E.R./X-Men fic: "Allegiance" - Fandom Cheat Sheets
Title: Allegiance
Characters: Ray, Neela, Jean, Xavier, Abby, Cyclops, Kovac, Gates & pretty much all the X2 ensemble
Pairings: Ray/Neela, canon pairings
Rating: teen (PTSD, discussion of child abuse, mutant hate, things going boom)
Summary: Ray doesn't need the Professor to tell him that you can't outrun your past. But that doesn't mean he'll stop trying - even when his mutant powers destroy the life he has built in Chicago, and William Stryker targets his old team.
AN: This fic is a reimagination of X2 (and parts of E.R.), pretty much like the story might have worked out if Ray Barnett was a central comicverse character who thus had to have been a part of the movie. I hope that many people will have fun reading it no matter the fandom combination is so obscure! Thanks to gabilar94 for answering questions about Boston, and to millari, who did a fabulous job betaing. She, BTW, doesn't know either fandom, so if you're considering reading this despite only knowing one of them, I think it's absolutely worth a shot. Plus, there are fandom cheat sheets.
Fandom cheat sheet for those of you who don't know E.R.
E.R. is set - you name it - in the emergency room of a teaching hospital, the Chicago County. My story gives us a little glimpse of season 12 (in the prologue), then moves on to crash an episode called "I don't" towards the end of season 13 (in chapter one). No matter that the show was on air for a very long time, featuring a big ensemble, you don't actually need to know much about it if you're just able to keep apart the main characters of my story. We launch with the E.R. setting and cast, but move on to the X-Men settings soon enough, so things will start looking a lot more familiar to you around chapter 3.
Dr. Ray Barnett
Ray, our reluctant hero. A third year resident, he's a bit of an obscurity in the E.R. because he wears evil looking shirts and used to paint his nails black before the Chief forbade it. The resident efficiency whiz, he's got terrible people skills, often being too impatient to listen his patients out. Originally, he regarded doctoring as a way to pay the bills, preferring partying, having one night stands and practicing with his punk rock band over focusing on work. But since the band moved on to L.A. without him, he's started focusing on being a good doctor. Ray has a suspicious habit of lying whenever his family or past come up - one day he's from Philly, the next he's from Florida (we'll eventually learn where he's from, but I'm disregarding that info in my fic, as it happened after "I don't"). When rooming with Neela Rasgotra in his first year of residency, he fell in love with her viciously, a feeling he is perfectly helpless about. In the episode "I don't," he has just come to realize that no matter what he'll do, she'll always go back to Tony Gates. Ironically, he's getting it all wrong.
Dr. Neela Rasgotra
Neela started her residency as an E.R. doctor alongside Ray, a job that neither fit her controlled and rational professional persona nor her many personal insecurities. She has since switched to the field of surgery, excelling there with both her brains and her calm in the face of gore. Her private life, unfortunately, is a lot more troubled. Falling for her room mate Ray, Neela agreed to marrying the officer Michael Gallant despite herself, just to be notified of his death in Iraq shortly after he went back there. Guilty about her feelings for Ray, she launched into a rebound relationship with new intern Tony Gates. Neela hails from London and is of Indian descent. Last we saw her during the wedding in "I don't," she was explaining to Tony in how many ways their relationship was a terrible idea, determined to give her feelings for Ray a shot.
Dr. Abby Lockhart and Dr. Luka Kovac
Here with their son Joe during their wedding in the episode recounted in our fic. Abby started her residency alongside Neela and Ray, befriending Neela especially, who used to crash on her couch. Abby used to be a nurse before she was a resident, which accounts for the fact that she's a little older and a lot more self-confident than her friends. If something's wrong in the E.R., you can count on her to notice. Dr. Kovac is the Chief of the E.R. but he is currently in the process of resigning from the position, since he has found that administrative work is not for him at all.
Intern Tony Gates
Here with E.R. attending Dr. Pratt (on the left). While a pointedly liberal, smart guy, Tony has strong issues with following orders given by men (most notably Ray's) and with staying faithful to his women. While dating Neela, he still was with long-time lover Meg, who committed suicide when he left her. He and Ray dislike each other very much on both a personal and a professional level.
