E.R./X-Men: Allegiance [6/8]
Title: Allegiance
Fandoms: E.R./X-Men Movieverse
Spoilers: Up to the end of E.R. season 13, rewriting "I don't," rewriting X2, and ignoring everything that came afterwards on both fronts, except for some backstory borrowed from X3
Characters: Ray, Neela, Jean, Xavier, Abby, Cyclops, Kovac, Gates & pretty much all the X2 ensemble
Pairings: Ray/Neela, canon pairings
Wordcount: ~ 33,000 words
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 who don't know E.R. -- Fandom Cheat Sheet for those who don't know the X-Men Movieverse
Prologue -- Chapter 1 -- Chapter 2 -- Chapter 3 -- Chapter 4 -- Chapter 5
Just for the record, my favorite scene is in this one.
Chapter 6
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Ray almost stumbled in his attempt to get out of the Drakes' living room fast, glass doors sliding shut behind him with force. Bobby's worried and Neela's calming voices were shut out immediately, neatly trimmed lawn quiet, and he tried to take a deep breath. All of his body had to be shaking.
He didn't know what the fuck was wrong with him. It had seemed like such a good idea at the time - laying low at Bobby's house, telling them Bobby had brought two staff members and his best friend to tell his parents what he really was.
But that had been before Ronny Drake had stopped looking his brother in the eye, before Mr. Drake's face had hardened and Mrs. Drake had started working assiduously on not breaking into tears. And no matter that Neela was doing her best in there to keep things cool and rational, it had suddenly all been too much. His own mother's sobs rang in his ear as if she were right there in the room with them - hiding in a corner - his father had been screaming and he might as well have been right back there, sound and smells and pictures unreeling out of order when he should be able to keep them in line. It had been all he could do to just sit there, willing Neela to take over, starting violently when his phone had started buzzing.
His phone. Surreally aware of his heaving chest and his pounding heart, Ray stared at it without understanding before he remembered what it was for. It was still buzzing. The X-jet's caller ID was the same it had been five years ago. It hit him, then, what he was supposed to be doing, and he raised it to his ear, hitting answer shakily.
Jean and 'Ro, and Scott and Professor Xavier were still out there, somewhere, out of reach all day. No news from anybody. No news from Logan.
"Tell me you're alright," he said, because nothing was alright, they weren't alright. Because the Drakes weren't taking the news well and that meant that none of them were safe; Jean and 'Ro couldn't be safe.
You're going mad.
"Ray," Jean's voice breathed with relief. "Thank god. We couldn't reach anybody at the mansion."
The mansion that had been attacked, not because of the Drakes or his father - not because of his father - and Ray had been alright during that. He'd been alright then. What the fuck was happening to him? "Are you alright?" he repeated.
'Ro. "Affirmative. We've retrieved the mutant, and are on the way home."
"There is no home." He had to suppress a bubble of hysterical laughter, swallowing hard, pressing his eyes shut. Home - what a joke. "There's nobody left at the mansion, 'Ro. There's nothing left, they... There was an attack." Focus. Be an X-Man. Report. "The mansion was attacked by, by soldiers. They had tranquilizers. They must have known that the Professor wouldn't be there. Some kids got out, but some were taken. Logan went after them, but he hasn't called in. I gave him a team phone."
There was a tense pause when the women took in the news. Ray used the opportunity to breathe, deep calming breaths - and don't the fuck hyperventilate - not listening to his father's voice, not looking at the patio when the sight threatened to overlap with cheap yellow carpet and blood...
Please, no...
Jean's voice. "We haven't been able to reach Scott and the Professor, either."
"Where are you now?" Storm, ever so practical. "We'll pick you up."
"Orient Heights. Boston. Bobby Drake's house. I'm with Allerdyce and Neela, from Chicago, who came to visit. It's... Something's..." He trailed of. He had no idea how to finish that sentence. Make it fast, he wanted to say. Get me out of here. Please. Make it an extraction code. It was just so hard to wrap his mind around why.
"What's wrong?" Jean, alert.
His throat felt too constricted to swallow down that lump.
("I should have killed you!" shouted his father. "I should have drowned you at birth!")
"It's..."
Something's wrong with me, he wanted to say. It's never happened before. Not like this. I think I'm going crazy. It's the wrong time and it isn't supposed to be happening, but it is, and I think I'm panicking. I think this is... this is panic. He was supposed to be a doctor. He was supposed to be able to diagnose; he should have words. There was no time for this now.
Come up with something. No time.
"I'm... The Drakes.
"I think I'm having an anxiety attack." It didn't quite sound like his voice. "Some sort of... episode."
A beat. "We're on our way. Stay calm." Jean had switched to a cool collected professional voice. "Your friend is a doctor, too?"
He swallowed convulsively. "Yeah."
"Tell her what's happening. Tell her, okay? She'll know how to help."
"Sure." Whatever. It seemed like too much of an effort to disagree, and it seemed to be what Jean wanted to hear.
"We're ten minutes out."
The connection closed after those words, and Ray slumped against the wall, closing his eyes and trying to will away that terrible mix of dizziness and the past sifting in and out of the present. It was impossible to focus on anything but that - except he had to go back in there to finish that conversation and tell John and Bobby, in a normal voice that they had to leave. Not freaking out about going back in. It would all make sense once it stopped, Ray told himself, except he was so shaky, and what if it wouldn't?
He was Ray Barnett, for fuck's sake, he didn't have anxiety attacks.
("I'm gonna kill you..."
Puddle of blood growing...)
One step at a time.
That was how Ray willed himself to get up, to shove the cell into his pocket, to turn towards the glass doors. Looking through, the Drakes and Bobby and John were talking. Ronny still was staring at the ground, and Mrs. Drake's shoulders were shaking just so. Neela, seated on a chair across the window, was staring at him, face confused and eyes concerned as her mind was working away.
Again the doors opened with too much force, banging shut when Ray staggered inside. Bobby's brother jumped to his feet, staring at Bobby and John in defiance and--
"Ronny! You stay right where you are," Mr. Drake said sharply. "This isn't the time."
Ronny sank down onto the couch with blazing hate in his eyes - or maybe that was just what it looked like to Ray - and Bobby lowered his head, and John smirked in delight.
Getting it all wrong.
"Mom..." Bobby muttered. His world had just collapsed, Ray thought. A son no more. Just a mutant.
"This is all my fault," his mother said, pressing her hand against her mouth.
John perked up leisurely. "Actually, they've found out that it's the males who..."
"We have to leave," Ray interrupted him, eyes moving from Bobby to Neela to the adults.
(The puddle of blood was growing on the carpet, but he didn't stop.
Let go of the force field, Ray, a voice was saying in his head, strange mental grasp on his mind, not violent just yet but firm.
I can't, he thought back at the voice, scared, shaking inside while his hands weren't shaking at all and he wasn't speaking but was and the force field was up, up, up and he couldn't lower it he couldn't he...
You will kill him if you don't.
I know.
It was the telepath in his head who loosened the force field, not him, and Joshua Barnett slumped to the ground...)
Neela's eyes were still all on him, searching his face.
"Ray..." she said cautiously. Ray thought he might have missed a part of the conversation.
"We have to leave," he repeated. "Now."
"Now wait a minute, Dr. Barnett, you can't just walk in here and dump something like this over our heads without giving us time to talk it through properly," Mr. Drake said, frowning and pulling himself up straight in his chair. "Show some respect for our situation. You're telling us Professor Xavier took away our son to a school for mutants without ever informing us about that fact. And Bobby knew, but never told us. We never knew that he was anything but..."
"Normal?" Bobby said like he was about to puke. "I am normal, dad, I..."
"...and that doesn't mean that we don't love him anymore, but..."
"Yeah? Could have fooled me."
"Ray!"
("We should have drowned you at birth. We should..."
"I'm gonna kill you..." Ray managed, trying to get up.
His chest was hurting - everything was hurting, and bruised - but he didn't...)
