Post by Pyro on Jan 13, 2007 10:12:12 GMT -5
Mystique had been quiet as they landed, staying in the near-dark, lights along the belly of the cargo plane lighting the ground beneath her bare feet as Raven Darkholme gave way to the midnight-blue Mystique. She'd told Python and Aurora to go ahead to the compound, that she would see to it the rest was handled.
So she sat on the edge of the open cargo hold and watched the stars. She wasn't ready to go in, to face others, their questions about where she'd gone and how everything went. Her failure, and most of all, her son. What she wanted to do was hide in her room, because she knew John would not let silence fill the space between them as she so desperately needed. Suddenly Mystique missed Erik so powerfully, she had to put a hand to her chest, wincing.
Her golden eyes were half-closed crescents in the dim light, and she sat there for long stretched out minutes, silent, thinking futile thoughts.
The breath of fresh air had made John feel a lot better, and he stood staring at the plane for while. He was glad beyond belief that they'd returned safely - of that there was no doubt. But his recent melancholy hadn't truly lifted, despite the fact that he knew things were, objectively speaking, going well.
He considered going out to the plane, but decided against it, choosing instead to wander out to the beach, to the quiet little cove he'd located and to which he often retreated for his own privacy.
Halfway to the cove, he had a change of heart and headed back towards the landing strip.
The breeze was blowing tendrils of ruby-hued hair into her face, and she pulled it out of her eyes, lifting her head. She saw John walking towards the plane, and figured Python must have told him she was still there.
It came to her as she watched him approach how painfully young he really was. It made him look a little strange, but at the same time, beautiful in a way she could not describe. There was still so much hope and life and passion inside him. He wouldn't have thought it of himself, she was sure; but it was all the reason he hurt the way he often did. The reason he could become so quiet and dark and withdrawn. Mystique wondered if Pyro ever realized how similar they really were.
As always her expression was impossible to read. The lightest hint of a smile on her eyes, on her lips, she said nothing as he drew closer. Looking up at him from her seated position, she met his gaze, and let the sound of the ocean and the steady tropical breeze blow their hair about.
He gazed up at her, his hands thrust in the pockets of his jeans. "I was just gonna take a walk on the beach," he said, softly, but clear enough for her to hear him. "Got any cobwebs that need blowing off? You could come with me. I'd like that."
She could sense instantly that he was more than a little unhappy about something; it was all in the set of his shoulders, the tilt of his head, the look in his eyes. But the tone was genuinely warm and affectionate, the sense of hope in his words that she would come for that moonlit walk on the beach with him.
Mystique nodded, standing and running her fingertips down the back of his arm as they turned back to the shoreline together. Nothing was said, and she almost enjoyed that- though half of her wanted to be in his arms, driving away their dark thoughts with other things, the other half was deeply comforted by the simple silence he offered her.
But love has a funny way of changing your habits; even when you love and don't realize it, or don't like to admit it. So as Mystique thought of Graydon, both his tiny infant self and the grown man who'd angrily stared her down so many years ago, she found herself wondering what was nagging at John. If it was something about the Brotherhood, she should know. If it wasn't... well, then she wanted to know.
After a few minutes her smooth voice broke the quiet. "Something's bothering you."
"Am I really that obvious?" He smiled at her vaguely. "Angie did some research for me whilst I was away. I asked her to do so if she had the time. She found out some stuff about my mom, things I didn't know."
The pair walked on, a silence descending over them again. His hand on her arm tightened slightly; an indication that he was, as she had suspected, hurting and doing his normal thing of covering it up.
There was a faint scent of alcohol lingering about him, something which was surprising. She knew that as a general rule, John declined even as much as a glass of wine knowing that his mutant physiology reacted badly to such things. He looked good though; clearly he had at least been sleeping and eating. He was less scrawny than usual and he looked well rested.
"She really didn't want anybody to know who my father was," he continued as they arrived at his cove. He picked up a stone and threw it moodily into the water. "I guess I should stop looking, I know it's stupid, but...well, there's part of me that would love to at least know. To find my roots, you know what I mean?"
He turned his head slightly away from her.
"I missed you," he said, softly. "Badly."
"What do you think you would do if you found your father, and hated him. What if he was someone would could not love or respect, no matter how you might have longed to? What if you found yourself worse off for having met him? Would you still make the choice to know?" Her voice was as calm as ever, and she didn't address what he'd said about her. She had missed him to, but it seemed they were both too cocooned in their problems to reach through them.