Other Characters
Other characters have short cameos. I won't bother listing them here, because they're not much more than extras in this story. All you need to know is that they're part of the hospital staff, and part of the E.R. staff in most cases. Obviously, we don't know anything about their stances on mutant rights, but I went by what we know about their political inclinations and their respective level of homophobia.
That's it! Go read and have fun!
Fandom cheat sheet for those of you who don't know X-Men (Movieverse)
You should be able to go by if you know the general premise of the universe, and if names such as Cyclops, Professor X or Wolverine ring a bell. It'd be a lot better if you have seen X-Men 2, though. A more detailed refresher on the movieverse: Humanity as we know it has evolved, and people with super powers have started being born thanks to genetic mutation. However, those mutants are hated and feared for being different; just recently, a Mutant Registration Act that would have forced all mutants to come out was barely fought off in the Senate. The Professors Xavier and Lehnsherr therefore started a school for mutants to create a safe environment for mutant kids to grow up in. As they had very different ideas on how to fight for mutant rights, Professor Lehnsherr eventually went off and became a terrorist. Meanwhile, Xavier founded the X-Men - a group of former students with especially strong alpha powers, trying to protect the world from evil mutants. Just recently, they apprehended Lehnsherr - now known as Magneto - when he was trying to transform all of the UN into mutants with a Machine of Evilness. He's now in prison, and most of his henchmen are dead.
If you still need to know more than that or just want to see pictures, here's a character list:
Professor Charles Xavier
The most powerful telepath the world has yet seen, Xavier is in possession of a machine called Cerebro to amplify his powers, one so powerful that he could use it to kill pretty much everybody with a mere thought. Fortunately, he's got ethics. Most of the time, anyway - we'll get into that in the story. His students, for whom he always has the best intentions, adore the ground he walks on, and he has saved numerous kids with his school, to which he has dedicated his life. He's in a wheelchair.
Dr. Jean Grey
School doctor and mutant researcher Jean Grey was Xavier's first student. A gentle and mature person, she is not quite fulfilled in her relationship with Scott Summers, which might or might not have to do with the fact that she's got a multiple personality disorder - a condition that developed when Xavier cut her off most of her powers during her childhood out of safety concerns. She remains unaware of this and of her secondary, much more powerful personality Phoenix, though when fighting Magneto and the Machine of Evilness, something came a little loose up there. It should be noted for the record that she's somewhat older than Scott (and Ray). She's the only member of the X-Men without a call sign. Her powers are telekinesis and telepathy, but thanks to Xavier's tampering, she's nowhere near as powerful as him.
Kurt Wagner aka Nightcrawler
Kurt Wagner is not an associate of the school as of yet. Raised by the crew of a circus in Germany, he is a gentle and soft-spoken Catholic despite his scary looks - he's got a tail and fangs, too. His power is teleportation. After being captured by mutant-hating General William Stryker, he was injected with a serum to control his mind, and sent out to attack the United States President right in the Oval Office - a plan to create panic so to push for stronger laws against mutants, and to get clearance for a strike against the X-Men in particular.
Scott Summers aka Cyclops
That's Cyclops, the leader of the X-Men and one of the school's teachers, who can't take off his glasses because otherwise red optic blasts would shoot out of them and level everything in sight. He's aiming to avoid that. A very serious young man, he cares deeply for his team and affiliates, as well as for Xavier's dream of peaceful coexistence. It stands to reason that he would loosen up around his friends, although I don't think we've ever seen it happen. Also he can't stand Logan, because Logan keeps flirting with Jean.
