Fic: from the rivers of our palms | part two con't
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“I am afraid of nothing,” the Lion roared, so great and loud that the mountains shook.
“Oh, really?” Said the Buzzard, flying lower and lower in the sky. “Not even of death?”
“Not even of death,” said the Lion.
“Pity,” said the Buzzard. “Oh well. You will be.”
***
IV.
Arinna snarled low in her throat, the sunlight streaming under her fur, and with a tremendous roar she let it out. Red light flared up and down the Danger Room and fire tore at the walls.
Alex felt the echoes of her anger and he latched on to it, letting build in his own veins, until light crackled underneath his skin and he burned-
The release left him shaking, and the Danger Room on fire.
“Jesus,” Hank muttered, slipping in with two fire extinguishers clutched in his big hands. “I just replated the walls, Alex, couldn’t you have at least made an effort to keep it together?”
His daemon Hesione swung off his furry shoulder to land on Arinna’s head, chattering a scolding in the lioness’s ear.
Arinna half-growled, shaking her head vigorously, and Hesione leaped to the ground and scrambled back up Hank’s shoulder.
“Woah,” Sean said, following Beast in. “Dude, you’ve got some anger issues.”
Alex glared.
Einín, a blue-tailed wren, circled Sean’s head in her usual swirl of energy and Arinna bared her teeth, leaking frustration.
Alex understood how she felt.
“How the fuck are you guys so cheerful,” he muttered, dragging a hand through his short hair. “Do you not realize who’s here?”
Hank and Sean shifted.
“Of course we do,” Sean started.
“Magneto,” Alex spat. “Mag-fucking-neto is here, and he’s going to fuck us all over again, I know it.”
Arinna growled, her claws splayed against the stone, and the sound echoed in the bunker, unnaturally loud.
“We won’t let him,” Hank said, baring his own teeth. Hesione did the same, and it was always kind of a shock to see a tiny little lemur bare fucking fangs.
“We already are,” Alex snapped. “You don’t get it, do you? Prof’s got this thing for Magneto. He wants to fix him, or save him, or prove that he’s a good fucking person or something. He’s got a huge soft spot, and he’ll get hurt again. Remember last time?”
Sean winced. Clearly, he did.
“Exactly,” Alex muttered. “We can’t let that happen again.”
“What can we do, though?” Hank-fuck him for always being the reasonable one, who the hell had to be like that anyway-said. “Magneto’s got a valid reason to be here. If someone’s-if someone’s cutting daemons away, they’ve got to be stopped.”
“Of course they do,” Alex said. “That’s not what I’m saying. We can take out a couple of government whack jobs on our own; we’ve done it before. We can fight. But we don’t have to fight with them.”
Hank shrugged, and Hesione stopped baring her teeth. “If he can get Raven out of there okay,” he said lowly, “then I’ve got no problem with him being here.”
Alex’s temper flared. “How can you say that?” he hissed. “After what happened last time? It took months for things to get back to normal around here again.”
Arinna snarled, echoing his feelings, and Hank just shrugged again.
“Professor X is a tough guy,” Sean said diplomatically. “He can take care of himself. ‘sides, it’s not like Er-I mean, Magneto, is gonna take the helmet off anyway.”
Arinna pinned her ears back. “They don’t understand,” she muttered to Alex, and he glared at them, irrationally angry and seething inside.
“When you open your eyes and realize what’s going on, I’ll be on the roof,” he said coolly. “C’mon, ‘rinna.”
His lioness muttered one last growl before following him out the door, tension rolling in her shoulders.
“They don’t see it,” Alex said, and sunlight bubbled in his blood. “They don’t get it.”
“No,” Arinna agreed. “Probably not.”
Alex and his daemon stalked through the hallways, climbing up stairs and across landings, going higher and higher until they broke out onto the rooftop and sucked in cool, clear air.
The Professor’s mansion was far enough away from the city that the sky was open and thick with stars. Alex hadn’t really seen anything like it, before, and it was nice to just sit on the rooftop and look at them, a hundred thousand constellations scattered like dust over the night sky.
Arinna lay flat and her claws skritched the roofing, grating on Alex’s ears.
“Not gonna pull those in, are you?”