"...for Bobby to stay here with you so that you can talk about it as much as you have to." Neela had stood up. "We know that it's a lot to take in, and you should have all the time you need. Bobby, you will fill your parents in on all they need to know about the current situation?" Bobby nodded, all pale. "We need to get home before curfew."
"I'm staying, too," John said.
Neela's face remained firm, though her eyes flickered at Ronny when he looked at John in horror. "Uhm, I don't think that's a good idea, John. The Drakes should have some time to themselves. And. You have a test tomorrow." And wouldn't that also be hysterical if Ray wasn't feeling like he should have fainted minutes ago. What the fuck.
"Promise you'll call me about Rogue, Dr. Rasgotra?" Bobby said.
"Absolutely. I promise."
There was a round of goodbyes then, and Ray reacted on autopilot, shaking a rigid Mr. Drakes and a trembling Mrs. Drakes hand and muttering something that had to have been the right phrase, that or nobody had listened. The Drakes were focused on Bobby, and Mr. Drake wrote the number of Neela's cell down for if he wanted to get in touch. Ronny stayed back, for which Ray was grateful when he got into motion, feeling like he was staggering towards the door although he could hear his boots steadily on the parquet. Neela was herding John outside and a moment later, they were on the porch, moving towards the car.
Neela was at his side, reaching for his arm as they moved. It was weird that it didn't make him flinch. "What's wrong, Ray?" she asked in a low, urgent voice. "You seem altered. I've never seen you act like this."
"Me neither," Ray muttered, trying to chase that terror away that had loosened when they'd left the house, but not by much. He needed to run.
"Have you ever been treated for an anxiety disorder? There aren't any meds you should be on, right? I suppose you didn't have time to take any along..." Howard had flunked out of his residency for OCD, Ray suddenly thought. The day Neela had sold him a muffin.
"What's wrong with him?" John said loudly.
"Nothing is wrong with me," Ray managed. "I'm fine."
It was then that he heard Jean calling his name. Raising his head in befuddlement, he saw her hurrying down the sidewalk, a hooded figure huddled in an oversized cloak trailing after her.
"John, follow the street to find the jet," Jean said, sending the boy off without looking at him twice, eyes focused on Ray. "Neela, I'm Jean Grey. Scott told me all about your visit on the phone. You don't happen to be a psychiatrist?" She smirked unhappily when Neela shook her head, moving carefully to reach for Ray's shoulders and search his face. "I brought Kurt to teleport you to the jet if you want," she said gently. That was weird, these two women, of all people, clinging to him.
"Who's Kurt?" Ray said, flinching away with a grimace when he felt her probing his mind.
The pressure of the intrusion amplified as if refusing to be thrown out, then stopped abruptly when she retreated.
There was a weird flash in Jean's eyes but it vanished as well.
"Let's try a grounding technique," she said firmly. "Tell me four things you see."
"I see a meddling telepath," he muttered weakly.
"Hello. I am Kurt Wagner," the cloaked man was saying to Neela, moving to lower his hood in the corner of Ray's eye. "Please don't be afraid of me."
Neela screamed.
---
Neela was remarkable, Ray thought in a daze, looking at the clouds rushing by outside the window. He didn't think there were a lot of doctors at Chicago County who would have been ready to accept that America's most wanted shouldn't be off in a prison. Even if Wagner looked like a nice guy, really. Lots of cool body art. Wagner had been drugged when he'd been made to attack the President, but not with Valium.
Ray was on Valium. Jean had insisted. Spending all night driving to Boston couldn't have helped his stress levels, she'd said, and he should rest on the flight instead later when they'd probably play at being X-Men and attacking people. Killing them, too, if they had to. She hadn't said that, but Ray had filled the blank.
He was good at that, killing people.
Now he was hunched in a seat in the jet's little medical bay, unwilling to lie down. Impossible to tell how long they'd been in the air, and he hadn't asked where they were going. At least Neela and Jean had stopped asking him questions.
The door opened. Jean stepped into the room, cautiously perching down next to him. Ray turned his head to face her. "Hey there. How are you doing?" she asked softly.
"Peachy." He smirked at her. "I think you over-medicated me."
"I think you have the drug tolerance of a little girl."
Answering his look without flinching, Jean's lips twitched.
"I think Neela is a little hurt because you made her wait outside," she whispered as if she were sharing a secret.
Just served to confuse him, though. "I did?"
"You seemed to find her presence unsettling, yes. You were a little agitated about it." Jean smiled. "She seems like a very nice person, Ray. We've been having a conversation during the flight. I'm a little envious of how smart she is." There was that honest warmth in her voice that Ray always found so bedazzling. How Xavier could think that a woman like Jean would ever lose control of strong powers, Ray didn't know. "I'm glad you've found someone like her. I remember your girlfriends in college." Jean made a face. "If you could call them that."
He snorted. "We're not dating."
"You aren't?" One of her eyebrows wandered upwards.
"No," he said slowly, because it was all very obvious. "She went away to marry Michael Gallant." And to fuck Tony Gates on a desk. I could have fucked her on a desk, Ray thought, feeling hazy. Surely that hadn't been the issue.
"She feels very strongly about you, you know. I think it scares her a little."
"How'd you figure that?"
Jean chuckled at him. "Telepath, remember?" Crooking her head at him, she softly covered his hand in hers. "It doesn't take that to see it, though, Ray. She's head over heels for you, and she'd be so good for you. I'm certain you'd be good for her, too. Promise me you won't chase her away."
Ray frowned, still thinking of being interrupted by Marines with tranqs. There's always something. Heh. "Why do you think I would?" It was Neela. Neela was great.
"You made her leave you alone just now, remember, loopy one? That's not how you get close to people." Jean good-naturally patted his hand. "I wish I could say we'll continue this conversation once the drug is out of your system, but both you and I know that you'll find ways to avoid that. So I'm going to let you get some more rest. Storm will want me to take over the controls."
Watching her leave, Ray eventually turned to look out of the window again. They were so high up. If he wasn't too lazy to bother, he thought he might have gone and thought about his dad, or about Chicago, or about other things he preferred to ban from his mind at every other time.
He thought it was a good thing that Jean had gone and joined 'Ro in the cockpit, because there was a military fighter plane showing up right next to the jet.
---
Nobody expected her to do anything, but Neela felt hyped up from the adrenaline still coursing through her veins, hyped up and wide awake, like the coldness of the night couldn't touch her. It annoyed her to notice white-haired Ororo Munroe giving her a look of approval when she jumped up from her place at the fire abruptly to go and help John with the tents. He shouldn't have to do it alone, and it might help in keeping him out of trouble. After the day she'd known John Allerdyce, Neela already had a feeling that somebody should always be in charge of that.
Especially now that a US military missile had almost crashed their plane, and the only thing to stop it from hitting the ground mid-air had been an old man who had courteously introduced himself as Magneto. America's most feared mutant terrorist. Who just happened to have been in the neighborhood after escaping from the safest prison in the world. Then, he'd been informed that Neela was human. She might as well have ceased to exist in his world.
Neela shuddered. John was working away quietly, face suspicious and defensive. Even the prospect of giving her orders on what to hold and what to do had left him unenthused - she didn't know anything about building tents, but it was better than sitting around feeling stupid while that woman Mystique smirked at her.
"Bollocks. I think I cut myself," she muttered, unhappily looking at her hand covered in dirt, tent post forgotten. In the middle of a Canadian forest, no tetanus shot available. "John, you wouldn't happen to carry a Kleenex, would you?"
Hair adrift in the breeze, John looked at her as if a seventeen-year-old carrying a tissue was about the stupidest assumption imaginable. Pressing his lips together, he went back to straightening the canvas, muttering something that was carried away by the wind.
Neela frowned. "What did you say?"
John's face hardened. "The name is Pyro," he repeated louder, daring her to object.
Neela paused for a moment, unsure. "Alright..." she tried.
There was an unreadable expression on John's face when he looked away.
Ray said the children at the school are throwaways, she thought. If there was one thing she'd learned about John at the Drakes' house was that he'd never before seen any such house from the inside. The only legal minor present, he'd found himself surrounded by two terrorists with superhero names, a history teacher who everybody addressed by call sign, and the man whose search warrant was currently flashing over every American news channel - introducing himself, with no small amount of pride, with his stage name on top of his regular one. The Incredible Nightcrawler.
