Part 7

He dropped the motorcycle off at a local bar about a mile away from the house. He jogged the rest of the way there, the envelope tucked away into his pocket, the disk inside.

It was a crisp night, and the road was slick with ice. No cars passed him as he approached the quiet rich neighborhood on the fringes of any significant town. His watch read 11:00pm. He wondered if the Congressman would be sleeping.

He stopped jogging as he approached the first houses and began walking, trying to look casual, just in case somebody happened to look out their window and think he seemed suspicious running through their streets at night.

The lawns were huge, endless and green under the light coating of snow. He wondered what type of grass it was that could live in subfreezing temperatures. The houses matched the land around them, overdone and soaked in grandeur. Most of the families that lived in them were probably no more than four or five people, maybe even just two. He wondered what they needed with 6 bedrooms, two kitchens, 3 bathrooms, and multiple living rooms/dens/entertainment rooms. And he・d bet that not a single one of them realized what it was they had or how grateful they should be.

Schecher was house number six, a blue mansion with white trim and brick embellishments wherever room could be found for them. Remy didn・t particularly care for the design. It looked expensive, but lacked a sense of style, like it was trying too hard to look good. He wandered up the long, brick, driveway, sticking to the shadows and moving quickly. There was one light on in the house, on the bottom of the three floors and all the way in the corner to the left. It looked so small in the giant home, and he got the feeling that it was meant to be that way・separate, almost forgotten, a hide-away.

He made it to the end of the driveway. Finally. He・d seen many expensive homes and they all seemed to pride themselves on how long a driveway they had, as if the length the cars had to go to get to the home indicated its worth. This house was no exception.

Slipping behind some bushes, he wandered around to the back. There were trees lining the edge of the property in all directions, which was perfect. He didn・t need to worry about witnesses from other homes.

There were bushes following the line of the house・s base and he crept along them, searching for an open window. The blinds were closed and curtains drawn on every one of them, and he wished that for once people wouldn・t be so concerned with privacy. It would make his job much easier to know what to expect before he jumped headlong into a room. Literally.

He chose a window, one that had been left open just slightly and yanked it the rest of the way up. A screen sat behind that, but a tiny burst of kinetic energy later it was gone. Somebody had once told him, a fellow thief, that to use your mutant power on a job was cheating. Remy had laughed loudly in reply.

As if there were rules in the game. There never were, and never would be. Such was life. Maybe that was what made it so exhilarating, the greatest gamble of all.

Stepping back a few feet from the wall, he gathered himself, mind and body. His senses came alive, and he knew that there was no movement save the blowing of the curtains on the other side of that gaping hole, that beckoned for him to enter like some sultry beast. There was only one person in the house that he could sense, Congressman Schecher, and the man was deeply focused on something Remy was not able to identify. He gave one last look around and then Remy leaned back and sprang forward diving through the open window・

・And Gambit landed in the room on the other side, rolling once to smooth and slow his momentum before coming to his feet in a defensive stance. Just in front of him stood a large pool table that he had barely missed crashing into. He looked down at it. The balls were scattered about, as if somebody had been playing a game and had suddenly decided to stop. A quick glance around the room took in the wet bar in the corner, the couch along one wall, the stereo and speakers rigged throughout. Nothing of interest. Silently, he walked around the pool table and came to the open door at the opposite wall.

The hall on the other side both felt and was empty, and he began to wander down it to the left, away from the Congressman and his one lit room. He checked every open space he came to, and then, unsatisfied, he went the other direction down the hall. And after that he searched the two floors above.

Somewhere, there had to be a file room where this Congressman kept his records.

*******

There was a file room, and it was on the second floor. It had taken almost fifteen minutes to find it, but then he had come across a locked door and he knew something important must be on the other side.

The lock was a joke. The door might as well have been left wide open.