She gave him a flat glare. “Not until he leaves, no.”
“Didn’t think so.”
She snorted, her tail twitching madly. “Like you’re going to relax,” she said.
“True.”
Sullen anger coursed through his veins and Alex wrestled with it. He was so angry, and it scared him. He was angry at Hank and Sean for not seeing, not understanding what Alex was trying to do. He was pissed at whoever took Raven, because now Charles was worried sick and Lehnsherr was in their house again. He was fucking furious with Magneto, for fucking things up in the first place and then having the balls to come back after everything.
All of it rattled around inside him, mixing with the sunlight, and he felt like he was going to explode or something (which was a distinct possibility, by the way), which only made him mad at himself for not having enough control at all.
“I’m fucked up,” he told Arinna, and she laughed a growl.
“No shit,” she said. “We all are.”
“Us more than the others, though.”
She gave him a lion-shrug. “Well. It could be worse.”
Alex felt like his bones were being seared from the inside out and he laughed. “Yeah?” he said. “How?”
She bared her teeth. “We could be Erik and Aliyah.”
For some reason Alex found that really fucking hilarious, and he laughed and laughed and it sounded like he was choking. “’rinna,” he said, between wheezes. “We are.”
She didn’t laugh. “Yeah,” she rumbled. “I know.”
Alex sobered up, staring out at the stars and the forest and the hulking shape of the satellite dish. “What are we gonna do, ‘rinna?”
His daemon rested her head on her great paws. “I don’t know,” she said. “Survive it, I guess, like we always do.”
He snorted. “Good plan.”
They fell silent, sitting beside each other, and Alex tried to breathe and let go of his anger.
“Fuck,” he whispered. “I miss Darwin.”
Arinna rested her head in his lap, and her eyes were luminous and sad. “Me too. I miss Myra.”
“They’d know what to do, wouldn’t they? They always-” Alex stopped, remembered Darwin standing in the courtyard with red sunlight cracking his bones. “They always knew what to do.”
Arinna didn’t answer and he felt her anger, and her pain. “What happened to us?”
He laughed short and sharp. “We killed a guy, remember? And got our asses thrown in fucking jail.”
“Oh,” she almost laughed. “I forgot about that part.”
Alex stroked her ears, tugging the tattered one fondly. “You’d never taken a lion’s shape before that day, remember? You were always a fox, or a magpie, or that little terrier.”
Arinna nodded, closing her eyes. “I remember. I liked those shapes. They fit nicely, I guess. I could’ve been any one of them.”
“Why’d you choose to be a lion?”
His daemon opened her eyes and looked up at him, and the dusty stars were reflected in her eyes. “The same reason Charles’s Iskierka chose to be an eagle, or Einín a wren, or Aliyah a tiger, or Myra whatever she pleased.”
“And that is…?”
She nosed him gently. “You,” she said. “I’m a lion because of you.”
“Me?”
She nodded and licked his arm. “You.” She settled her head back on her paws and closed her eyes again. She’d look almost peaceful if it wasn’t for her lashing tail or her splayed, sharpened claws.
“That’s it? You’re not going to explain anymore?”
“Nope,” Arinna said. “You probably wouldn’t understand anyway; it’s a daemon thing.”
“A daemon thing.”
“Mmhmm.”
Alex said, dragged a hand through his hair. “What am I going to do, ‘rinna? I feel like I’m alone in wanting Magneto out.”
“Snapping at the others probably didn’t help,” she said, a little guiltily. “We got too angry.”
Alex laughed. “Jesus, we are Lehnsherr and Aliyah. All I need is a motherfucking cape.”
His lioness swatted him. “Don’t think like that,” she said. “We won’t end up like them. We’ll learn from their mistakes.”
“Good,” Alex muttered. Behind him, the door to the roof creaked open, and he could make out Hank’s tall, fuzzy form standing uncertainly in the shadows. “Starting with not being dicks.”
“Got it,” Arinna said. “If we’re going to do this thing, we have to be united, don’t we?”
“Yeah,” he told her, and turned to face Hank. “Hey,” he called. “You gonna come over here or what?”
And Hank came, his daemon darting ahead, and Alex pasted on a smile. He was going to fix this.