Involuntarily, her eyes moved to the jet, the place where Ray was currently holed up. Threshold, Munroe - Storm - had called him once, but he'd snorted at her.
Maybe it was because he'd already found a way of expressing his otherness in his music and his clothes.
Maybe it wasn't.
In any way, Neela suddenly found that she liked how the school had taught this boy Pyro how to show off what he was, of finding pride in an identity that made him the other. Human or not, it was something that she'd always wished she could be better at. Something she'd always admired about Ray, too.
Her eyes wandered back to John, who was pointedly focusing on the tent. To him, she was the enemy.
"What's your power, Pyro?" she asked cautiously.
His eyes flickered at her face.
"I control fire," he said.
"That sounds rather dangerous."
His lips quirked derisively, and he moved towards the bag of the next tent.
"There's the medical bay in the jet," he said after a minute. "Dr. Grey keeps stuff in there."
Neela smiled. "Thanks," she said. "I'm set."
---
Neela paused on her way up the ramp of the jet when Jean called her name. When she turned to see the older woman approaching, Jean was smiling, but it was an empty polite smile, worn and tired from a fear Neela could barely imagine. Actually, she could, she suddenly realized, thinking of the day two officers had shown up in the E.R. and she had just refused to believe them that Michael was dead. It was strange to think that she had something on this woman. And to think of Michael's death in those terms.
Scott wasn't dead, for all they knew, just missing, but nobody here was in denial about what that probably meant. Both Jean and Storm had spent the day working themselves up into hardened battle-ready soldiers, the lines of veterans etched in their faces.
"We've finally been able to reach Logan," Jean said. "He had to hike out of range to make sure that the radios wouldn't pick up the call. The students are held at a military base underneath Alkali Lake, in British Columbia. He has agreed to wait for us, but I'm afraid he'll run out of patience if we don't hurry." She sighed, as if there was history between her and Logan's impatience that she didn't even want to start dabbling into.
"What about Scott? Does he know if he and Professor Xavier are there?"
Jean rubbed her eyes tiredly. "Logan said he saw transports arrive, but, we don't know. The children have to take priority."
Scrunching her face in sympathy, Neela wished she could think of any comfort to offer.
"Anyway," Jean said. "We're launching at dawn. Alongside Magneto." That one seemed to be giving her a headache. It certainly made Neela's chest grow tight, because... Magneto. "Have you spoken to Ray?"
"I was just on my way to check on him. He hasn't left the jet all evening."
"Yes, Storm and I thought it best to keep him out of Magneto and Mystique's line of sight for now. Magneto and Ray..." She grimaced unhappily. "There's history. Not a bad history, all things considered, but not the kind I want Ray to confront tonight." After a moment of hesitation, she added, "I'll leave briefing him on the situation to you. Just remember we'll need him to be combat-ready tomorrow."
Horror crept up within Neela. Michael, she thought involuntarily. Michael had died in combat when he'd never even been supposed to take part in a fight, except Michael would have fought on the other side in this and... god. "You want him to fight alongside you? When he's just come out of an episode like that?"
"We can't afford not to." Jean sighed, brushing hair out of her face. "Ray is a full alpha mutant and a trained X-Man, Neela. In a fight, he is a weapon. I know this isn't what he wants for himself, but with Magneto in the picture, Storm and I will need somebody we can trust. I don't even want to know what Stryker is doing to the students."
And to Scott, she didn't say, but it was written all over her face when she looked away in distress. Well, that's what happens if you go to war, Neela thought, suddenly angry. People die. Your husband was kidnapped and he'll die because...
...because of absolutely no fault of his. Her anger died just like that, replaced by a terrible coldness. Munroe had explained to Kurt Wagner what the X-Men did, and they didn't play at war - they tried to avoid one - it was nothing like Michael going off to fight it out in an oil raid. Alpha mutants were in the greatest danger of being persecuted, and they were all so scared.
She was just so relieved that Ray didn't want to be any part of it. This situation they were in now, that was one thing - there were children in danger and family and friends. But it wasn't what he'd ever want out of his life, Jean had said that, everything Ray had said and done today had screamed it at her, and she was just so relieved. She could deal with the situation, somehow, but she could never have handled that attitude again.
It's not like in a movie, either, she thought. They need to attack now, because now they can. A day later, maybe they can't. That much she had gleamed from Jean and Storm's conversations with Magneto. This William Stryker, who hated mutants so much, had a serum to control mutants. He'd used it on Magneto, who was said to be one of the most powerful people on this planet. Magneto had dropped hints about how Stryker had done something to Logan once, as well, years ago, and now he had a group of little children in his base.
He had used Wagner to attack his own President and start a war, that was how much he hated them. It was unfathomable to Neela how anybody could hate anybody that strongly. Even she had no argument against Jean's line of reasoning, not after everything they'd gone through already. It all felt so desperate.
"Ray is a good man, even if he tries his hardest to hide it," Jean said, trying for a chuckle. "There won't be a doubt on his mind about coming along. Not with Scott and the Professor gone. He'll know that we don't have a choice."
One last tired smile that didn't quite reach her eyes, and Jean had walked off into the night towards Storm, Mystique and Magneto, making plans for the raid at the fire.
---
It took a moment to spot Ray, who was lounging in the pilot's seat. When Neela walked up to the cockpit, she saw he was stroking alongside the control board as if brushing away dirt. The weird thing was that he wasn't looking like a boy who'd sneaked away to play pilot in the cool fast plane, the way she would have expected Ray to look in a cockpit just a week ago. He looked like he knew where to put his hands, where to rest his feet. Like in the school's infirmary, he made an impression that he belonged - like Michael in uniform.
But he belongs at the E.R. too. Michael never did.
"What are you doing?" Neela asked quietly, not wanting to startle Ray, and still worried after today's events. Cautiously, she sat down on the arm rest of the co-pilot's seat, enough space left between them to show that she didn't mean to intrude. It made butterflies flutter in her stomach, being closer, but right now, she just longed to see Ray be alright.
It seemed to be working. He crooked his head, engrossed in his thoughts. "You know what kind of jet this is?" he asked casually, leftover sedative leaving his voice very even.
Neela snorted a laugh. "I think you already know the answer to that question."
Ray smiled without warmth. "It's a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird," he said. "Those were in use in the Air Force for over thirty years and they're the fastest manned air-breathing jets in the world. Now, official records are gonna tell you that there were only ever thirty-five of them around to start with, but that isn't true - they made a round, neat three dozen. The Professor has friends in high places, though." His smile transformed into a grimace. "I doubt that there's still a single record about this one around, and I'm pretty sure nobody remembers."
Neela frowned, unable to understand what he was getting at. "Jean told me that the Professor is incredibly powerful," she offered.
"Jean has no idea how powerful exactly," he breathed, alluding to yet another thing Neela didn't get but didn't feel qualified to ask about. But Ray shook his head slightly. "Anyway," he said. "You wouldn't believe what kind of bitch a Blackbird is to maintain. She'd have a whole crew taking care of her in the Air Force. I don't know if Scott and Hank ever stopped her from leaking fuel in the hangar, but it's near impossible to land her in the field without damaging something. Drove both 'Ro and me crazy. The only one who can do it reliably is Scott."
Neela swallowed hard. "You know how to fly it?"
That was the first time Ray turned his head to look at her, quirking an eyebrow. "Occupational perk of the X-Men," he said dryly. "'Ro and I learned together during college. I don't have a license officially, if that's what you mean, but yeah. I know how to fly it."
Again there were too many questions to ask, too many things she didn't know. Neela paused, helpless, overwhelmed by how everything she'd believed she'd known about Ray had changed with a snap of a finger - again. First he'd suddenly been a mutant, now he suddenly was an X-Man, one of those people you heard about on the news although nobody ever had pictures, and for all she knew, Magneto had taught him to fly. It was dizzying, too, seeing him sitting in that chair like he belonged.