And so here he was, searching though a lifetime of personal files, hoping to find anything・something, to sedate the uneasy feeling running rampart in his chest and stomach. There wasn・t too much to find. There were some receipts for large sums of money given to Schecher for anonymous tasks that were most likely bribes, but Gambit wasn・t too surprised by that. Corruption wasn・t all that uncommon in politics. But the man・s sins didn・t seem to go much deeper than that. No criminal activity more serious than bribes that he could find・no accusations for serious criminal activity even.

And then he came to a file cabinet filled with financial information. The most interesting by far was the folder for the present time period. And he finally knew what might be motivating this politician to risk his reputation and shake hands with the devil. He was out of money. Completely and totally broke. He was already in the beginning stages of filing bankruptcy.

The lawyers, trial expenses, and divorce papers were what had done it. The folder was overflowing with bills, with outstanding expenses demanding him to pay up. A glance over the folders from previous years showed that he had had some trouble in the past financially, but this had put him over the edge. And it had been Gambit・s experience that wealthy men whose financial security was being threatened could get quite desperate.

Gambit had started to think that this might be some kind of information exchange, judging by the disk he was to deliver and Schecher・s lack of a crime record before this recent domestic violence charge, which, even if it was true, didn・t indicate that he had any history of involvement with organized crime syndicates, like New Son・s. But now he doubted that. This whole mess with his wife had put the Congressman in more trouble than Gambit had realized. Schecher wasn・t in this to get information. He was in this to get money. Another bribe.

But for what?

Gambit looked around at the stacks of unexplored file cabinets. The Congressman obviously had a fetish for hard copies. He could be here all year trying to find an answer to that question.

*******

She・d first seen New Son・s name in a scrapbook of newspaper articles from prewar times. The scrapbook had belonged to the man with the M-shaped scar and he had shown it to her at the same time that he had told her about the graves. He・d spent a lot of time searching for articles on the past and had managed to come up with only a few measly scraps of paper. One of them was a New York newspaper dated November 25th, 2001. All it really was was a piece of a headline, most of it ripped off and lost in the years of war that had come after it, but two words could be made out clearly, and they were: New Son. She hadn・t known what it meant then, whether good or bad, and the man with the scar hadn・t seemed able to offer her too much more information, but she had been intrigued.

And then, seeing her interest, the man had told her that he thought the date of that newspaper was the date that had brought a start to it all. He wasn・t sure of details, but something that had happened on that Sunday had triggered the events that led to the war. When she・d asked him how he knew, he just shook his head and said that it was a rumor he・d heard, one piece of history that had been passed down through word of mouth, and something just kept telling him to believe it.

She・d figured that when solid facts were so scarce, rumor was all you had left.

Nevertheless, it was a mystery, and it was begging to be solved. If that newspaper really was an artifact from the beginning of it all, then maybe New Son had been involved in the cataclysmic event that had pushed humans and mutants to fight. She・d had this feeling that if she could just find out what it all meant, if she could just discover who or what New Son was, she・d have a much clearer picture of the events that had led up to the Great War. It was a small thread to hang on, but she had had nothing else, and so she had clung to it, desperately. There had to be a reason for it all, for her life, and for the world she lived in. She・d needed to find it, to pinpoint it and point her finger and say, "There you are." And here she had been given a possible hope for an explanation.

So many people had died, so many suffered, and nobody could even remember what had started it all. History had been lost and destroyed, along with everything else in the past fifty years with anybody old enough to remember already dead.

Except for one person, she had realized. And that was the Witness.

*******

The problem was that there was just so much information to go through. He had no way of knowing if somewhere, in the back of some file cabinet, in the corner of the room, there were the answers he searched for. If there was some connection to New Son to be found, and it was somewhere in this room, it probably would be somewhat hidden, and so he looked in all the less obvious places first・the file drawers close to the floor, the ones high up and barely in reach, the ones lost in the depths of the room.

But all his searching had yielded nothing more than his initial discoveries.