***
“Try it,” the Jaguar challenged the Man. “Try and kill me, little god.”
“You’re too weak to win,” boasted Man. “I have taken the sun and the stars from your fur.”
Jaguar bared his teeth. “I have the moon,” he said, “and that is more than enough to kill you.”
***
V.
“Raven,” someone was saying, just above her left ear. “Mystique. Hey, Mystique, you gotta get up now, okay?”
“Charles,” she said thickly, except it came out as “Chls.” Her head hurt-no, scratch that, killed-and her mouth felt like it was stuffed full of something dry and not very pleasant. What were they called? Cottonballs? “Fvem’remints.”
“Mystique.” Someone was shaking her shoulder now, hard, and she twitched. “Mystique!”
Raven bolted straight up and regretted it immediately. Somewhere against her side Sirion howled in pain, and she felt like echoing him.
“Shit,” she swore. “My head, Jesus, where am I, what’s going on?”
“We don’t know where we are,” Angel was saying. “But we’ve been captured by the CIA and we’re in a cell somewhere. We’ve been here for about two days. What the fuck happened to your face?”
Raven opened her eyes to glare at the bleary smudge hovering above her head. Sirion hissed and burrowed deeper against her side, and when she touched his head he flinched.
“Um,” she said. She tried to remember but it hurt-she’d been called out yet again for tests, poked and prodded and weighed, and the scientist had asked for her name-
“Oh,” she thought, and probably said it out loud because the Angel-blur seemed concerned. “Um, I got into a fight with the guards.”
“What?” The pitch of Angel’s voice struck a nerve-Sirion whimpered, flicking into dog shape, and put his paws over his head.
“I-” Raven started, but she didn’t get to finish because the door swung open and sharp, splintering light stabbed her in the eyes and she groaned.
Three more guards-different ones-came in and manhandled Angel to her feet. Raven saw Quetz loop around her friend’s arm, hissing, and murmur something in Angel’s ear, and then she was gone, and Raven was alone in the bright light with the scientist.
(Where was Riptide? Was he being tested too?)
His daemon blinked and flicked her tongue, and Sirion, somewhat recovered, shifted back into his striking white jaguar shape, teeth bared.
The scientist smiled coldly. “Interesting,” he said. “I’ve studied dozens of your kind, girl, and I’ve never met one with an unsettled daemon. It… intrigued me, you see, because mutation manifests itself at puberty, when the daemon settles.”
“What,” Raven said, because she hated the man and she was a little too woozy to be talking to him on equal footing, right now.
The scientist shook his head. “Mutation,” he explained, like he was talking to a little kid, “comes from daemons.”
This time Raven understood, and she blinked. “What,” she repeated, “the fuck are you smoking? Daemons cause mutation? That’s completely wrong, it’s evolutionary genetics.”
The scientist arched an eyebrow. “Oh?” He said mockingly. “According to whom?”
Raven was almost-almost-addled enough to say her brother, but Sirion bit down on her arm just in time and she choked back Charles’s name.
The scientist’s daemon blinked.
“It’s difficult for little girls like you to understand, I’m sure,” he continued. “But it has been proven, conclusively, that daemons carry the mutation in them, and pass them on to their humans.” He tapped a thick, worn leather book in his hands. “It says so right here.”
Sirion snarled, deep and low and violent.
The scientist ignored him. “Your daemon, for instance, isn’t settled; he’s mutated and cannot settle, therefore you have the ability to shapeshift.”
“It’s not his fault,” Raven snapped. “It’s no one’s fault. I was born this way. My mutation didn’t manifest at puberty.”
“Ah,” said the scientist. “That’s what makes you so different. Most mutations do manifest at the moment the daemon settles. But you, you, you’re special. You’ve always been a mutant. When we weighed you, your Dust was off the charts-unprecedented.”
Raven blinked, lost again. The man was talking about dust now?
Not dust, Sirion whispered. I think he means Dust.
What the hell is Dust?
No idea.
“You’re confused, of course,” the scientist continued. “Understandable. Dust is very newly known to us, after all, and I highly doubt that a mutant like yourself has heard of it, for all it clings to your kind.”
Raven bristled at the slur against her people. “The smartest people I know are mutants,” she snapped.
