X-Man
by Babs Yerunkle
From the "X-Men Evolution" universe, beginning
after the end of the first season.
Chapter 8: Reunion
Moira prepared the stimulant mixture.
"He's a *very* old man. The shock of this stimulant
could be enough to kill him. Even if it doesn't, it can't help but cause
further deterioration in his condition."
"For once," Charles said, "I agree with
Rogue." He nodded toward me. "If we can get her memories back in
their proper position, I think Gerard would be willing to accept the price."
"I would," I said. "I am." After all,
while this might kill my body, it would also obliterate *me*, the thoughts and
memories living inside Rogue's head.
"But," Kurt asked, "Rogue's powers are
blocked. How will she be able to absorb her memories back?"
I looked at him with a guilty expression. "Remember
Halloween? Alcohol blocks the shapechanging, and once I relax back into Rogue's
normal shape, her powers come back full force. Dr. McTaggart has a sedative
that forces the same effect. I'll take it once we're sure that Rogue's
memories are in there."
"Alright," Charles said. "Let's clear the
room. Everyone out, except for me, Dr. McTaggart, Rogue…anyone else?"
"I'd like Kurt to stay," I said.
I took him aside and spoke to him privately. "She'll
need you, Kurt. You don't have to promise her anything, you don't have to make
a commitment, but once we finish she's going to be very confused and she'll
need comfort. Can you give it to her?" For some reason, there was a
tremendous pressure in my chest.
He looked at me carefully. This was a very different face
than Kurt usually wore. No happy-go-lucky prankster, no fast-food munching
machine, no goofy fuzzball. He was serious and intent, and looking oddly
mature for his fifteen years.
"How do you know she'll feel that vay?"
I touched my heart. "I think…I think she left her
feelings behind, in her body. I'm just a voyeur to them. When she returns,
everything will snap back into place."
"And vhat of your own feelings? The people you loved?"
I had never really considered that. I thought about my
great triumphs and disasters, lost loves, and causes that would always remain.
Those feelings were oddly…dead. There should have been something, but it was
all strangely disconnected. "I guess…there's nothing there, for the
moment. Perhaps I've left my feelings in *my* body."
He gave a goofy grin. "I don't suppose you can 'relax'
or vhatever, and go back to your girl body?"
I shook my head. "Sorry, I can't really control it
yet."
"Too bad." He was almost laughing, but I sensed
that his humor was aimed inward. "Ach, I feel like such an idiot, but it's
hard for me to see past the exterior and talk to the 'you' that is really inside."
He laughed and tapped himself on the nose. "I can't believe it's *me*
admitting that – me, the blue monster."
"You're not a monster! If anything, you're
better…superior…"
He chuckled. "You should never tell a German that he's
superior. It starts all kind of trouble."
"Hey! I was in that war! I was a lot closer to things
than *you* ever were!"
Kurt suddenly leaned back, and I realized how I'd been
moving closer to him, into his personal space.
"Ach. It is hard for me to say this to a man's body,
even if I know who you are inside."
Huh? "Ah, Kurt…"
He put his finger on my lips. "Hush. Talk all you
vant about science and powers. You always forget the important thing. What
about Rogue's *soul*? I'll tell you vhat I think: her soul is right where it's
always been." He reached over and tapped my chest, just over my heart. "Memories
change, but the soul is the same. Her soul has the same hopes and feelings,
she's still the same girl inside. No matter what the outside looks like. No
matter vhat she thinks inside her head."
What was wrong with me? Why did I feel like this inside? I
turned away from him, suddenly.
"Vhat's wrong? I didn't mean to hurt your feelings!"
"Men don't cry," was all I told him.
I felt a hand on my shoulder.
"I just want you to help her feel better, afterward,"
I said, wiping my face off.
"I promise," Kurt said quietly. "Whoever she
thinks she is."
"I'm ready," Moira called.
We all took position around the bed. Mystique adjusted a
drip-IV, then we waited. Aside from a change in the monitors, nothing happened
for several minutes. Then, with a wet and gummy-sounding cough, the frail and
ancient man began to stir. Slowly he blinked his eyes and then peered around,
as if trying to cope with everything.
"His glasses!" I said. "He sees better with
his glasses on!"
Moira slipped the glasses onto the old man's head. I felt
very strange, looking at myself and thinking of myself in the third person.
He peered around again. Moira – he didn't seem to recognize
her. "Charles…" his head turned past me "Kurt!" Was that
a trace of southern accent? Suddenly his head snapped back to me and he began
to cough. After a moment, I realized that he was laughing.
"Haven't seen that face since Herbert Hoover was in the
White House," he wheezed. Then, in a drawl he asked, "What'n hell's
a matter with ya?"