Ororo Munroe aka Storm
Born and raised in Africa, Ororo was one of the latest X-Men to join the school as a student. Scott's second in command and the resident history teacher, she's a really reluctant, insightful person who admits to a certain amount of hate of the humans, a hate that she herself says is born out of fear. Once she starts fighting, though, she's a force to be reckoned with. Her power is control of the weather, tightly connected to her ability to keep her emotions in check. (Ororo's character got a do-over in X-Men 3, but I'm ignoring that here, as it happened after X2)
Logan aka Wolverine
Logan is a recent acquaintance of the X-Men. He has an ability to heal himself and martial arts skills like you wouldn't believe. Also he has a skeleton made out of unbreakable steel, including metal claws he can retract between his knuckles. The latter is not a part of his power, but something that was done to him by aforementioned General Stryker in his attempts to use mutants to kill mutants. Unfortunately, the trauma of the procedure made Logan snap, killing everybody in his line of sight on the way out, and developing a severe case of amnesia. He is now searching for his past. During our fic, Logan will recognize Stryker as a person he knows, and learn lots about himself in the process, but it'll all happen off screen. That said, he's not a nice guy. He's a really scary, deadly guy.
Professor Eric Lehnsherr aka Magneto
Magneto thinks it would be best if the mutants ruled, and the humans were their slaves, because otherwise the humans would just kill all the mutants. He thus became a terrorist. His power is the control of magnetic force, which makes him an almost all-powerful villain. Also it has enabled him to build a helmet that might look dorky, but protects him from Xavier's telepathy. He's currently imprisoned in a plastic prison especially designed for him. Also he's Stryker's source of intel on the X-Men, because Stryker isn't shy at all about using his mind-fuckery serum on the old man. This is not making Lehnsherr a happier camper.
Mystique
That's Mystique, the only one of Magneto's henchmen to survive the latest battle. As a shapeshifter able to take anybody's form, she's been biding her time, currently working on freeing Magneto from his plastic prison. She's gonna make it, too, because she's freakishly competent.
Other Characters
Other characters with cameos include Jubilee (a student who I don't have to introduce here because she's barely in the movies, so I'll be treating her like an original character, anyway); John Allerdyce aka Pyro (another student, who's not all that happy in a school that teaches you to use your powers with moderation); Bobby Drake aka Iceman (John's much more rational friend, whose suburban parents have no clue that he's a mutant); Marie aka Rogue (Bobby's girlfriend, who can't touch anybody's skin due to her powers); General William Stryker (who hates all mutants, and takes personal issue with Xavier); and Dr. Hank McCoy aka Beast, a famous researcher and former X-Man, who never actually appears but is mentioned a lot.
That's it. Go read and have fun!
Characters: Ray, Neela, Jean, Xavier, Abby, Cyclops, Kovac, Gates & pretty much all the X2 ensemble
Pairings: Ray/Neela, canon pairings
Rating: teen (PTSD, discussion of child abuse, mutant hate, things going boom)
Summary: Ray doesn't need the Professor to tell him that you can't outrun your past. But that doesn't mean he'll stop trying - even when his mutant powers destroy the life he has built in Chicago, and William Stryker targets his old team.
AN: This fic is a reimagination of X2 (and parts of E.R.), pretty much like the story might have worked out if Ray Barnett was a central comicverse character who thus had to have been a part of the movie. I hope that many people will have fun reading it no matter the fandom combination is so obscure! Thanks to gabilar94 for answering questions about Boston, and to millari, who did a fabulous job betaing. She, BTW, doesn't know either fandom, so if you're considering reading this despite only knowing one of them, I think it's absolutely worth a shot. Plus, there are fandom cheat sheets.
Fandom cheat sheet for those of you who don't know E.R.
E.R. is set - you name it - in the emergency room of a teaching hospital, the Chicago County. My story gives us a little glimpse of season 12 (in the prologue), then moves on to crash an episode called "I don't" towards the end of season 13 (in chapter one). No matter that the show was on air for a very long time, featuring a big ensemble, you don't actually need to know much about it if you're just able to keep apart the main characters of my story. We launch with the E.R. setting and cast, but move on to the X-Men settings soon enough, so things will start looking a lot more familiar to you around chapter 3.
Dr. Ray Barnett
Ray, our reluctant hero. A third year resident, he's a bit of an obscurity in the E.R. because he wears evil looking shirts and used to paint his nails black before the Chief forbade it. The resident efficiency whiz, he's got terrible people skills, often being too impatient to listen his patients out. Originally, he regarded doctoring as a way to pay the bills, preferring partying, having one night stands and practicing with his punk rock band over focusing on work. But since the band moved on to L.A. without him, he's started focusing on being a good doctor. Ray has a suspicious habit of lying whenever his family or past come up - one day he's from Philly, the next he's from Florida (we'll eventually learn where he's from, but I'm disregarding that info in my fic, as it happened after "I don't"). When rooming with Neela Rasgotra in his first year of residency, he fell in love with her viciously, a feeling he is perfectly helpless about. In the episode "I don't," he has just come to realize that no matter what he'll do, she'll always go back to Tony Gates. Ironically, he's getting it all wrong.