But, also learning Ray was suffering from something that bloody well looked like post-traumatic stress. One of the strongest, most independent and self-assured people she knew, coming apart at the seams when god knew what horrible memory was replaying in his mind - that was hard to picture, so much harder than the idea that he'd wear an X-Men uniform tomorrow.
Keeping a tight rein on himself at the Drakes', there'd still been sweat forming on Ray's forehead and his face had looked so haunted - older and younger than he was at once.
Nervously, Neela wet her lips. "But you didn't stay with the X-Men in the end."
"No. I quit when I went away to med school."
"What made you do it?"
Ray rubbed his eyes tiredly before he answered. "I grew up," he said finally, like it didn't quite matter, then snorted about his own words, and any leftover similarity to Michael trembled and shattered. "Scott was in knee-deep from moment one. 'Ro and I, we weren't that much younger and we had the right kind of power, so everybody expected that we'd want to go along. It was just what everybody did during college." He looked out of the front window. "Great power and great responsibility, my ass," he muttered.
Not like Pyro, Neela thought - not like Michael, Pyro, none of the mutants she had met. Ray had never been one to carry anything with pride - with the exception of his attitude, his band. His mutation, in particular, just seemed to fill him with anger, as if he was trying to make it so that it had nothing to do with him.
As if he wished it had been his mutation and not him that had shoved Tony out of his way at the wedding - such a tiny little incident, it suddenly seemed, compared to military attacks and jets hovering in the air. So ridiculous how everybody had overreacted to it.
County seemed incredibly far away.
Shifting her weight on the arm rest, Neela suddenly felt nervous. "What happened at the Drakes' today, Ray?" she whispered. She had to ask. She couldn't not try to help.
Because he was Ray.
The drugs had left him cool and composed, drained in a casual way, but now he stiffened ever so slightly, eyes moving across the cockpit controls.
"You shouldn't have to deal with that."
She rolled her eyes. "I think you are the one who shouldn't have to deal with it," she said, a maybe too-accusing undertone in her voice, but what was she supposed to say? "It's a very serious condition, Ray. I can't believe you were mental enough to pull through med school without ever getting treatment." That had been one of the questions he'd answered when they'd tried to get a history out of him, before it had become glaringly obvious that he'd rather not have her in the room. Neela knew that having an episode didn't leave you rational, but that had still hurt. Even if it had probably been for a stupid reason like personal dignity.
"Well, it got miraculously better when I left the school, alright? I was alright. Everything was great. Before I fucked it all up and ended up with the X-Men again." He gave her an agitated look and Neela thought, he probably would have hit his head against the steering wheel if there had been one. The X-Men, where I belong, was what he didn't say, but there was none of Pyro's pride or Jean's resignated acceptance in his words. He took a deep breath. "What do you suppose I tell a therapist, Neela? That I'm one of those freaks? Or that I'm losing my mind because I can't manage to forget the day..."
He stopped abruptly, breath shallow.
It was almost impossible for Neela to stop herself from lurching forward, alarmed that she might have misjudged the effect of the drug and that he might slide right back into another flashback. But slumped into the seat, Ray's whole posture screamed defiance - not losing his grip on the here and now, but just angry, probably at himself. The comparison with Michael had become openly absurd.
And seeing Ray's tight effort to stay in control of the situation made Neela ache. She'd seen him do it before, too, just hadn't known what it was she was seeing. He hadn't been fine in Chicago, not entirely, and he shouldn't have to do it like this.
"Forget what day, Ray?" she asked tentatively.
"The day I killed my father," he said, voice threatening to flip.
There was a beat when none of them moved - Neela didn't know how to react, no words came to mind whatsoever. Then Ray took a deep breath, moving to lean his elbows on his knees and lower his head, rubbing his neck in a gesture that made him look utterly lost.
"Oh god..." Neela breathed, so many different emotions flooding her at once.
As he had told her, Ray had been fifteen when he'd come to Xavier's school. And if Jean Grey, who was a telepath, hadn't known about his condition, Neela didn't doubt for a second that he'd never talked to anybody else, either - he had the power to keep people out, she understood. That was twelve years of never thinking of it, never acknowledging that it was there.
She took a trembling breath.
So did Ray.
"My father found out when the school called him," he said. He didn't have to explain what he'd found out. "I hadn't bothered hiding it in school. It was one of these things, you know? Way to show off for the girls." His chuckle sounded shaky. "It hadn't even occurred to me that the teachers would care enough to call my parents. I hadn't thought it through."
Automatically, Neela reached out to - touch him, maybe, or take his hand. But he wasn't looking at her and didn't see, and she stopped in mid-motion, retreating her hand. The impact of his words was just too enormous. "What did he do?"
"He beat me up, of course." It came out flippantly, but Neela still swallowed hard. There was an assumption in that answer, one about how the world worked, that told Neela things she would never have guessed. Ray's grimace was pained as he struggled for words. "Mom stayed out of it. She always did. It wasn't like... It was just something he did, but it had never been bad. Not abusive. Just a little rough, you know?" But he was rubbing his arm, an unconscious nervous gesture, and looking off into space. "But that day, he... I thought he'd kill me." His breath hitched. "He told me he would have killed me the day I was born, if he'd known..."
His voice died, as if he'd abruptly run out of air and as if, maybe, there'd never be enough air for those words. Now, Neela reached out anyway, despite herself, taking hold of his arm, his biceps hard like Magneto's steel.
"It wasn't your fault," she heard herself say, because mutant or not, she'd seen this one play out in the E.R. often enough to know where the story was going. Though normally, it was the sons who were brought there, face swollen and ribs broken and wheeled off to surgery sometimes with ruptured spleens. "None of it is your fault, Ray. You were defending yourself. You were a child, you had no way of controlling..."
"I had perfect control of it, alright?" Ray said harshly to the side, though he didn't move to throw off her grip, so Neela firmly kept her hand where it was. "I know that's what they like telling you, what the Professor keeps saying, but it never worked like that for me. So I... I..." Again his voice threatened to die, but agitation won out. "I told him I'd kill him. I pinned him to the wall with a force field. It was a perfect force field," he breathed, as if it had been the first time he'd created such a thing of beauty in his life. He swallowed convulsively, face pale, words rushing out of him. "He, he cracked something. I think it broke his skull. He was bleeding... so much blood... and he couldn't have done anything to me anymore, I could have let go, but I ... I didn't... I couldn't... I just didn't."
A moment of wavering silence, and Ray slumped into himself, everything about him so lost, voice small and scared like that of a child. "I felt him die, Neela," he whispered. "I can't do it without touch, but I guess since he was my father..." His voice broke. "I don't know why I couldn't let go... He was so scared... And the professors showed up, but he'd been injured too badly and he coded in the ambulance..."
"Oh Ray..." Neela breathed, in motion already, crossing the distance to slide onto his lap, arms wrapping around his wide shoulder frame. It was all she could do, having to be closer, a mad wild instinct to protect him and absorb all that pain like there was no other place she'd ever have to be. "It wasn't your fault. You shouldn't ever have had to go through that..."
A shudder ran through Ray's body, a half-hearted attempt to flinch away. But for once, there was nowhere he could go, and a second later, he pressed his face into the crook of her neck, his hands sliding across her back with a strange resilience, feeling all the more intimate for it. Neela made a soothing sound, placing her hand on the back of his neck to hold him close.
It pained her that the man she was in love with should be in so much anguish, but there was a strange sort of relief to hold him this close. This was where she belonged, Neela thought, not at Michael's side and certainly not at Tony's. This was what she'd hoped to find when she had come - the real Ray buried underneath all his secrets - and while this wasn't what she'd expected, it was still worth taking a side in the X-Men's mutant war. Maybe Michael had been right in that way. And Ray deserved someone with whom he could dare share his secrets. Somebody who wasn't like him and still was okay with it.