There was a table in the room covered with papers not yet filed. Among them were a few scattered letters urging Schecher to vote one way or the other on Mutant Registration, piled upon letters trying to sway him on other scattered upcoming votes. Gambit imagined he must get hundreds of these in a week, all imploring him to choose the right side. He wondered how many, if any, Schecher actually read. He picked one up randomly, fully gloved hands gripping the paper gently. It was from a Dr. McCoy asking Congressman Schecher to consider the injustice of such an act as Mutant Registration. Gambit smirked in the dark room. He wondered if this McCoy was coated in blue fur, or if he was just another who happened to have the same name and view.

Something in the back of his mind flared to life and he froze suddenly, feeling about with every sense he had.

Schecher was moving.

And he was coming here.

*******

The second time she had heard New Son・s name had been from the Witness himself. She had been getting older, growing out of her fearful younger years and starting to learn that she really did have nothing to lose. He had already taken everything that mattered, and she didn・t value her life all that much.

And so she・d started to confront the Witness, in little spurts, to challenge him.

The funny thing was, he seemed to be pleased when she did it, like he・d expected her to do so eventually, and was satisfied that she had finally reached that point.

She couldn・t disappoint him, now could she? He・d get what he wanted. He would definitely get what he wanted.

She・d snuck into his chambers once, thinking she could get into his room when he was not around and search his stuff. She・d seen him leave the building where his underground quarters were, had watched him get into a car with some men and drive away, so she・d expected that the room would be unoccupied when she got there.

Only it wasn・t, because he was standing behind the door as she entered to leap around and grab her from behind, a glowing card pressed to her neck where he held her.

He was completely silent. She couldn・t even hear him breathe. And there was no scent to his body. She wondered if he was even real.

"Why did you come here?" he asked in a low voice. There were the chills that skittered up and down her spine, which were always there when he spoke to her. She ignored them.

"Because I could," she replied.

She thought she heard him chuckle in the dim and empty room. "You would risk your life because you could? Dat dere is de kind of attitude that will get you killed."

"Like my parents?" Her voice was a snarl. Her hate gave her bravery.

"I・d had higher aspirations for you than dat," he said coldly, a strange twist to the words that she couldn・t interpret.

"Sorry to disappoint you."

He smirked, barely visible in the corner of her vision. "Why did y・ come here?"

"I thought I answered that question already."

"You thought wrong. You had a reason."

She could feel herself sweating, held so close to his body. She could barely keep from gagging. "Can・t you just mind rape me if you want to know so bad?" She・d been told he could read minds, if it was true, it explained a lot about past conversations.

"Perhaps. Is dat an invitation?"

She shivered uncontrollably at the thought. He laughed.

"I have questions. I came to find answers."

He pulled her a little tighter and whispered in her ear, "Then, cherie, I will answer one of your questions, but first you must get free."

She looked over her shoulder just enough to see his glowing eyes as the card he was holding fizzled out and dropped to the floor so that it was only his strength keeping her where she was. She reached forward and slammed her elbow back into his stomach. The blow hit a wall of muscle, tight and prepared for such an attack. There was no affect. So then she tried to hit him lower, but there was armor to protect that. She even tried stepping on his foot, but every time he pulled it away before she could.

She realized that his physical advantage was too much for her. Biting was her last resort and though she finally managed to draw blood through his gloves, he didn・t let go.

There was no where to turn・ except to her mind. She was a mutant, born with an ability to enter other people・s heads with her psionic form and stay there for long periods of time・almost like a parasite, but self-sustaining. He must not have been expecting her attack, or maybe she was just that fast and powerful mentally, but she shot into his mind beneath his walls and came out on the other side into something similar to a warzone. There was so much there, so many conflicting memories all crossing and mixing・futures mingling with pasts, imaginings with realities. She almost became so dizzy that she fell right back out to her own body, but she held on, just barely, long enough to grab a small cluster of memories, clumped together in the scattered world she was in. She gripped them, wrapping herself around them until they were forced into a little ball. And then he was there, knocking her out of his mind with such a force that her physical body was pushed to the floor as her psionic form came crashing back home.

