and at once a golden disck appeared beneath them and--
Blackness, a cacophony of bells, screams, wind, blackness, pain
-- they're standing in the middle of what was once St. Petersberg.
"Chto za huy!" Illyana exclaims, kicking at loose rubble and snow. She snarled, a deep animal sound, and her fingers clutched at the air in spasms.
"What the fuck?" John asks, looking around nervously.
"Walls," Illyana says darkly. "I hit... something. It messed with my mutant powers. It must be a security measure." She sat down quite suddenly, face miserable.
"Eto prosto pizdets..." she mutters. "John, I am sorry. I cannot take us there. We are so fucked."
"You can't," John asks in disbelief. "What the fuck do you mean, you can't?"
He listens as Illyana rambles on, and he's able to decipher what the problems was: there seemed to be some sort of shield around the area where Peter was expected that prevented Illyana's teleportation powers.
"Fuck, HE really does know," John says, sitting down on the ground not to far away from where Illyana had slumped to the ground. "Just... fuck."
He sighs. He will just have to come up with a new plan, really. And he does, quite quickly, as long as Illyana is willing to help.
It could go either way with that one, but he might as well ask.
"Will you take me back to my safehouse, just for a pit stop? I'll get some supplies and stuff. Then, if you can put me as close to the point you can get me. As close to Peter as you can... that's our best bet, yeah?"
Illyana nods. "That is our best bet," she agrees. She sighs and looks around the ruined city.
"Rasputins always did have a tendency to go mad with power," she mutters. "Come on."
And an instant later, they're at John's safehouse, startling one of his men quite badly. Illyana just stares at him blankly as he yelps and then gets himself under control as soon as he realises his leader is there. She follows as John goes to gather supplies, not paying much attention to anyone but him.
"When you find him," she says, "you must get him someplace safe. You must explain to him what has happened." She shakes her head. "I do no think he would believe me. And sometimes I... I forget important things." She looks moodily at the floor. "You must do that. And then I will find you again, and I will take care of the end." She takes hold of John's arm and turned him so he was facing her. "Promise me you will do as I say."
John turns to her. From the side, Jones watches, his face grimacing at the look of her hands, even though she isn't even touching him. But John doesn't have such a reaction. He put a hand over hers, and says, "I'll try."
It's all he can promise her.
He grabs a hold of Jones' arm, now. John's face changes. Now, it's that of a soldier. A leader. One who has a mission, and one who has to get it done right
"Okay," John says, looking hard at Illyana. "We're ready."
And just like that, one of her discs appeared beneath them and the next second they were outdoors again, standing underneath an angry sky. Illyana sighs.
"I am tired," she announces, and looks John in the eye. "You find him. You tell him. And then you come to me." She leans forward and gently kisses John on one grizzled cheek. "Good luck, hero." She steps back onto another flash of gold and is gone.
The little house in the middle of the French country side actually fits a lot more people and high tech equipment then one would think looking at it with a glance from the outside. But that's what happens when you have superpowered people working as an underground resistance unit - a lot more good shit then you'd ever expect.
"I don't know, it's not working," Jones says, still looking every bit the wide-eye geeky boy with huge glasses as he did way back in the day at Xavier's.
John Allerdyce runs a hand through his still-there-but-thinning hair, and scrubs it over his face. There are age lines there, now, and scars, both from burns and sharp-edged objects. Still, he looks every bit as handsome and rugged as he did in his youth. More so, even. He's still as infamous as then, but for many different reasons, though he is more recluse then in even his Brotherhood days.
The leader of the Resistance has to take much care, and spend a lot of time in secrecy.
"Well, fucking make it work!" he yells, pushing a rolling-chair across the room, where it crashes into the wall.
His temper - well, that's the same.
"Just fucking find her!" John yells.
Illyana Rasputin is even better at hiding than him. But, then again, she gets to do it in another plane of existence. The lucky bitch.
He knew that finding Illyana this time of year was impossible - any time of year, really, as she only showed up in this plane four times a year. But he knew it was soon, it was closing in; Peter Rasputin - the young one, from the past - should be showing up sometime soon. It's just that no one knows exactly when, probably not even Illyana. It's all theory, based on the little bits of information that has passed down through the years, but they have it calculated, and it should be soon. Very very soon.
John has to get to Peter before, well, Peter does. Colossus. The Ruler of the Now.
That much John knows, that this time he has to be the one that finds Pete, not Colossus, or else the world would end up just as terrible, all over again.
Several hours later, and with a very frustrated leader, John gives everyone their leave for the night. They head to their bunk rooms, glad to have the reprieve, but John wouldn't be able to sleep, he knows. He stays at his desk, and pours over his papers. It has to be soon, it just has to.
Finally, when his eyes wouldn't focus any more, John gets up and starts to walk to his own room.
Suddenly, there was a gold disk underneath his feet. "Shit," he mutters, knows exactly what's happening, and within a second, is gone from that plain of existence.