The scientist, once again, ignored her.
“Later, perhaps,” he was explaining. “I will tell you what Dust is. For now, all you have to know is that it is the source of your daemon’s mutations, and therefore your own.”
Sirion growled and pressed close to his human.
“Tell me, girl,” the scientist said. “If you could choose a form for your daemon to settle in, what would it be?”
Raven started, speechless at the man’s deeply personal question. Nobody just asked that-it was kind of taboo, like touching someone else’s daemon. A daemon’s shape was for its human, and for no one else.
“This current form is rather magnificent,” the scientist continued. “A white jaguar, if I’m not mistaken.” His lizard blinked. “Is this your favorite?”
Raven didn’t answer; she glared defiantly, daring him to force her.
The scientist signed. “Yes,” he said, as if she wasn’t even there. “This is a very nice form. Would you like him to settle in this shape? I can arrange it, of course.”
Raven stared at him, letting all of her anger surge and coil in her eyes. “Intercise, you mean. Cut us apart, you mean.”
The scientist smiled. “Later,” he said. “But now I want tests. Stand up.”
Two new guards entered the room, armed to the teeth. Their daemons snarled and snapped at Sirion. Raven reluctantly stood-she’d rather not get punched in the face again, thanks. She felt like she had to be on her guard around the scientist.
He smiled and his daemon blinked. Fear formed a ball of ice in Raven’s stomach and she swallowed, reaching automatically for Sirion. He came into her touch and growled comfortingly, though she could tell he was just as scared-cut away, taken away, my fault we can’t settle, my fault?-as she was.
“It’ll be okay,” she told him quietly. “Magneto’s coming for us. Don’t worry.”
“Worried?” Sirion muttered, and flashed her a cracking glance. “Who’s worried?”
***
“Why did you accept the Chief’s request, if it makes you so sad?” Sparrow wanted to know.
Eagle smiled. “Because,” he said. “All things must help one another. I helped the Chief when he feared his enemies, and he will help me now.”
“Oh,” said the Sparrow. He thought for a moment. “It doesn’t seem like a fair trade.”
The Eagle stopped smiling. “No,” he said. “It isn’t.”
***
VI.
Emma Frost and Azazel returned in the evening, out of breath and a little bloody, but triumphant. And as little as Charles cared for them, he figured that that kind of triumph was a good thing, considering the situation.
Azazel was the worse for the wear; blood darkened his pants and his Elvira limped, her face peeled back into a pained grimace.
“Just a bullet wound,” the teleporter said. “I got it out.”
“I’ll stitch it up later,” Erik said, eyeing the wound critically. Charles watched him, curious to see how he interacted with his teammates. “You’re not going to bleed to death?”
“Nyet.”
“Good.”
Aliyah gave the white wolf a gentle nudge with her nose and the wolf nudged back, clearly able to function. Emma delicately cleared her throat and her owl hooted softly, drawing the attention off the bleeding teleporter and onto herself.
The mutants sat at the dining room table, Charles and his children at one end, Erik and his people on the other.
On the table between them lay a dozen sheets of paper-manifestos, maps, battle plans, handwritten and typed-up notes.
Emma Frost had been very successful.
“Well, Ms. Frost,” Charles said stiffly. He still didn’t like her, much, but he had to admit that she had value at whatever she did. “What do you have for us?”
Frost smiled, and her owl preened. “The location of the facility,” she said. She stood and tapped a map of Canada. “It’s here, about ninety miles west of Vancouver, in the Rocky Mountains.”
Charles studied it. “It will be hard to reach,” he said. “But not impossible.”
“No,” she agreed. “Not impossible.”
“What’s the security like?” Alex watched Frost and the Brotherhood with blatant dislike written on his face, but he was talking to them instead of fighting.
“Good,” Azazel admitted ruefully, rubbing his wounded leg. “Prepared against mutants. They learned from the other base.”
Alex nodded, his face grim.
“How advanced is their intercision project?”
“They call it the Bolvangar Project,” Erik cut in. He was bent over the table, his helmet firmly in place-appearances, he’d said to Charles-studying Frost’s findings intently. “It’s rather far advanced-they know what they are doing, and how to do it. There is no Silver Guillotine at the Rocky Mountains facility yet, but one is expected within the next few weeks.”