He stared at her, fiery shock in his eyes.

And she smiled, because he was standing two feet away from her and she was sitting on the ground completely free.

"Now, about my question," she said. "I want to know who New Son was."

He recovered quickly, tilting his head to regard the request. After a pause: "New Son was trouble. He・s de reason why we are all here."

More than that he wouldn・t tell her. But he promised she would find out when the time was right.

*******

He was standing in the shadows, out of view when Schecher entered the room. The man reached up to switch on the lights・ his hand never made it there.

The card flew out of Gambit・s left hand with practiced precision, hitting the light switch and shorting it out in a burst of sparks and light.

And then they were standing in the darkness a few feet away, the Congressman・s eyes suddenly skittering across the room frantically and he was looking like he was about to run. He came across Gambit・s ruby gaze in the corner. He froze.

"Who・s there?" he called, trying to put authority into his voice but failing.

Gambit stepped forward, staying just out of the column of dim light cast by the one window on the end of the rather long, rectangular room. "You sure you wanna ask dat question?"

The Congressman didn・t answer. In the dark Gambit could make out his features, somewhat less spectacular than they appeared in the newspapers. He had a solid sense of German blood in him, a big, strong looking man, deep blue eyes, thinning and whitening blond hair. But instead of looking composed and solid, he looked unsure, unsteady・ lost. He looked scared. He looked like a man collapsing under the pressure of everything around him and afraid that the next moment might bring the last straw that would break his back. Even without his empathy telling him so, Gambit would have known it.

"I been sent by my employer to give you something. Do you know who m・ employer is?"

The Congressman stared into the shadows for a second, and suddenly he didn・t look on the verge of running away anymore. "New Son," he breathed, as if the name offered the key to life. He no longer had the appearance of a deer in headlights. There was a new confidence in him, driven by greed?, hope?, knowledge?

"Very good. And do you know what New Son wants wit・ you?" Now was his chance to get some more information, even if information could be a very dangerous thing to have. Something was telling him he needed it this time, no matter what the risks. Maybe it was the ghost in his head. Maybe it was himself.

The Congressman squinted his tired eyes, puffy and offset by large bags. "You are the messenger, right?" He sounded suspicious.

Gambit pulled the disk out into his hand, sealed in the old envelope again with new glue. He held it there in the folds of his trench coat, fingers bent around it as if he could suck out the answers he felt so much like he needed.

"Dat would be me," he confirmed, trying to sound like he shouldn・t have to explain himself.

"I was told not to discuss the details with you. I was promised that you would be a third-party member who knew nothing, to protect my privacy. Has New Son changed the parameters of my deal?" The fear was gone; the politician was there.

Gambit gripped the disk tighter. There was nothing he could do. New Son had planned everything perfectly. "No, de deal remains."

Schecher nodded, a few strands of his disheveled hair falling even more out of place. "Good. Then, I believe you have a message for me."

He looked down at the paper envelope in his hands. As much as he hated it, he had no way out here. If he kept it, just left right now without doing his job, both New Son and the Schecher would be after him for whatever that disk held. He was tired of running. He・d been doing it his whole life, from his past, from his enemies, from himself. All he had to do was hand over that disk and it would be over. There was no reason not to. No reason to listen to just another ghost tormenting him in his mind. He・d be stupid to.

Switching his grip on the weighted envelope, he got ready to flip it through the air into Schecher・s outstretched hand. It left his fingertips・

******

She couldn・t let it happen. She didn・t know why, but she couldn・t. Maybe she was paranoid, but it didn・t matter. New Son was trouble and any deal he was involved with also meant trouble. She had to stop this, even if there was no real evidence to support that she should. She didn・t give everything just to come back here and take the chance that it would all happen again.

She couldn・t let her parents die again. Couldn・t let the billions of graves be built again.

Maybe this was the key to the future. If it was, she didn・t know exactly how, but she wasn・t going to take the chance that that door be opened.