Something told her they were going to have to come to some conclusion before they could.
"I know all that," he said, and his tone was surprisingly sad. "I just need to come to terms with the fact that he never wanted to know then and he's not gonna want to know now. It's just...ah, I miss her. Sixteen years after they took me away from her and I still miss her. I was only four years old."
He closed his eyes and drew in a few deep breaths. "I feel better for just talking about it," he said, softly.
His words cut through her cleanly, and she had to turn away, looking down at the sand and pressing her bare toes into it. "I'm glad," she murmured after a moment. "Keep talking then."
She couldn't. Her breath felt stalled in her lungs. Four years old. Graydon hadn't been much younger when she'd left him. The parallel was so strong, Mystique wasn't sure how to handle it. She knew what she had to do; get Graydon out of the picture. End his life. It was the right thing to do for mutant kind, but it would also release her from her guilt. She could bury him just as she'd buried Irene. Memories to be dredged up only in the blackest moments.
Lifting her face again, she scanned the skies with a look of deep thought on her face, that classic Mystique expression that betrayed not quite anger, not quite sadness, not quite joy. She betrayed nothing.
Except those you love, of course. Mystique cleared her throat.
"I watched her and her boyfriend - I can't even remember his name now, isn't that weird? I watched them killing themselves in front of me with those drugs that changed her. I promised myself that I'd never touch the stuff - and I haven't. Mind, one snort of coke and I'd probably drop dead anyway." He gave her a brief, but warm smile.
"I talked to Angie about it. She's a good girl. And every time I look at her, for some reason I see my mother. I don't know why." He sighed and reached down to pull off his boots and let his bare feet rest in the still-warm sand. "I ... I got some photos of her back. I - uh - I found them in the back of one of my books. It sort of stirred up so many memories."
"It's an odd thing to deal with, right now, isn't it." She didn't know what to say. Wish she did. It just wasn't something she was used to doing. She could talk all night to him about the Brotherhood, but this was a subject to whom she was the last person he should be talking to."
"John, I..." She hesitated, her stomach lurching. In fact, suddenly she felt so sick, she had to close her eyes. Sitting down in the sand rather abruptly, she took a deep breath.
She had to get a handle on herself. There were important things to do. Yes. Important things. Like the Sombra files. "I spoke with Kurt Wagner, Nightcrawler. I sent him all the information I found at the Sombra location. Video files, their database, files on the children. I expect it's only a matter of time until we see it on the news. Then we'll have to leave, and act quickly." Her head stopped spinning slowly. She hadn't meant to switch subjects on him, but talking about business was always a place the two of them connected. And Mystique found herself struggling for that connection, unable to grasp him across a cloud of memories.
"You did the right thing," he said, strangely glad that she had switched the topic. "We need to make damn sure that we don't let ourselves get too near the X-Men, though. I don't reckon as they'd be particularly forgiving if our paths cross again."
He reached over and took her hand. "You did the right thing," he repeated, reassuringly, kissing her knuckles gently. "The idea of what that place is doing to those kids...makes me crazy. Crazier." He studied her face by moonlight. "Are you OK, baby?"
Mystique looked over at him, smiling faintly as his lips touched her skin. "It's been a hard week," she said quietly. "I'm..." She looked at the ocean, and squeezed his hand again. Time for a confession.
"I'm not the person I was before the Cure was forced on me." She let that admission linger before speaking again. "I'm not as hard." Another pause, as she struggled against the discomfort that came from opening up this way. "I don't... recover as well, and... I don't feel as confident." Her eyes narrowed in the moonlight.
"I'm worried the mistake I made in Philadelphia won't be the last mistake. That I'm going to risk your lives, your... life, by being too emotional about things. It's been my strength. Erik's strength. It's how we work, and why we've survived when others haven't. And now it's... gone."
The worry on her face, the sense of being lost from who you once were, was clear as the day that had long since lingered from the skyline. "The Brotherhood needs me more than ever, and I feel myself- failing-" she stopped short, and took an even breath.
She just wasn't sure how much longer she could do it. Or if she was going John any good by sitting here with him, or by continuing their affair. Nothing seemed right. And when things went wrong for Raven Darkholme, changes were made. Big changes.
She looked at him, searched his face, his eyes, and hoped he wasn't going to be the one to die this time.