"Rogue?" This was agonizingly drawn out of Kurt.
"Hi, Kurty," the old man said, with a great deal
of sorrow. "It's good to see you, my son."
"You're all in there," I said. Not with triumph,
with resignation. "Me, Rogue, Mystique. All of you."
"I'm proud of myself," he said. "How much do
you remember?"
"Just Mystique breaking into the lab, screaming about
how she was going to 'kill her.' Kill Rogue, I assume. After that, we must
have struggled. I got knocked out. Things got real messed up after that."
Then, "So, damn you, where's my body?"
"Mystique? Lance and Quicksilver found you at your
place. They called some emergency number –"
"Shit!"
"So your body is in the keeping of Sebastian Shaw. He
says it's a tableau rasa. Even with telepathic help, he can't find any
memories."
"Good riddance, Ah say."
Charles spoke up. "Please, we want to understand what
happened."
"Maybe you're not as smart as I thought, after all."
"Well just keep guessing. It's more entertaining that way." "Aw,
Ah'll tell. You two shut up." And in a southern drawl, he continued. "The
bitch decided she needed to kidnap me because –" "Don't even try!"
"—because she had to. That's all Ah can say. So Ah open the door and
there's this postman. Before Ah knew what was up, he'd thrown a gas bomb in
and slipped a mask ovah his own face. But Ah hadn't planned on going out. Ah
wasn't wearing long sleeves or gloves, so Ah grabbed him around the neck and we
started strugglin'. Right then, Ah knew it was Mystique, set to mess mah life
up again, so Ah fought like a demon. And Ah knocked her mask off and we
fought, and Ah sucked the power and memories out of her until it hurt. It hurt
like hell. But the more Ah saw, the more Ah hated her. It was like poison! I
had to get rid of it all! Ah was so stupid, but she drove me mad, and Ah had
to stop her, had to make it stop. It couldn't be true! And then Ah passed
out, too, and mah arm was across her skin, and the drain still continued…"
"Because when we woke up, we were both trapped in the
little bitch's head. My own body – my real body – was lying on the floor like
I was dead. Do you know what that's like?"
"Hell, you deserved it. Ah'm the one who has to
suffer, with you locked up inside mah head. Ah knew your mind was a tortured
mess, but Ah nevah knew it was *this* bad."
"I'll take you with me, you ungrateful little –"
"Yes, I believe you will." I think it was my
voice again. That is, it was definitely my old body, but I think that was my
original personality speaking. "I'd been resigned to my own mortality for
some time now. The odd thing is, that acceptance has come to both Rogue and
Mystique, as well. They're still fighting, but they won't for much longer.
They've accepted, not that you'd ever guess it from the way they act."
"No," I said. "We can fix things. We've
figured it out. I'm locked in this form and I can't use Rogue's powers, but
when I get drunk I 'relax' back into her normal body. Then her powers come on
again. I'll use them to transfer you back out of that body, Rogue, and back
into your normal body, where you belong."
"No!" Instantly, the heart monitors started to
screech an alarm signal.
"Calm down, calm down!" Moira said. "I won't
let her get any closer until you're ready."
"You don't understand," the drawling voice began
again, with a slight wheeze. "There isn't any such thing as a clean
transfer. You get *everything*. It all gets dumped into you. And when it's
permanent like this, you cain't evah get rid of it again. Ah'm trapped with
that bitch forever. And Ah couldn't control her power – she was there in the
way – and our shape changed until we looked like Mystique. Ah hated that, but
even more Ah hated the idea of having her in mah head. She's so sick, you
wouldn't believe it. After Magneto took her baby it got lots worse, but she
was always sick. And Ah just wanted to die. That's when Ah got the idea of
using your contraption, Doc. It stores the power up until it explodes, and
that's what Ah wanted to do. So I took Mystique's car ovah to your place.
Wow, were you surprised to see us! You thought Ah was Mystique. But I
explained, and said that Ah needed your invention to 'stabilize' my power."
"And to my shame, I didn't realize what you were
planning until it was almost too late."
"You tried to pull me away, just as it overcharged and
blew up. And when it was all over, all of us were in the Doc's head, and mah
own body was lying unconscious. Only, while we watched, it started shifting,
until it looked like Doc. Even had his clothes. So we figured that Doc was
inside, and probably in charge."
I nodded my head. "I'm the *only* one in here. And my
memory cuts off just after 'Mystique' burst into the lab."
"Yes, these few minutes after she arrived probably hadn't
been transferred to long-term memory storage when the accident happened. Which
would seem to indicate that Rogue's bio-control field only regulates the transference
–"
"—of long-term memories," I finished. We nodded
at one another, me and I.