For once feeling no hesitation, Neela pressed a soft kiss against Ray's forehead, holding him still. She knew he couldn't be further from using any of his powers right now, but she swore she could feel a force field wrapped around them, keeping them close.
on to the next part
Fandoms: E.R./X-Men Movieverse
Spoilers: Up to the end of E.R. season 13, rewriting "I don't," rewriting X2, and ignoring everything that came afterwards on both fronts, except for some backstory borrowed from X3
Characters: Ray, Neela, Jean, Xavier, Abby, Cyclops, Kovac, Gates & pretty much all the X2 ensemble
Pairings: Ray/Neela, canon pairings
Wordcount: ~ 33,000 words
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 who don't know E.R. -- Fandom Cheat Sheet for those who don't know the X-Men Movieverse
Prologue -- Chapter 1 -- Chapter 2 -- Chapter 3 -- Chapter 4 -- Chapter 5
Just for the record, my favorite scene is in this one.
Chapter 6
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Ray almost stumbled in his attempt to get out of the Drakes' living room fast, glass doors sliding shut behind him with force. Bobby's worried and Neela's calming voices were shut out immediately, neatly trimmed lawn quiet, and he tried to take a deep breath. All of his body had to be shaking.
He didn't know what the fuck was wrong with him. It had seemed like such a good idea at the time - laying low at Bobby's house, telling them Bobby had brought two staff members and his best friend to tell his parents what he really was.
But that had been before Ronny Drake had stopped looking his brother in the eye, before Mr. Drake's face had hardened and Mrs. Drake had started working assiduously on not breaking into tears. And no matter that Neela was doing her best in there to keep things cool and rational, it had suddenly all been too much. His own mother's sobs rang in his ear as if she were right there in the room with them - hiding in a corner - his father had been screaming and he might as well have been right back there, sound and smells and pictures unreeling out of order when he should be able to keep them in line. It had been all he could do to just sit there, willing Neela to take over, starting violently when his phone had started buzzing.
His phone. Surreally aware of his heaving chest and his pounding heart, Ray stared at it without understanding before he remembered what it was for. It was still buzzing. The X-jet's caller ID was the same it had been five years ago. It hit him, then, what he was supposed to be doing, and he raised it to his ear, hitting answer shakily.
Jean and 'Ro, and Scott and Professor Xavier were still out there, somewhere, out of reach all day. No news from anybody. No news from Logan.
"Tell me you're alright," he said, because nothing was alright, they weren't alright. Because the Drakes weren't taking the news well and that meant that none of them were safe; Jean and 'Ro couldn't be safe.
You're going mad.
"Ray," Jean's voice breathed with relief. "Thank god. We couldn't reach anybody at the mansion."
The mansion that had been attacked, not because of the Drakes or his father - not because of his father - and Ray had been alright during that. He'd been alright then. What the fuck was happening to him? "Are you alright?" he repeated.
'Ro. "Affirmative. We've retrieved the mutant, and are on the way home."
"There is no home." He had to suppress a bubble of hysterical laughter, swallowing hard, pressing his eyes shut. Home - what a joke. "There's nobody left at the mansion, 'Ro. There's nothing left, they... There was an attack." Focus. Be an X-Man. Report. "The mansion was attacked by, by soldiers. They had tranquilizers. They must have known that the Professor wouldn't be there. Some kids got out, but some were taken. Logan went after them, but he hasn't called in. I gave him a team phone."
There was a tense pause when the women took in the news. Ray used the opportunity to breathe, deep calming breaths - and don't the fuck hyperventilate - not listening to his father's voice, not looking at the patio when the sight threatened to overlap with cheap yellow carpet and blood...
Please, no...
Jean's voice. "We haven't been able to reach Scott and the Professor, either."
"Where are you now?" Storm, ever so practical. "We'll pick you up."
"Orient Heights. Boston. Bobby Drake's house. I'm with Allerdyce and Neela, from Chicago, who came to visit. It's... Something's..." He trailed of. He had no idea how to finish that sentence. Make it fast, he wanted to say. Get me out of here. Please. Make it an extraction code. It was just so hard to wrap his mind around why.
"What's wrong?" Jean, alert.
His throat felt too constricted to swallow down that lump.
("I should have killed you!" shouted his father. "I should have drowned you at birth!")
"It's..."
Something's wrong with me, he wanted to say. It's never happened before. Not like this. I think I'm going crazy. It's the wrong time and it isn't supposed to be happening, but it is, and I think I'm panicking. I think this is... this is panic. He was supposed to be a doctor. He was supposed to be able to diagnose; he should have words. There was no time for this now.
Come up with something. No time.
"I'm... The Drakes.
"I think I'm having an anxiety attack." It didn't quite sound like his voice. "Some sort of... episode."
A beat. "We're on our way. Stay calm." Jean had switched to a cool collected professional voice. "Your friend is a doctor, too?"
He swallowed convulsively. "Yeah."
"Tell her what's happening. Tell her, okay? She'll know how to help."
"Sure." Whatever. It seemed like too much of an effort to disagree, and it seemed to be what Jean wanted to hear.
"We're ten minutes out."
The connection closed after those words, and Ray slumped against the wall, closing his eyes and trying to will away that terrible mix of dizziness and the past sifting in and out of the present. It was impossible to focus on anything but that - except he had to go back in there to finish that conversation and tell John and Bobby, in a normal voice that they had to leave. Not freaking out about going back in. It would all make sense once it stopped, Ray told himself, except he was so shaky, and what if it wouldn't?
He was Ray Barnett, for fuck's sake, he didn't have anxiety attacks.
("I'm gonna kill you..."
Puddle of blood growing...)
One step at a time.
That was how Ray willed himself to get up, to shove the cell into his pocket, to turn towards the glass doors. Looking through, the Drakes and Bobby and John were talking. Ronny still was staring at the ground, and Mrs. Drake's shoulders were shaking just so. Neela, seated on a chair across the window, was staring at him, face confused and eyes concerned as her mind was working away.
Again the doors opened with too much force, banging shut when Ray staggered inside. Bobby's brother jumped to his feet, staring at Bobby and John in defiance and--
"Ronny! You stay right where you are," Mr. Drake said sharply. "This isn't the time."
Ronny sank down onto the couch with blazing hate in his eyes - or maybe that was just what it looked like to Ray - and Bobby lowered his head, and John smirked in delight.
Getting it all wrong.
"Mom..." Bobby muttered. His world had just collapsed, Ray thought. A son no more. Just a mutant.
"This is all my fault," his mother said, pressing her hand against her mouth.
John perked up leisurely. "Actually, they've found out that it's the males who..."
"We have to leave," Ray interrupted him, eyes moving from Bobby to Neela to the adults.
(The puddle of blood was growing on the carpet, but he didn't stop.
Let go of the force field, Ray, a voice was saying in his head, strange mental grasp on his mind, not violent just yet but firm.
I can't, he thought back at the voice, scared, shaking inside while his hands weren't shaking at all and he wasn't speaking but was and the force field was up, up, up and he couldn't lower it he couldn't he...
You will kill him if you don't.
I know.
It was the telepath in his head who loosened the force field, not him, and Joshua Barnett slumped to the ground...)
Neela's eyes were still all on him, searching his face.
"Ray..." she said cautiously. Ray thought he might have missed a part of the conversation.
"We have to leave," he repeated. "Now."
"Now wait a minute, Dr. Barnett, you can't just walk in here and dump something like this over our heads without giving us time to talk it through properly," Mr. Drake said, frowning and pulling himself up straight in his chair. "Show some respect for our situation. You're telling us Professor Xavier took away our son to a school for mutants without ever informing us about that fact. And Bobby knew, but never told us. We never knew that he was anything but..."
"Normal?" Bobby said like he was about to puke. "I am normal, dad, I..."
"...and that doesn't mean that we don't love him anymore, but..."
"Yeah? Could have fooled me."
"Ray!"
("We should have drowned you at birth. We should..."
"I'm gonna kill you..." Ray managed, trying to get up.
His chest was hurting - everything was hurting, and bruised - but he didn't...)
"...for Bobby to stay here with you so that you can talk about it as much as you have to." Neela had stood up. "We know that it's a lot to take in, and you should have all the time you need. Bobby, you will fill your parents in on all they need to know about the current situation?" Bobby nodded, all pale. "We need to get home before curfew."