He's in Illyana's domain now. He's in Limbo.
The darkness is sentient. There are sounds, sounds alien to human ears, and the air is heavy and fetid and stinks of old pennies and stale incense. The horizon seems wrong - the sky comes down too low, the ground rises too high; they meet in an awkward line that defies geometry. A huge red rock juts out of the ground, casting its shadow over John and hurting his eyes with its angles. There is a constant wind, screaming softly, ruffling John's clothes and throwing grit in his eyes.
Illyana's voice comes from everywhere, although she is sitting in the shadow of the rock.
"Ivan. John."
John nods. "Illyana."
She giggles, and the sound is completely devoid of sanity. "Lady of Situations, yes," she says. "How ARE you?" She does not move, but the shadow thrown by the rock does, rotating slowly away so the sun (although there is no sun here, but. There is light? When She says so, sometimes.) illuminates her form. It isn't human.
"You were looking for me." A statement, not a question. "So. Start talking." She throws her head back at laughs up at the bruised and shifting sky. "Or I will eat you up! Yes. Joy! Joy! Joy! His little bones, they come on their own... shall I add you to my fence of skulls, John? Speak. Speakspeakspeak. Speak to me. What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?" She blinks inhuman eyes and her tail curls around her.
"Is it Piotr?" she asks, and her voice is both sad and mercifully lucid.
John isn't afraid of Illyana, not really. He's faced too much in his lifetime to get spooked by some crazy demon woman. He tries to think of her back when they were young, when she hadn't quite fallen of her rocker, when she still hero-worshiped him. It's too hard to grasp - it's been so long ago, and she's so different now. They both are.
He's been to many strange places too, none as strange as this. He could feel the supernaturalness of it surrounding him, air thick and stifling, trying to crush him as he stands there.
He focuses on breathing evenly. It's all he can do.
"Yes," he answers, forward and simple. "It's Peter. He's coming soon. I know he is." He tilts his head to the side, looking at her, watching her tail move around her as she sits completely still. It's as if it is a creature on it's own.
"You know it too," he says. "Where? When exactly? I need to know."
He does not sound desperate, he is not begging - he has a powerful force about him now, years of being that soldier that people in his youth told him he didn't have to be. They had been foolish to think that; the world now was nothing but a war zone.
He states, simply again, "I need to change it. Change it all."
"I tried that," Illyana says. "That is part of the PROBLEM, yes?"
She sighs hugely, shaking her head. "Should not fuck with the past," she says, mostly to herself. "Never ends well. Always wind up having to race the clock - hah! - and put things back as they were... at least there is no fucking M'Kraan this time..." she trails off, brooding.
"Peter," John prompts her.
Illyana sits up straight. "Yes, he is coming. When and where?"
She gestures for John to follow her, and she leads him away... somewhere. The journey is mercifully brief, a blind trip where distance doesn't really exist and all impressions are phantom. When John regains his senses properly, he finds himself standing in a stone room with high, vaulted ceilings. In the center of the room, black and white marble and gold and silver are inlaid on the floor in patterns: triangles, circles, pentagrams, hexagrams, lines connecting and intersecting over and over. Above this a huge rattling contraption turns the planets in miniature, all rusting brass and iron.
"I did not make it," Illyana confesses. "I was never very good with math. So!" She trips over to the machine on inhuman legs, tail swishing. "Piotr is coming to the NOW. Let me see... hmm." She studies the false universe, ducking to avoid being hit in the head by stray moons. "Tuesday," she says finally. "At... nine AM. I think."
"Are you fucking shitting me?"
John still has no control over that tongue of his. It has, in fact, gotten worse over the years. He doubts she minds much.
"Tuesday? This Tuesday?"
It is Sunday.
That wasn't a lot of time to prepare, though he felt as if he'd been preparing for this for years. Still, unless he got her to port him back right into Piotr's Land, he probably wouldn't make it in time. And he'd be fucking stupid to even try without getting his equipment and some back up - that's why they joined the resistance, for this event, he wasn't about to leave them out of it.
Still. Tuesday.
"Can you stop it yourself?" he asks. "Like, when your younger self and Peter come through Limbo in the first place. Just sent them the fuck back to where they belong. You could do that, right?"
But he knows the answer already. It's not something she can do. Or, perhaps, won't do.
Illyana gives John a withering look. "If it were that easy, would I not have done that ALREADY?" she snarls. "There are rules." She looks away. "I know that now."
She's silent for a moment, brooding. The only noise is the creaking and whirring of machinery, constant and unhealthy.
"Tuesday," Illyana says at length. She shakes her head and steps away, heading unerringly for a low table nearby. It is piled high with glasses and bottles and bowls and strings and dry withered husks of things best left unidentified. At one end there are small cages, and it is one of these that she opens and reaches into. Her taloned hand pulls out a pigeon, and she coos softly to it, keeping it calm.