Charles’s stomach twisted and Iskierka stroked his back. “We’ll have to hurry, then.”
“Indeed.”
Charles reached for the papers, pulling them to him and studying them with a scientist’s eye. He left the maps alone-Erik could read them better, probably-and focused.
Iskierka fluttered down the table, gathering up all the notes and “findings,” bringing them back to her person and reading over his shoulder.
Subject: Male, twenty-three years old, Charles read. Mutation: Flight. Daemon: Female, red-tailed hawk. Onset of mutation: age thirteen, two days after daemon settled. Dust: positive. Intercised: died from shock.
Subject: Female, nineteen years old. Mutation: Speaks with animals. Daemon: Male, terrier dog. Onset of mutation: age fourteen, three days after settling. Dust: positive. Intercision: died from shock.
Subject: Male, twenty-six. Mutation: Telekinesis. Daemon: Female, lioness. Onset of mutation: Age twelve, day of settling. Dust: positive. Intercision: survived a week, died from shock.
Charles read on and on, and he felt ill-who could do this, could methodically and unfeelingly write down lives and deaths and intercisions like they were nothing?
He pushed the papers away. “What,” he said, his voice hoarse, “the hell are they trying to do? What’s this nonsense about Dust and daemon settling and the onset of powers?”
Erik shrugged, looking to Frost.
She shifted, clearly uncomfortable. “Shaw fancied himself a scientist,” she began. Her daemon was perfectly still on her shoulder, his narrowed into vivid, unblinking slits. “He liked to experiment, to push things to see what could happen. He knew a good deal about mutation, probably more than anyone else, then or now, and he had theories.”
Frost paused, tilted her head, and seemed to consider something, turning her thoughts over and over in her mind. She wasn’t blocked off, and Charles could’ve read her mind, easily, but he held back.
He needed to get Raven out safe.
“Shaw thought that mutation came from daemons.”
Charles raised his eyebrows. “Mutation comes from daemons?” He brushed Iskierka’s wings automatically.
Emma nodded. “He thought that the daemon was the source of mutation, and when the daemon settled, the mutation would manifest.”
“That’s not possible,” Charles said, shaking his head, even as Alex, Sean, and Erik shifted, their hands going to their daemons. “I was a telepath years before Iskierka settled.”
The teleporter nodded, agreeing with Charles, and his daemon whispered something to him in Russian.
“Same for me,” Hank said. He was studying the records and notes Emma had stolen with interest-not malicious interest, but scientific-stroking his Hesione absentmindedly.
“It’s a flawed theory, sugar,” Emma said with a shrug. “My telepathy was active before Mortimer settled, but my diamond form didn’t come until after. There’s a correlation between daemons and mutations, but I don’t necessarily think that the daemon causes the mutation.”
“What is Dust?” Erik murmured. He too was reading, his face inscrutable and his eyes shadowed by the helmet. Only Aliyah’s eyes, a glowing, hot gold, betrayed his current emotional state-barely suppressed rage. “It’s mentioned in every single record.”
Emma’s face twisted into a frown. “Sebastian’s greatest discovery,” she said. “He found records from the Magisterium, before their fall, and pictures. It appears that early mutants were held by the General Oblation Board-what the people now running the Bolvangar Project call themselves, by the way-for crude testing. One of those tests was a sort of photograph. Here.”
The other telepath pulled several grainy, ancient-looking pictures from under the mess of notes and records. Each picture had two people and their daemons in it, standing side by side. One was clearly human, and the other a mutant with clawed hands and a feral snarl on his face. One person was only a dark, smudged blur, but the other-the mutant-was radiant with light. Thousands of tiny particles flowed from him and his daemom in bright, streaming rivers, winding through them and around them in heaving, intricate patterns.
It was beautiful.
“These particles,” Charles said, awed, “are they Dust?”
Emma dipped her head. “Yes. Ruskanov Particles, technically, but ‘Dust’ is the more common term. The blur there,” she tapped the ancient photo, “is a normal, non-mutated human. The one with all the Dust is a mutant, and his daemon is settled. Dust is only attracted to those who are whole. The severed have no Dust at all.”