Dr. Neela Rasgotra
Neela started her residency as an E.R. doctor alongside Ray, a job that neither fit her controlled and rational professional persona nor her many personal insecurities. She has since switched to the field of surgery, excelling there with both her brains and her calm in the face of gore. Her private life, unfortunately, is a lot more troubled. Falling for her room mate Ray, Neela agreed to marrying the officer Michael Gallant despite herself, just to be notified of his death in Iraq shortly after he went back there. Guilty about her feelings for Ray, she launched into a rebound relationship with new intern Tony Gates. Neela hails from London and is of Indian descent. Last we saw her during the wedding in "I don't," she was explaining to Tony in how many ways their relationship was a terrible idea, determined to give her feelings for Ray a shot.
Dr. Abby Lockhart and Dr. Luka Kovac
Here with their son Joe during their wedding in the episode recounted in our fic. Abby started her residency alongside Neela and Ray, befriending Neela especially, who used to crash on her couch. Abby used to be a nurse before she was a resident, which accounts for the fact that she's a little older and a lot more self-confident than her friends. If something's wrong in the E.R., you can count on her to notice. Dr. Kovac is the Chief of the E.R. but he is currently in the process of resigning from the position, since he has found that administrative work is not for him at all.
Intern Tony Gates
Here with E.R. attending Dr. Pratt (on the left). While a pointedly liberal, smart guy, Tony has strong issues with following orders given by men (most notably Ray's) and with staying faithful to his women. While dating Neela, he still was with long-time lover Meg, who committed suicide when he left her. He and Ray dislike each other very much on both a personal and a professional level.
Other Characters
Other characters have short cameos. I won't bother listing them here, because they're not much more than extras in this story. All you need to know is that they're part of the hospital staff, and part of the E.R. staff in most cases. Obviously, we don't know anything about their stances on mutant rights, but I went by what we know about their political inclinations and their respective level of homophobia.
That's it! Go read and have fun!
Fandom cheat sheet for those of you who don't know X-Men (Movieverse)
You should be able to go by if you know the general premise of the universe, and if names such as Cyclops, Professor X or Wolverine ring a bell. It'd be a lot better if you have seen X-Men 2, though. A more detailed refresher on the movieverse: Humanity as we know it has evolved, and people with super powers have started being born thanks to genetic mutation. However, those mutants are hated and feared for being different; just recently, a Mutant Registration Act that would have forced all mutants to come out was barely fought off in the Senate. The Professors Xavier and Lehnsherr therefore started a school for mutants to create a safe environment for mutant kids to grow up in. As they had very different ideas on how to fight for mutant rights, Professor Lehnsherr eventually went off and became a terrorist. Meanwhile, Xavier founded the X-Men - a group of former students with especially strong alpha powers, trying to protect the world from evil mutants. Just recently, they apprehended Lehnsherr - now known as Magneto - when he was trying to transform all of the UN into mutants with a Machine of Evilness. He's now in prison, and most of his henchmen are dead.
If you still need to know more than that or just want to see pictures, here's a character list:
Professor Charles Xavier
The most powerful telepath the world has yet seen, Xavier is in possession of a machine called Cerebro to amplify his powers, one so powerful that he could use it to kill pretty much everybody with a mere thought. Fortunately, he's got ethics. Most of the time, anyway - we'll get into that in the story. His students, for whom he always has the best intentions, adore the ground he walks on, and he has saved numerous kids with his school, to which he has dedicated his life. He's in a wheelchair.