"I'm staying, too," John said.
Neela's face remained firm, though her eyes flickered at Ronny when he looked at John in horror. "Uhm, I don't think that's a good idea, John. The Drakes should have some time to themselves. And. You have a test tomorrow." And wouldn't that also be hysterical if Ray wasn't feeling like he should have fainted minutes ago. What the fuck.
"Promise you'll call me about Rogue, Dr. Rasgotra?" Bobby said.
"Absolutely. I promise."
There was a round of goodbyes then, and Ray reacted on autopilot, shaking a rigid Mr. Drakes and a trembling Mrs. Drakes hand and muttering something that had to have been the right phrase, that or nobody had listened. The Drakes were focused on Bobby, and Mr. Drake wrote the number of Neela's cell down for if he wanted to get in touch. Ronny stayed back, for which Ray was grateful when he got into motion, feeling like he was staggering towards the door although he could hear his boots steadily on the parquet. Neela was herding John outside and a moment later, they were on the porch, moving towards the car.
Neela was at his side, reaching for his arm as they moved. It was weird that it didn't make him flinch. "What's wrong, Ray?" she asked in a low, urgent voice. "You seem altered. I've never seen you act like this."
"Me neither," Ray muttered, trying to chase that terror away that had loosened when they'd left the house, but not by much. He needed to run.
"Have you ever been treated for an anxiety disorder? There aren't any meds you should be on, right? I suppose you didn't have time to take any along..." Howard had flunked out of his residency for OCD, Ray suddenly thought. The day Neela had sold him a muffin.
"What's wrong with him?" John said loudly.
"Nothing is wrong with me," Ray managed. "I'm fine."
It was then that he heard Jean calling his name. Raising his head in befuddlement, he saw her hurrying down the sidewalk, a hooded figure huddled in an oversized cloak trailing after her.
"John, follow the street to find the jet," Jean said, sending the boy off without looking at him twice, eyes focused on Ray. "Neela, I'm Jean Grey. Scott told me all about your visit on the phone. You don't happen to be a psychiatrist?" She smirked unhappily when Neela shook her head, moving carefully to reach for Ray's shoulders and search his face. "I brought Kurt to teleport you to the jet if you want," she said gently. That was weird, these two women, of all people, clinging to him.
"Who's Kurt?" Ray said, flinching away with a grimace when he felt her probing his mind.
The pressure of the intrusion amplified as if refusing to be thrown out, then stopped abruptly when she retreated.
There was a weird flash in Jean's eyes but it vanished as well.
"Let's try a grounding technique," she said firmly. "Tell me four things you see."
"I see a meddling telepath," he muttered weakly.
"Hello. I am Kurt Wagner," the cloaked man was saying to Neela, moving to lower his hood in the corner of Ray's eye. "Please don't be afraid of me."
Neela screamed.
---
Neela was remarkable, Ray thought in a daze, looking at the clouds rushing by outside the window. He didn't think there were a lot of doctors at Chicago County who would have been ready to accept that America's most wanted shouldn't be off in a prison. Even if Wagner looked like a nice guy, really. Lots of cool body art. Wagner had been drugged when he'd been made to attack the President, but not with Valium.
Ray was on Valium. Jean had insisted. Spending all night driving to Boston couldn't have helped his stress levels, she'd said, and he should rest on the flight instead later when they'd probably play at being X-Men and attacking people. Killing them, too, if they had to. She hadn't said that, but Ray had filled the blank.
He was good at that, killing people.
Now he was hunched in a seat in the jet's little medical bay, unwilling to lie down. Impossible to tell how long they'd been in the air, and he hadn't asked where they were going. At least Neela and Jean had stopped asking him questions.
The door opened. Jean stepped into the room, cautiously perching down next to him. Ray turned his head to face her. "Hey there. How are you doing?" she asked softly.
"Peachy." He smirked at her. "I think you over-medicated me."
"I think you have the drug tolerance of a little girl."
Answering his look without flinching, Jean's lips twitched.
"I think Neela is a little hurt because you made her wait outside," she whispered as if she were sharing a secret.
Just served to confuse him, though. "I did?"
"You seemed to find her presence unsettling, yes. You were a little agitated about it." Jean smiled. "She seems like a very nice person, Ray. We've been having a conversation during the flight. I'm a little envious of how smart she is." There was that honest warmth in her voice that Ray always found so bedazzling. How Xavier could think that a woman like Jean would ever lose control of strong powers, Ray didn't know. "I'm glad you've found someone like her. I remember your girlfriends in college." Jean made a face. "If you could call them that."
He snorted. "We're not dating."
"You aren't?" One of her eyebrows wandered upwards.
"No," he said slowly, because it was all very obvious. "She went away to marry Michael Gallant." And to fuck Tony Gates on a desk. I could have fucked her on a desk, Ray thought, feeling hazy. Surely that hadn't been the issue.
"She feels very strongly about you, you know. I think it scares her a little."
"How'd you figure that?"
Jean chuckled at him. "Telepath, remember?" Crooking her head at him, she softly covered his hand in hers. "It doesn't take that to see it, though, Ray. She's head over heels for you, and she'd be so good for you. I'm certain you'd be good for her, too. Promise me you won't chase her away."
Ray frowned, still thinking of being interrupted by Marines with tranqs. There's always something. Heh. "Why do you think I would?" It was Neela. Neela was great.
"You made her leave you alone just now, remember, loopy one? That's not how you get close to people." Jean good-naturally patted his hand. "I wish I could say we'll continue this conversation once the drug is out of your system, but both you and I know that you'll find ways to avoid that. So I'm going to let you get some more rest. Storm will want me to take over the controls."
Watching her leave, Ray eventually turned to look out of the window again. They were so high up. If he wasn't too lazy to bother, he thought he might have gone and thought about his dad, or about Chicago, or about other things he preferred to ban from his mind at every other time.
He thought it was a good thing that Jean had gone and joined 'Ro in the cockpit, because there was a military fighter plane showing up right next to the jet.
---
Nobody expected her to do anything, but Neela felt hyped up from the adrenaline still coursing through her veins, hyped up and wide awake, like the coldness of the night couldn't touch her. It annoyed her to notice white-haired Ororo Munroe giving her a look of approval when she jumped up from her place at the fire abruptly to go and help John with the tents. He shouldn't have to do it alone, and it might help in keeping him out of trouble. After the day she'd known John Allerdyce, Neela already had a feeling that somebody should always be in charge of that.
Especially now that a US military missile had almost crashed their plane, and the only thing to stop it from hitting the ground mid-air had been an old man who had courteously introduced himself as Magneto. America's most feared mutant terrorist. Who just happened to have been in the neighborhood after escaping from the safest prison in the world. Then, he'd been informed that Neela was human. She might as well have ceased to exist in his world.
Neela shuddered. John was working away quietly, face suspicious and defensive. Even the prospect of giving her orders on what to hold and what to do had left him unenthused - she didn't know anything about building tents, but it was better than sitting around feeling stupid while that woman Mystique smirked at her.
"Bollocks. I think I cut myself," she muttered, unhappily looking at her hand covered in dirt, tent post forgotten. In the middle of a Canadian forest, no tetanus shot available. "John, you wouldn't happen to carry a Kleenex, would you?"
Hair adrift in the breeze, John looked at her as if a seventeen-year-old carrying a tissue was about the stupidest assumption imaginable. Pressing his lips together, he went back to straightening the canvas, muttering something that was carried away by the wind.
Neela frowned. "What did you say?"
John's face hardened. "The name is Pyro," he repeated louder, daring her to object.
Neela paused for a moment, unsure. "Alright..." she tried.
There was an unreadable expression on John's face when he looked away.
Ray said the children at the school are throwaways, she thought. If there was one thing she'd learned about John at the Drakes' house was that he'd never before seen any such house from the inside. The only legal minor present, he'd found himself surrounded by two terrorists with superhero names, a history teacher who everybody addressed by call sign, and the man whose search warrant was currently flashing over every American news channel - introducing himself, with no small amount of pride, with his stage name on top of his regular one. The Incredible Nightcrawler.