"Anyway," the drawl-voice continued, "we
figured we'd better move Mystique's body. We decided to take her back to her
place. After that we decided to pick up some of our things from the apartment,
and that's when those creeps jumped us – Avalanche and Quicksilver!
"After that, things got rough. They hit me a couple of
times, but Ah was too old now. Ah passed out on them. Ah remember a rescue,
and Ah saw Doc, only Ah knew it had to be me, mah body. It feels like a while
has passed. How long has it been?"
"Almost a veek," Kurt said softly.
"But –" I protested "—you belong back in your
own body."
"Don't you get it? You cain't pull us apart now. We're
all in here together. And it's not very nice. But it *is* a little more
peaceful than back when I was still in mah own body. Ah thought Ah was going
to go mad."
"That's true!" After a moment, I decided the
voice must be Mystique's. "It doesn't hurt. For the first time in
fifteen years, I can stand to look at it. It doesn't hurt."
"What doesn't hurt?" Moira asked.
"Her baby." The drawl voice came out of my aged
body with infinite sadness. "It drove her mad."
"No!"
"Ah have to tell them. They have a right to know.…Kurt
needs to know."
"Then I'll tell." The old man looked at Kurt with
a tenderness that was almost heartbreaking. "I never thought…I never
meant…the whole time I was pregnant with you, I was in my 'Mystique' shape.
And when you were born, you had blue fur, pointed ears. I knew there was no
way you'd ever be able to have a normal life." He held back a sob. "And
Magnus thought he had an answer. I…I trusted him. I was such a fool! It
changed you even more. Your hands, your feet, and you cried so hard! It must
have hurt so much! I tried to save you, to take you, but he sent the wolves
after me and you fell – we thought you were dead. Magnus and I. I left him
thinking that, even after I found you. I had to. I had to keep you safe from him.
But I never stopped loving you."
"Except she isn't quite telling the truth. It changed
her. She hated everything afterward, even Irene for a while –" the
drawl-voice gasped at that "—Irene! That's why –"
"No, keep out of my memories!"
"They belong to both of us, now!"
"The fact that both of them are skipping is that…"
the old man's face went through a series of contortions "…that we all have
our secrets. Childhood secrets. Pains and loves and agonies that form who you
are. And one core of Mystique's personality are the terrible events that
happened to her son. And a pillar of Rogue's personality was her…strong
affection…for that same person. The two could not coexist. It was like oxygen
and acetylene, an explosive mixture. Although…oddly enough, the two seem to be
getting along better now. The fighting is more like an ingrained reflex than
the insane rage that existed before."
"Ve have been noticing," Kurt offered, "that
the emotions, perhaps the soul, remains vith the body. Only the information of
the memories is transferred."
"What, you mean Ah'm still ovah there, in spite of the
fact that Ah think Ah'm in here?"
Kurt nodded. "Maybe."
The old man took on a look of glee. "Ah guess hat
means that Mystique – the *real* one – is still in her own body, except that it's
a vegetable now! That is just too rich! Hear that, you old biddy? You only
*think* you're over here!"
The man looked at me, in particular. "There's one way
to know for sure. *I* could never love…a man. I'm a *man*, not a woman. How
could I even *look* at another man? The very idea is sickening. But from
Rogue's memories, I know that she felt very different." He stared at me.
"So who are you? Are you *her*, or are you *me*?"
"I'm a MAN," I told him. "I may be
temporarily occupying her *body*, but I am 100% *male*."
"Good!" The man cackled in glee. "Then you
won't be bothered when you hear what *really* sent Rogue over the edge."
"Now Ah'm telling you to shut up! She doesn't need to
know that!"
"*She* is a *he*. Didn't you hear him?"
Dr. McTaggart adjusted the drip. "I think that's
enough. You're starting to overstress yourself. This session has already been
too much for you."
"Who cares? We're old! We're all going to die! Don't
you get it?"
"You shut up, bitch!"
The cardiac monitor was starting to give a warning squeal.
"Calm down! Before you kill yourself!"
"Kill myself? Ha! Not before I say goodbye –" "Don't
you DARE!"
The old man raised himself up, with the alarm screech of the
cardiac monitor in the background. He looked straight at me, but I knew it was
Mystique speaking.
"I want to say goodbye…to my daughter." "NO!"
As the stress peaked, I saw the old man collapse back onto
the bed. And as the implications struck me, as I turned to look at
my…brother…the man I could never, ever love…as my own heart shattered, I too
collapsed to the ground, in perfect synchronization with my older body.
(Author's note: Okay, it was a very short chapter, but this
seemed like a good place to end it. I'm not a stinker, am I?)
Continued in Chapter 9, appearing NEXT Sunday!
since 03/09/03