He sat in respectful silence as she poured her heart out to him and he knew a sudden cold chill in his veins. This wasn't right. Mystique was his strength, the solid core of his existence as the leader of the Brotherhood. To hear her expressing her self doubts made him realise his own shortcomings, and he knew he had many of them.
It didn't mean he liked acknowledging them, though.
"You listen to me, Mystique. I know that there's plenty enough people who look at us as we are now and laugh. 'The leader's just a kid', they say. I know they do. But they don't know what I do. They don't believe like I do. Like YOU do. Because you still believe in the cause, I know you do. What is it about this place, this Sombra Corporation that's affected you like this? Is it because of the children? I'll make them regret what they've done, I promise you that."
Mystique laughed in a whisper, a smile brightening her face. The surge of happiness that shot through her when he promised vengeance had come as a total surprise, like being tickled when you were in a black mood. She leaned over to him and kissed him briefly, slipping her free hand around to caress the back of his neck.
Then the kiss became something more, something deeper, and how much she really had missing came pouring over her hurt and doubt. She murmured behind the kiss, needy and almost desperate. Breaking the kiss but not their close contact, Mystique's voice shivered a little.
"I did miss you..."
So she sat on the edge of the open cargo hold and watched the stars. She wasn't ready to go in, to face others, their questions about where she'd gone and how everything went. Her failure, and most of all, her son. What she wanted to do was hide in her room, because she knew John would not let silence fill the space between them as she so desperately needed. Suddenly Mystique missed Erik so powerfully, she had to put a hand to her chest, wincing.
Her golden eyes were half-closed crescents in the dim light, and she sat there for long stretched out minutes, silent, thinking futile thoughts.
The breath of fresh air had made John feel a lot better, and he stood staring at the plane for while. He was glad beyond belief that they'd returned safely - of that there was no doubt. But his recent melancholy hadn't truly lifted, despite the fact that he knew things were, objectively speaking, going well.
He considered going out to the plane, but decided against it, choosing instead to wander out to the beach, to the quiet little cove he'd located and to which he often retreated for his own privacy.
Halfway to the cove, he had a change of heart and headed back towards the landing strip.
The breeze was blowing tendrils of ruby-hued hair into her face, and she pulled it out of her eyes, lifting her head. She saw John walking towards the plane, and figured Python must have told him she was still there.
It came to her as she watched him approach how painfully young he really was. It made him look a little strange, but at the same time, beautiful in a way she could not describe. There was still so much hope and life and passion inside him. He wouldn't have thought it of himself, she was sure; but it was all the reason he hurt the way he often did. The reason he could become so quiet and dark and withdrawn. Mystique wondered if Pyro ever realized how similar they really were.
As always her expression was impossible to read. The lightest hint of a smile on her eyes, on her lips, she said nothing as he drew closer. Looking up at him from her seated position, she met his gaze, and let the sound of the ocean and the steady tropical breeze blow their hair about.
He gazed up at her, his hands thrust in the pockets of his jeans. "I was just gonna take a walk on the beach," he said, softly, but clear enough for her to hear him. "Got any cobwebs that need blowing off? You could come with me. I'd like that."
She could sense instantly that he was more than a little unhappy about something; it was all in the set of his shoulders, the tilt of his head, the look in his eyes. But the tone was genuinely warm and affectionate, the sense of hope in his words that she would come for that moonlit walk on the beach with him.
Mystique nodded, standing and running her fingertips down the back of his arm as they turned back to the shoreline together. Nothing was said, and she almost enjoyed that- though half of her wanted to be in his arms, driving away their dark thoughts with other things, the other half was deeply comforted by the simple silence he offered her.
But love has a funny way of changing your habits; even when you love and don't realize it, or don't like to admit it. So as Mystique thought of Graydon, both his tiny infant self and the grown man who'd angrily stared her down so many years ago, she found herself wondering what was nagging at John. If it was something about the Brotherhood, she should know. If it wasn't... well, then she wanted to know.
After a few minutes her smooth voice broke the quiet. "Something's bothering you."
"Am I really that obvious?" He smiled at her vaguely. "Angie did some research for me whilst I was away. I asked her to do so if she had the time. She found out some stuff about my mom, things I didn't know."
The pair walked on, a silence descending over them again. His hand on her arm tightened slightly; an indication that he was, as she had suspected, hurting and doing his normal thing of covering it up.