"He will be in the desert," she says to John as she crouches, putting the bird on its back. "I remember that. A hundred miles from anywhere. I bet HE remembers, too." She sighs sadly and slits the pigeon open with one of her nails, letting go so it can flap uselessly about the floor. She watches it intently, nodding slightly when the animal's intestines slide from its body.
"Oh yes," she near whispers. "He remembers." She looks around at John, absently licking blood off her fingers. "Tuesday. Nine-oh-eight in the morning. Piotr always was an early riser. I can take us there." She taps one side of her head and smiles hugely. "I know where he will be. Up here. Exactly. Would you like some tea?"
"No, thanks," John declines casually, as if he wasn't completely disguested by Illyana licking blood of her fingers. He's seen a lot worse done to people then she did to that bird, but the way she did so as if it were a normal everyday thing, as if it weren't more then a little creepy, put him off.
But he's smart enough not to show that. Offending Magik would not be a very good idea at all. Not when he had to get back to Earth, and forward to Tuesday, to where and when he could find Pete.
He's not surprised to hear that Colossus remembered, that Colossus knew when his younger self will be appearing. John knpws that he should take care to not treat the young Peter from the past with the hatred he felt for his older self. John wonders if he would even be able to look at him kindly. He'd have to make sure he did; this Peter will not know of all the bad blood that went down between them.
"Thank you," John says. "For taking me there."
And he thought he shouldn't mention that they were totally fucking up the rules by doing so. That seems to be a sore subject with her.
"You're welcome." She sounds so prim it's laughable, all things considered.
"When do you want to go? Now? Later? And tea? Yes, no? I make it myself. It is very good."
"No tea," John says. He thought about what she asked him, about what would be best. He really should stop and get his crew...
"Now," he says. "Let's go now. Let's go to Tuesday."
John is a survivor, and a leader, and totally prepared for this. He'd be able to deal with just himself and Pete. He just needs to get there, asap.
Illyana shrugged. Boys were so impatient.
But she stalked over to John's side and nodded, and at once a golden disck appeared beneath them and--
Blackness, a cacophony of bells, screams, wind, blackness, pain
-- they're standing in the middle of what was once St. Petersberg.
"Chto za huy!" Illyana exclaims, kicking at loose rubble and snow. She snarled, a deep animal sound, and her fingers clutched at the air in spasms.
"What the fuck?" John asks, looking around nervously.
"Walls," Illyana says darkly. "I hit... something. It messed with my mutant powers. It must be a security measure." She sat down quite suddenly, face miserable.
"Eto prosto pizdets..." she mutters. "John, I am sorry. I cannot take us there. We are so fucked."
"You can't," John asks in disbelief. "What the fuck do you mean, you can't?"
He listens as Illyana rambles on, and he's able to decipher what the problems was: there seemed to be some sort of shield around the area where Peter was expected that prevented Illyana's teleportation powers.
"Fuck, HE really does know," John says, sitting down on the ground not to far away from where Illyana had slumped to the ground. "Just... fuck."
He sighs. He will just have to come up with a new plan, really. And he does, quite quickly, as long as Illyana is willing to help.
It could go either way with that one, but he might as well ask.
"Will you take me back to my safehouse, just for a pit stop? I'll get some supplies and stuff. Then, if you can put me as close to the point you can get me. As close to Peter as you can... that's our best bet, yeah?"
Illyana nods. "That is our best bet," she agrees. She sighs and looks around the ruined city.
"Rasputins always did have a tendency to go mad with power," she mutters. "Come on."
And an instant later, they're at John's safehouse, startling one of his men quite badly. Illyana just stares at him blankly as he yelps and then gets himself under control as soon as he realises his leader is there. She follows as John goes to gather supplies, not paying much attention to anyone but him.
"When you find him," she says, "you must get him someplace safe. You must explain to him what has happened." She shakes her head. "I do no think he would believe me. And sometimes I... I forget important things." She looks moodily at the floor. "You must do that. And then I will find you again, and I will take care of the end." She takes hold of John's arm and turned him so he was facing her. "Promise me you will do as I say."
John turns to her. From the side, Jones watches, his face grimacing at the look of her hands, even though she isn't even touching him. But John doesn't have such a reaction. He put a hand over hers, and says, "I'll try."
It's all he can promise her.
He grabs a hold of Jones' arm, now. John's face changes. Now, it's that of a soldier. A leader. One who has a mission, and one who has to get it done right
"Okay," John says, looking hard at Illyana. "We're ready."
And just like that, one of her discs appeared beneath them and the next second they were outdoors again, standing underneath an angry sky. Illyana sighs.
"I am tired," she announces, and looks John in the eye. "You find him. You tell him. And then you come to me." She leans forward and gently kisses John on one grizzled cheek. "Good luck, hero." She steps back onto another flash of gold and is gone.