In the darkness of a dormant corner of a mind, she gathered herself together, focusing herself into a clarity that was so hard for her to reach now. The mist faded and she was a sharp image, powerful, determined. Grabbing the rope of light that leapt out of her heart, she pulled herself forward, leaving the safety of emptiness・

*******

The envelope arced upwards, through the air, halfway to the destination of its flight. Gambit watched it, relieved now that the decision had finally been made・

*******

She was coming up behind him, behind the center of his consciousness where he stood, astral form tied into the ・real・ world, unaware of her footsteps as she came closer. She walked around him once, his eyes glazed as staring emptily, his blue, brilliant body still, his focus not here, but somewhere else. She imagined that if she were loud enough, obtuse enough, he would sense her, notice her presence. But she knew him enough that she could blend in with the surroundings, that she could become him・ which is what she would do.

She stood in front of him, facing that vacant and handsome face. And then she reached back and punched him with all her strength. He went down, without ever knowing what had hit him.

Nothing had ever felt so good in her entire life.

And then she was in control and she was Gambit, free to do things right.

*******

Gambit lunged forward, grabbing the disk the moment before it touched Schecher・s outstretched and waiting palm. His eyes shot up in shocked anger. "What・s this?" he demanded.

Gambit backed away. "I don・t think we・ll be making any deals tonight," she said.

Turning, she headed for the window, charging some cards in her hand to clear the glass out of her way. Schecher was yelling behind her but she ignored it, knowing that there was nothing he could do because she was in control・

*******

Remy blinked, groggy and disoriented. His vision cleared to reveal a foreign world, and as he slowly got up and looked at the lightning flickering across his bluish glass body, he realized that he was on the astral plane. He heard whispers all around him, filling what he perceived to be a room・a junction point, with innumerable doors and open passageways extending out of it. The voices seemed to be coming from them, converging here, and he knew that this was the center of his mind, where the commands that controlled his whole body were given.

And looking up, he saw who was in the center of the room, doing the commanding.

She stood there, sharp emerald body contrasting with the ambiguous shapes of faded colors merging and flowing along the walls and passages around them. Her face was drawn in concentration, tight and distant and he wondered if she was even aware of his presence here.

He knew he had to fight for his control back, and there was the stab of anger and fear that accompanied knowing that she had had the indignation to take over his body and that she could now do whatever she wanted in the real world.

Collecting himself, sharpening his image by gathering all his mental powers around himself, coiling them tighter and tighter like Jean had showed him to do, he charged headlong into his opponent.

He never made it to her.

A wall of mental force or will or something he couldn・t understand rammed into him before he could come close, knocking him back on his illusionary butt and dazing him for a perceived moment.

Determined, angered, and enraged, he tried again. His butt got another beating.

And this time he decided to stop and think. Maybe she could feel his attacks and was blocking him somehow, maybe she wasn・t as oblivious to this plane of existence as he thought.

Maybe he needed to be more subtle.

Standing again, he gripped the wire of light extending out of his right hand, held his arm up to about the level of her neck and circled her still form, carefully keeping the distance between them.

After two circuits he pulled. At first she didn・t seem to respond to the wire taunt around her neck and slowly choking her, but then, all at once, she was animated, pulled into the psionic plane by her shock, and grabbing senselessly for her throat. He used her distraction, coming behind her and holding both her and the wire tight, before she could unwind herself, and as she slowly grew limp and weak in his arms, he projected a wind of thought to force her back to the corner of his mind where she had come from. He wasn・t exactly sure how he did it, but it happened somehow and then she was gone and he was ready to grab his consciousness by the reins and retake his control・

*******

He woke up on the floor, the fuzzy carpet scratching against his 5 o・clock shadow, his right arm spasming violently and screaming out in pain. His instincts told him to get up quickly and he did, ignoring all his body・s protests, and coming up into a defensive stance.