Involuntarily, her eyes moved to the jet, the place where Ray was currently holed up. Threshold, Munroe - Storm - had called him once, but he'd snorted at her.
Maybe it was because he'd already found a way of expressing his otherness in his music and his clothes.
Maybe it wasn't.
In any way, Neela suddenly found that she liked how the school had taught this boy Pyro how to show off what he was, of finding pride in an identity that made him the other. Human or not, it was something that she'd always wished she could be better at. Something she'd always admired about Ray, too.
Her eyes wandered back to John, who was pointedly focusing on the tent. To him, she was the enemy.
"What's your power, Pyro?" she asked cautiously.
His eyes flickered at her face.
"I control fire," he said.
"That sounds rather dangerous."
His lips quirked derisively, and he moved towards the bag of the next tent.
"There's the medical bay in the jet," he said after a minute. "Dr. Grey keeps stuff in there."
Neela smiled. "Thanks," she said. "I'm set."
---
Neela paused on her way up the ramp of the jet when Jean called her name. When she turned to see the older woman approaching, Jean was smiling, but it was an empty polite smile, worn and tired from a fear Neela could barely imagine. Actually, she could, she suddenly realized, thinking of the day two officers had shown up in the E.R. and she had just refused to believe them that Michael was dead. It was strange to think that she had something on this woman. And to think of Michael's death in those terms.
Scott wasn't dead, for all they knew, just missing, but nobody here was in denial about what that probably meant. Both Jean and Storm had spent the day working themselves up into hardened battle-ready soldiers, the lines of veterans etched in their faces.
"We've finally been able to reach Logan," Jean said. "He had to hike out of range to make sure that the radios wouldn't pick up the call. The students are held at a military base underneath Alkali Lake, in British Columbia. He has agreed to wait for us, but I'm afraid he'll run out of patience if we don't hurry." She sighed, as if there was history between her and Logan's impatience that she didn't even want to start dabbling into.
"What about Scott? Does he know if he and Professor Xavier are there?"
Jean rubbed her eyes tiredly. "Logan said he saw transports arrive, but, we don't know. The children have to take priority."
Scrunching her face in sympathy, Neela wished she could think of any comfort to offer.
"Anyway," Jean said. "We're launching at dawn. Alongside Magneto." That one seemed to be giving her a headache. It certainly made Neela's chest grow tight, because... Magneto. "Have you spoken to Ray?"
"I was just on my way to check on him. He hasn't left the jet all evening."
"Yes, Storm and I thought it best to keep him out of Magneto and Mystique's line of sight for now. Magneto and Ray..." She grimaced unhappily. "There's history. Not a bad history, all things considered, but not the kind I want Ray to confront tonight." After a moment of hesitation, she added, "I'll leave briefing him on the situation to you. Just remember we'll need him to be combat-ready tomorrow."
Horror crept up within Neela. Michael, she thought involuntarily. Michael had died in combat when he'd never even been supposed to take part in a fight, except Michael would have fought on the other side in this and... god. "You want him to fight alongside you? When he's just come out of an episode like that?"
"We can't afford not to." Jean sighed, brushing hair out of her face. "Ray is a full alpha mutant and a trained X-Man, Neela. In a fight, he is a weapon. I know this isn't what he wants for himself, but with Magneto in the picture, Storm and I will need somebody we can trust. I don't even want to know what Stryker is doing to the students."
And to Scott, she didn't say, but it was written all over her face when she looked away in distress. Well, that's what happens if you go to war, Neela thought, suddenly angry. People die. Your husband was kidnapped and he'll die because...
...because of absolutely no fault of his. Her anger died just like that, replaced by a terrible coldness. Munroe had explained to Kurt Wagner what the X-Men did, and they didn't play at war - they tried to avoid one - it was nothing like Michael going off to fight it out in an oil raid. Alpha mutants were in the greatest danger of being persecuted, and they were all so scared.
She was just so relieved that Ray didn't want to be any part of it. This situation they were in now, that was one thing - there were children in danger and family and friends. But it wasn't what he'd ever want out of his life, Jean had said that, everything Ray had said and done today had screamed it at her, and she was just so relieved. She could deal with the situation, somehow, but she could never have handled that attitude again.
It's not like in a movie, either, she thought. They need to attack now, because now they can. A day later, maybe they can't. That much she had gleamed from Jean and Storm's conversations with Magneto. This William Stryker, who hated mutants so much, had a serum to control mutants. He'd used it on Magneto, who was said to be one of the most powerful people on this planet. Magneto had dropped hints about how Stryker had done something to Logan once, as well, years ago, and now he had a group of little children in his base.
He had used Wagner to attack his own President and start a war, that was how much he hated them. It was unfathomable to Neela how anybody could hate anybody that strongly. Even she had no argument against Jean's line of reasoning, not after everything they'd gone through already. It all felt so desperate.
"Ray is a good man, even if he tries his hardest to hide it," Jean said, trying for a chuckle. "There won't be a doubt on his mind about coming along. Not with Scott and the Professor gone. He'll know that we don't have a choice."
One last tired smile that didn't quite reach her eyes, and Jean had walked off into the night towards Storm, Mystique and Magneto, making plans for the raid at the fire.
---
It took a moment to spot Ray, who was lounging in the pilot's seat. When Neela walked up to the cockpit, she saw he was stroking alongside the control board as if brushing away dirt. The weird thing was that he wasn't looking like a boy who'd sneaked away to play pilot in the cool fast plane, the way she would have expected Ray to look in a cockpit just a week ago. He looked like he knew where to put his hands, where to rest his feet. Like in the school's infirmary, he made an impression that he belonged - like Michael in uniform.
But he belongs at the E.R. too. Michael never did.
"What are you doing?" Neela asked quietly, not wanting to startle Ray, and still worried after today's events. Cautiously, she sat down on the arm rest of the co-pilot's seat, enough space left between them to show that she didn't mean to intrude. It made butterflies flutter in her stomach, being closer, but right now, she just longed to see Ray be alright.
It seemed to be working. He crooked his head, engrossed in his thoughts. "You know what kind of jet this is?" he asked casually, leftover sedative leaving his voice very even.
Neela snorted a laugh. "I think you already know the answer to that question."
Ray smiled without warmth. "It's a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird," he said. "Those were in use in the Air Force for over thirty years and they're the fastest manned air-breathing jets in the world. Now, official records are gonna tell you that there were only ever thirty-five of them around to start with, but that isn't true - they made a round, neat three dozen. The Professor has friends in high places, though." His smile transformed into a grimace. "I doubt that there's still a single record about this one around, and I'm pretty sure nobody remembers."
Neela frowned, unable to understand what he was getting at. "Jean told me that the Professor is incredibly powerful," she offered.
"Jean has no idea how powerful exactly," he breathed, alluding to yet another thing Neela didn't get but didn't feel qualified to ask about. But Ray shook his head slightly. "Anyway," he said. "You wouldn't believe what kind of bitch a Blackbird is to maintain. She'd have a whole crew taking care of her in the Air Force. I don't know if Scott and Hank ever stopped her from leaking fuel in the hangar, but it's near impossible to land her in the field without damaging something. Drove both 'Ro and me crazy. The only one who can do it reliably is Scott."
Neela swallowed hard. "You know how to fly it?"
That was the first time Ray turned his head to look at her, quirking an eyebrow. "Occupational perk of the X-Men," he said dryly. "'Ro and I learned together during college. I don't have a license officially, if that's what you mean, but yeah. I know how to fly it."
Again there were too many questions to ask, too many things she didn't know. Neela paused, helpless, overwhelmed by how everything she'd believed she'd known about Ray had changed with a snap of a finger - again. First he'd suddenly been a mutant, now he suddenly was an X-Man, one of those people you heard about on the news although nobody ever had pictures, and for all she knew, Magneto had taught him to fly. It was dizzying, too, seeing him sitting in that chair like he belonged.