Dr. Jean Grey
School doctor and mutant researcher Jean Grey was Xavier's first student. A gentle and mature person, she is not quite fulfilled in her relationship with Scott Summers, which might or might not have to do with the fact that she's got a multiple personality disorder - a condition that developed when Xavier cut her off most of her powers during her childhood out of safety concerns. She remains unaware of this and of her secondary, much more powerful personality Phoenix, though when fighting Magneto and the Machine of Evilness, something came a little loose up there. It should be noted for the record that she's somewhat older than Scott (and Ray). She's the only member of the X-Men without a call sign. Her powers are telekinesis and telepathy, but thanks to Xavier's tampering, she's nowhere near as powerful as him.
Kurt Wagner aka Nightcrawler
Kurt Wagner is not an associate of the school as of yet. Raised by the crew of a circus in Germany, he is a gentle and soft-spoken Catholic despite his scary looks - he's got a tail and fangs, too. His power is teleportation. After being captured by mutant-hating General William Stryker, he was injected with a serum to control his mind, and sent out to attack the United States President right in the Oval Office - a plan to create panic so to push for stronger laws against mutants, and to get clearance for a strike against the X-Men in particular.
Scott Summers aka Cyclops
That's Cyclops, the leader of the X-Men and one of the school's teachers, who can't take off his glasses because otherwise red optic blasts would shoot out of them and level everything in sight. He's aiming to avoid that. A very serious young man, he cares deeply for his team and affiliates, as well as for Xavier's dream of peaceful coexistence. It stands to reason that he would loosen up around his friends, although I don't think we've ever seen it happen. Also he can't stand Logan, because Logan keeps flirting with Jean.
Ororo Munroe aka Storm
Born and raised in Africa, Ororo was one of the latest X-Men to join the school as a student. Scott's second in command and the resident history teacher, she's a really reluctant, insightful person who admits to a certain amount of hate of the humans, a hate that she herself says is born out of fear. Once she starts fighting, though, she's a force to be reckoned with. Her power is control of the weather, tightly connected to her ability to keep her emotions in check. (Ororo's character got a do-over in X-Men 3, but I'm ignoring that here, as it happened after X2)
Logan aka Wolverine
Logan is a recent acquaintance of the X-Men. He has an ability to heal himself and martial arts skills like you wouldn't believe. Also he has a skeleton made out of unbreakable steel, including metal claws he can retract between his knuckles. The latter is not a part of his power, but something that was done to him by aforementioned General Stryker in his attempts to use mutants to kill mutants. Unfortunately, the trauma of the procedure made Logan snap, killing everybody in his line of sight on the way out, and developing a severe case of amnesia. He is now searching for his past. During our fic, Logan will recognize Stryker as a person he knows, and learn lots about himself in the process, but it'll all happen off screen. That said, he's not a nice guy. He's a really scary, deadly guy.
Professor Eric Lehnsherr aka Magneto
Magneto thinks it would be best if the mutants ruled, and the humans were their slaves, because otherwise the humans would just kill all the mutants. He thus became a terrorist. His power is the control of magnetic force, which makes him an almost all-powerful villain. Also it has enabled him to build a helmet that might look dorky, but protects him from Xavier's telepathy. He's currently imprisoned in a plastic prison especially designed for him. Also he's Stryker's source of intel on the X-Men, because Stryker isn't shy at all about using his mind-fuckery serum on the old man. This is not making Lehnsherr a happier camper.
Mystique
That's Mystique, the only one of Magneto's henchmen to survive the latest battle. As a shapeshifter able to take anybody's form, she's been biding her time, currently working on freeing Magneto from his plastic prison. She's gonna make it, too, because she's freakishly competent.
Other Characters
Other characters with cameos include Jubilee (a student who I don't have to introduce here because she's barely in the movies, so I'll be treating her like an original character, anyway); John Allerdyce aka Pyro (another student, who's not all that happy in a school that teaches you to use your powers with moderation); Bobby Drake aka Iceman (John's much more rational friend, whose suburban parents have no clue that he's a mutant); Marie aka Rogue (Bobby's girlfriend, who can't touch anybody's skin due to her powers); General William Stryker (who hates all mutants, and takes personal issue with Xavier); and Dr. Hank McCoy aka Beast, a famous researcher and former X-Man, who never actually appears but is mentioned a lot.
That's it. Go read and have fun!