Schecher glanced at him strangely, backing away with the envelope Gambit had dropped in his hand. "You are one crazy, confused, mutant. I think New Son should be more careful who he hires." Somehow, he・d gotten hold of a gun, and he was pointing it at Gambit・s chest. "Now, leave. Your job is done."

Gambit might have possessed superior agility, but he wasn・t invincible. He couldn・t dodge bullets from point-blank range.

Knowing there was no other way, he turned to the window, already broken behind him, and gracefully vaulted over a file cabinet to land in the frost-dampened grass outside.

Fully aware that he must be as insane as Schecher thought he was.

*******

There was empty forest behind the houses, the expensive homes too pompous and clickish to be invaded by another row of buildings within view of the lush backyards and Victorian style windows. He perceived the forest as a haven, vaulting over the fence circling Schecher・s expansive pristine gardens, relying on colorful bushes and hardy plants to take the place of the flowers killed off by the first frost. The ground was slippery and his arm was throbbing and his journey from one side of the fence to the other wasn・t as graceful as he・d have liked, but there was little left in him to care for more than a moment.

He moved quickly, quietly, always in the shadows cast by the hazy moon, breathing steadily the crisp, cold air that bit at his nose and ears, stung his eyes.

Where was he going? He wasn・t sure. The first lines of trees opened to him, and soon he was surrounded by the protection of statues of bark rising above him and branching out to net out the sky and the moon and anything else that might dare invade.

He immediately felt safer, if just for the solace that he was hidden, kept away from the eyes of politicians in bathrobes and millionaires in sleeping caps. Hidden? Never, never truly hidden.

The walls were high in his mind, desperately strong. He couldn・t even feel her verdant touch.

Somehow he ended up back on the road where his bike was. He didn・t remember choosing it as a destination, but he was moving mindlessly, foggily, stunned, and instinct was controlling his actions. He automatically found the machine in the bushes where he had left it, methodically pulled it back to the road, thoughtlessly mounted it and started it up.

And then the wind was blowing across his face, tickling the fuzz of his hair, chilling his bones as much as anything could chill ice, while his foot slowly pressed farther and farther down on the accelerator and the surrounding bushes and trees and dirt road and small towns became an indistinct blur. His trench coat blew up behind him, flying straight back away from his black body suit and he thought he must be a sight to see as he recklessly pulled up into a wheely at insane speeds.

He slowed when he realized he had ended up somewhere familiar. It was the bar he・d met Jake/Jackie at and it surprised him that he・d chosen to take this way home in his delirium.

Maybe it shouldn・t have. This was, of course, where all the events that had led up to this night had started. Without the secret meetings here he・d never have known about a Schecher or his financial problems or his business with New Son. He・d never have had any need to steal his mind back from a sultry invader sneaking through him.

As he passed the bar, his pulse slowing from the high-speed adrenaline rush, he considered stopping in for a drink. Then he decided that a drink would probably have the end-result of him leaving drunk and stupid by the time he was done.

His next thought was, Would dat really be so bad?

He decided that it wouldn・t, and he had pulled his bike up to the curb between a beat up pick-up truck and a sleek black sports car and dismounted before he realized that drinking would mean his defenses would go down.

And that would mean that she could get in.

He shivered. No. He・d wallow in angst and self-pity rather than in cheap beer.

He was about to get back on his bike when he saw the three girls, which seemed to be a permanent fixture in the bar, walk out, leaning close to each other and giggling as they whispered excitedly in each other・s ears about something or other. They didn・t seem too drunk, but they were definitely feeling a buzz and he wondered if they did this every night or if the last three in a row had just been a coincidence, an uncommon bout of self-indulgence.

They stepped off the curve, one of the almost falling off and the other two catching her and laughing, their bold lipstick accentuating their overly happy smiles. One of them was wearing a sparkly blue top and it shone in the streetlights.

It wasn・t until they reached the middle of the street that the middle girl glanced over her shoulder and noticed his presence, the same girl that had come on to him that first night with Jake at the bar. Her face lit up and she waved enthusiastically as she noticed him, stopping in the middle of the street and oblivious to the rest of the world as her friends, equally oblivious, continued to cross to the other side.