She showed them another picture, and this time is was clear; there were two men, and only one daemon. The daemonless man-the mutant-had no daemon, and his claws and snarl were gone. There were no streaming golden particles this time.
Everyone at the table looked away.
Charles shook his head. “This Dust is thought to be the source of mutation, then?”
Frost nodded again. “That’s what the Magisterium thought, and what Sebastian thought later. He theorized that Dust caused mutation, and since the daemonless have no Dust, that daemons must be the source of it, and therefore mutation.”
“Mutation is evolution, though,” Charles argued. “The natural progression of species.”
Emma shrugged. “I don’t particularly care either way,” she said. “Dust or evolution, it doesn’t really matter, does it? They’re cutting us apart anyway.”
Charles frowned, turning this new information over in his head. His inner scientist leaped, jumping at the chance to study this “Dust,” learn about it, test it, and see if it was related to mutation after all.
Iskierka batted him lightly. Not our concern right now, she warned.
Charles nodded. Yes, yes, of course.
“We have more time than we thought originally,” he said, changing the subject. “Is that correct?”
The three Brotherhood mutants exchanged a glance, and Erik nodded. “I’d prefer not to wait longer than necessary,” he said. “The longer we wait, the greater chance we have of loosing them, and of more being intercised or tortured.”
The telepath nodded, staring down at the pictures, of the ones lit with rivers of light and the ones dead, blank, ruined.
“A week,” he said. “That’s adequate time to prepare, yes?”
Erik nodded, and steel crept into his eyes. Aliyah sat straight up at his side, her teeth bared momentarily in a glimmering snarl. “A week,” he said. “We’ll make preparations. I’ll return all of yours to you, I promise-”
“Wait a moment,” Charles snapped. “I’m not staying here.”
Erik blinked. “Of course you are,” he said.
Everyone else-including his students, Charles noted, and anger stirred in his chest. Iskierka mantled her wings, and she was suddenly very, very large-turned to stare at the professor, bemused.
“You’ve never wanted to go on a mission before,” Alex said softly. “You’ve always just let us go.”
Hank and Sean nodded. Charles could see that they, at least, were driven by worry for his wellbeing. Iskierka hissed at them anyway.
Azazel’s thoughts were politely condescending, and Emma’s face was impassive but he saw the annoyance in the way her daemon flicked his head.
Erik’s face was in shadow, and Aliyah’s face was as soft and painful as a tiger’s could be, her head bowed.
Charles bit back his anger. “I’m going,” he said flatly. “That’s my sister in there, and my people. I won’t leave them, not like this.”
“What can you do?” said Emma Frost.
He glared. “More than you, telepathy-wise. I don’t have to go in, that’s not what I’m suggesting. But I want to be close, very close, so I can monitor what’s going on and take out threats as you go.”
The children subsided, exchanging tired, anxious glances. Azazel seemed to accept Charles’s plan, and Emma nodded. Erik, though, was gritting his teeth, his hands curled tightly, and the lights flickered and rattled. Charles couldn’t hear him, through the helmet, but he didn’t need to.
“I’ll be fine,” Charles said quietly. “I’ll stay out of your way, and I can help clear doors for you, to minimize casualties.”
Erik met his eyes. “Casualties,” he said hollowly. “Fine. Come, if you must.” He stood abruptly, muscles bunching in his neck, flexing his fingers.
Charles nodded, satisfied, for now. “A week,” he said.
Erik had turned, looking out the window, his hands scattering up dust that billowed around him, fire-gold in the sunlight.
“A week,” he said, and Aliyah snarled something softly in German. The line of Erik’s-no, Iskierka whispered, Magneto’s-shoulders was tense and hard.
A memory hit Charles so hard he couldn’t breathe-
(erik, standing out the window, coiled so tight his muscles jumped, and president kennedy’s address was ringing in their ears.
“come to bed,” charles whispered, and he scratched aliyah’s ears. she purred at him, but her eyes were fixed on her human, her tail twitching furiously. “erik, come on, you need your rest.”
“in a minute,” erik said, and waved charles away.
he never came to bed.)
His insides knotted and sank, hard and heavy.
Iskierka, he whispered, and she carded through his hair.
I know, she said. I know.
continued