But, also learning Ray was suffering from something that bloody well looked like post-traumatic stress. One of the strongest, most independent and self-assured people she knew, coming apart at the seams when god knew what horrible memory was replaying in his mind - that was hard to picture, so much harder than the idea that he'd wear an X-Men uniform tomorrow.
Keeping a tight rein on himself at the Drakes', there'd still been sweat forming on Ray's forehead and his face had looked so haunted - older and younger than he was at once.
Nervously, Neela wet her lips. "But you didn't stay with the X-Men in the end."
"No. I quit when I went away to med school."
"What made you do it?"
Ray rubbed his eyes tiredly before he answered. "I grew up," he said finally, like it didn't quite matter, then snorted about his own words, and any leftover similarity to Michael trembled and shattered. "Scott was in knee-deep from moment one. 'Ro and I, we weren't that much younger and we had the right kind of power, so everybody expected that we'd want to go along. It was just what everybody did during college." He looked out of the front window. "Great power and great responsibility, my ass," he muttered.
Not like Pyro, Neela thought - not like Michael, Pyro, none of the mutants she had met. Ray had never been one to carry anything with pride - with the exception of his attitude, his band. His mutation, in particular, just seemed to fill him with anger, as if he was trying to make it so that it had nothing to do with him.
As if he wished it had been his mutation and not him that had shoved Tony out of his way at the wedding - such a tiny little incident, it suddenly seemed, compared to military attacks and jets hovering in the air. So ridiculous how everybody had overreacted to it.
County seemed incredibly far away.
Shifting her weight on the arm rest, Neela suddenly felt nervous. "What happened at the Drakes' today, Ray?" she whispered. She had to ask. She couldn't not try to help.
Because he was Ray.
The drugs had left him cool and composed, drained in a casual way, but now he stiffened ever so slightly, eyes moving across the cockpit controls.
"You shouldn't have to deal with that."
She rolled her eyes. "I think you are the one who shouldn't have to deal with it," she said, a maybe too-accusing undertone in her voice, but what was she supposed to say? "It's a very serious condition, Ray. I can't believe you were mental enough to pull through med school without ever getting treatment." That had been one of the questions he'd answered when they'd tried to get a history out of him, before it had become glaringly obvious that he'd rather not have her in the room. Neela knew that having an episode didn't leave you rational, but that had still hurt. Even if it had probably been for a stupid reason like personal dignity.
"Well, it got miraculously better when I left the school, alright? I was alright. Everything was great. Before I fucked it all up and ended up with the X-Men again." He gave her an agitated look and Neela thought, he probably would have hit his head against the steering wheel if there had been one. The X-Men, where I belong, was what he didn't say, but there was none of Pyro's pride or Jean's resignated acceptance in his words. He took a deep breath. "What do you suppose I tell a therapist, Neela? That I'm one of those freaks? Or that I'm losing my mind because I can't manage to forget the day..."
He stopped abruptly, breath shallow.
It was almost impossible for Neela to stop herself from lurching forward, alarmed that she might have misjudged the effect of the drug and that he might slide right back into another flashback. But slumped into the seat, Ray's whole posture screamed defiance - not losing his grip on the here and now, but just angry, probably at himself. The comparison with Michael had become openly absurd.
And seeing Ray's tight effort to stay in control of the situation made Neela ache. She'd seen him do it before, too, just hadn't known what it was she was seeing. He hadn't been fine in Chicago, not entirely, and he shouldn't have to do it like this.
"Forget what day, Ray?" she asked tentatively.
"The day I killed my father," he said, voice threatening to flip.
There was a beat when none of them moved - Neela didn't know how to react, no words came to mind whatsoever. Then Ray took a deep breath, moving to lean his elbows on his knees and lower his head, rubbing his neck in a gesture that made him look utterly lost.
"Oh god..." Neela breathed, so many different emotions flooding her at once.
As he had told her, Ray had been fifteen when he'd come to Xavier's school. And if Jean Grey, who was a telepath, hadn't known about his condition, Neela didn't doubt for a second that he'd never talked to anybody else, either - he had the power to keep people out, she understood. That was twelve years of never thinking of it, never acknowledging that it was there.
She took a trembling breath.
So did Ray.
"My father found out when the school called him," he said. He didn't have to explain what he'd found out. "I hadn't bothered hiding it in school. It was one of these things, you know? Way to show off for the girls." His chuckle sounded shaky. "It hadn't even occurred to me that the teachers would care enough to call my parents. I hadn't thought it through."
Automatically, Neela reached out to - touch him, maybe, or take his hand. But he wasn't looking at her and didn't see, and she stopped in mid-motion, retreating her hand. The impact of his words was just too enormous. "What did he do?"
"He beat me up, of course." It came out flippantly, but Neela still swallowed hard. There was an assumption in that answer, one about how the world worked, that told Neela things she would never have guessed. Ray's grimace was pained as he struggled for words. "Mom stayed out of it. She always did. It wasn't like... It was just something he did, but it had never been bad. Not abusive. Just a little rough, you know?" But he was rubbing his arm, an unconscious nervous gesture, and looking off into space. "But that day, he... I thought he'd kill me." His breath hitched. "He told me he would have killed me the day I was born, if he'd known..."
His voice died, as if he'd abruptly run out of air and as if, maybe, there'd never be enough air for those words. Now, Neela reached out anyway, despite herself, taking hold of his arm, his biceps hard like Magneto's steel.
"It wasn't your fault," she heard herself say, because mutant or not, she'd seen this one play out in the E.R. often enough to know where the story was going. Though normally, it was the sons who were brought there, face swollen and ribs broken and wheeled off to surgery sometimes with ruptured spleens. "None of it is your fault, Ray. You were defending yourself. You were a child, you had no way of controlling..."
"I had perfect control of it, alright?" Ray said harshly to the side, though he didn't move to throw off her grip, so Neela firmly kept her hand where it was. "I know that's what they like telling you, what the Professor keeps saying, but it never worked like that for me. So I... I..." Again his voice threatened to die, but agitation won out. "I told him I'd kill him. I pinned him to the wall with a force field. It was a perfect force field," he breathed, as if it had been the first time he'd created such a thing of beauty in his life. He swallowed convulsively, face pale, words rushing out of him. "He, he cracked something. I think it broke his skull. He was bleeding... so much blood... and he couldn't have done anything to me anymore, I could have let go, but I ... I didn't... I couldn't... I just didn't."
A moment of wavering silence, and Ray slumped into himself, everything about him so lost, voice small and scared like that of a child. "I felt him die, Neela," he whispered. "I can't do it without touch, but I guess since he was my father..." His voice broke. "I don't know why I couldn't let go... He was so scared... And the professors showed up, but he'd been injured too badly and he coded in the ambulance..."
"Oh Ray..." Neela breathed, in motion already, crossing the distance to slide onto his lap, arms wrapping around his wide shoulder frame. It was all she could do, having to be closer, a mad wild instinct to protect him and absorb all that pain like there was no other place she'd ever have to be. "It wasn't your fault. You shouldn't ever have had to go through that..."
A shudder ran through Ray's body, a half-hearted attempt to flinch away. But for once, there was nowhere he could go, and a second later, he pressed his face into the crook of her neck, his hands sliding across her back with a strange resilience, feeling all the more intimate for it. Neela made a soothing sound, placing her hand on the back of his neck to hold him close.
It pained her that the man she was in love with should be in so much anguish, but there was a strange sort of relief to hold him this close. This was where she belonged, Neela thought, not at Michael's side and certainly not at Tony's. This was what she'd hoped to find when she had come - the real Ray buried underneath all his secrets - and while this wasn't what she'd expected, it was still worth taking a side in the X-Men's mutant war. Maybe Michael had been right in that way. And Ray deserved someone with whom he could dare share his secrets. Somebody who wasn't like him and still was okay with it.
For once feeling no hesitation, Neela pressed a soft kiss against Ray's forehead, holding him still. She knew he couldn't be further from using any of his powers right now, but she swore she could feel a force field wrapped around them, keeping them close.
on to the next part