He heard the Jeep tearing down the road before he turned and saw it, driving too fast to stop, its huge red form growing closer too quickly.

The girl was still staring at him, yelling something that he couldn・t hear, followed by a giggle and then a hiccup. She had no idea that death was racing toward her in the cloak of a luxury caravan.

Legs ran toward her, he moving before logical thought could even plan an action, the hero-mode coming online automatically. Her expression changed as she turned her head to face the danger preparing to collide with her, fear freezing her position like carved ice forever frozen under the spotlights of the street lamps, amidst the smell of burning rubber and the sound of screeching tires.

It was his right arm that slammed into her, intending to grab her around the waist and hold her as he dove out of the way, but the injuries and the stress of the night were too much and it gave out, fingers tingling and muscles involuntarily relaxing, and as he rolled to the ground he was alone, the damsel still in distress screaming behind him. He turned terrified eyes, wide and glowing, to see her laying flat on the ground, body horizontal to the lines of the road and the oncoming car, knocked over by the impact of his attempted rescue.

Her eyes were big and shocked, her mouth opened in a endless scream that he would never forget. And then time ran out.

The tires spun past his upturned face, throwing dirty wind and the smell of the brakes at him.

And then the Jeep was gone, screeching to a halt farther down the road. She was there, laying exactly as she had been, silently crying with her head down in her arms with sobs that shook her body and she was alive by some chance that the tires had gone to either side of her, leaving her young, intoxicated body untouched.

He got up slowly, pushing against the concrete to go to her, afraid that his mind was playing tricks on him and she was really dead because he had failed, had watched the terror on her face and failed to save that carefree youth from a mindless body of metal and rubber.

But as he came to her and asked if she was okay, she nodded, never looking up, and he could see no sign of damage save for the cuts on her hands from her impact with the ground.

A crowd was starting to gather. He looked up to see their reactions. That・s when they got the first clear look at his eyes, and with the first shout of "Mutie" he knew what would happen. He knew that the accident would become his fault and that he・d have a mob of civilians chasing him, calling him Diablo Blanc in their own unique ways. He saw it happen before it all did and refused to let himself see it again in real life, turning and running to his bike, driving off down the road before anybody could get a hold of him.

He felt like a boy on the streets of New Orleans, running from the gangs of boys that would torture him and beat him and chase him, always staring at his eyes in disgust.

It had been a long time since he had openly run-away, him always refusing to let himself be beaten by that world that hated him, refusing to let it have the satisfaction of thinking it was better than him, of knowing he was afraid.

But under extreme stress, with all other higher thinking and logic stripped away, base-instinct was all that remained.

He sped the bike all the way home, relieved to finally reach the driveway, winding through the dark to the X-Mansion, porch lights shining like the light at the end of a tunnel.

Carefully, focussing on his movements and still in a degree of shock, he stowed his bike away in the garage and made his way up the stairs and to his room. He wasn・t sure if any of the X-Men were still awake, the barriers of paranoia in his mind too massive and crucial for him to use his higher powers, and he dropped into his bed not caring, not caring if Scott had seen him come back in the early hours of morning long after his unspoken but implied curfew, not caring if the mob of mutant-haters followed him here, not caring if the world blew up tomorrow. And in shear exhaustion, he fell into sleep, even forgetting to be apprehensive of the unconsciousness.

His dreams felt delusional, bight colors swirling in an endless sea, flickering and flashing like some living creature. He thought he felt her there, barely touching him but even the slightest brush obvious to his newly tuned mind, her emotional patterns full of guilt, trauma, uncertainty. He didn・t understand what it meant or how to interpret it and he eventually fell deep enough into his hallucinogenic sleep that he forgot to consider it.

But when he woke up, with light torturing him through the space between his curtains, he remembered.

Because when he woke up, his arm was healed.

Fin Part 7