There was a faint scent of alcohol lingering about him, something which was surprising. She knew that as a general rule, John declined even as much as a glass of wine knowing that his mutant physiology reacted badly to such things. He looked good though; clearly he had at least been sleeping and eating. He was less scrawny than usual and he looked well rested.
"She really didn't want anybody to know who my father was," he continued as they arrived at his cove. He picked up a stone and threw it moodily into the water. "I guess I should stop looking, I know it's stupid, but...well, there's part of me that would love to at least know. To find my roots, you know what I mean?"
He turned his head slightly away from her.
"I missed you," he said, softly. "Badly."
"What do you think you would do if you found your father, and hated him. What if he was someone would could not love or respect, no matter how you might have longed to? What if you found yourself worse off for having met him? Would you still make the choice to know?" Her voice was as calm as ever, and she didn't address what he'd said about her. She had missed him to, but it seemed they were both too cocooned in their problems to reach through them.
Something told her they were going to have to come to some conclusion before they could.
"I know all that," he said, and his tone was surprisingly sad. "I just need to come to terms with the fact that he never wanted to know then and he's not gonna want to know now. It's just...ah, I miss her. Sixteen years after they took me away from her and I still miss her. I was only four years old."
He closed his eyes and drew in a few deep breaths. "I feel better for just talking about it," he said, softly.
His words cut through her cleanly, and she had to turn away, looking down at the sand and pressing her bare toes into it. "I'm glad," she murmured after a moment. "Keep talking then."
She couldn't. Her breath felt stalled in her lungs. Four years old. Graydon hadn't been much younger when she'd left him. The parallel was so strong, Mystique wasn't sure how to handle it. She knew what she had to do; get Graydon out of the picture. End his life. It was the right thing to do for mutant kind, but it would also release her from her guilt. She could bury him just as she'd buried Irene. Memories to be dredged up only in the blackest moments.
Lifting her face again, she scanned the skies with a look of deep thought on her face, that classic Mystique expression that betrayed not quite anger, not quite sadness, not quite joy. She betrayed nothing.
Except those you love, of course. Mystique cleared her throat.
"I watched her and her boyfriend - I can't even remember his name now, isn't that weird? I watched them killing themselves in front of me with those drugs that changed her. I promised myself that I'd never touch the stuff - and I haven't. Mind, one snort of coke and I'd probably drop dead anyway." He gave her a brief, but warm smile.
"I talked to Angie about it. She's a good girl. And every time I look at her, for some reason I see my mother. I don't know why." He sighed and reached down to pull off his boots and let his bare feet rest in the still-warm sand. "I ... I got some photos of her back. I - uh - I found them in the back of one of my books. It sort of stirred up so many memories."
"It's an odd thing to deal with, right now, isn't it." She didn't know what to say. Wish she did. It just wasn't something she was used to doing. She could talk all night to him about the Brotherhood, but this was a subject to whom she was the last person he should be talking to."
"John, I..." She hesitated, her stomach lurching. In fact, suddenly she felt so sick, she had to close her eyes. Sitting down in the sand rather abruptly, she took a deep breath.
She had to get a handle on herself. There were important things to do. Yes. Important things. Like the Sombra files. "I spoke with Kurt Wagner, Nightcrawler. I sent him all the information I found at the Sombra location. Video files, their database, files on the children. I expect it's only a matter of time until we see it on the news. Then we'll have to leave, and act quickly." Her head stopped spinning slowly. She hadn't meant to switch subjects on him, but talking about business was always a place the two of them connected. And Mystique found herself struggling for that connection, unable to grasp him across a cloud of memories.
"You did the right thing," he said, strangely glad that she had switched the topic. "We need to make damn sure that we don't let ourselves get too near the X-Men, though. I don't reckon as they'd be particularly forgiving if our paths cross again."
He reached over and took her hand. "You did the right thing," he repeated, reassuringly, kissing her knuckles gently. "The idea of what that place is doing to those kids...makes me crazy. Crazier." He studied her face by moonlight. "Are you OK, baby?"
Mystique looked over at him, smiling faintly as his lips touched her skin. "It's been a hard week," she said quietly. "I'm..." She looked at the ocean, and squeezed his hand again. Time for a confession.
"I'm not the person I was before the Cure was forced on me." She let that admission linger before speaking again. "I'm not as hard." Another pause, as she struggled against the discomfort that came from opening up this way. "I don't... recover as well, and... I don't feel as confident." Her eyes narrowed in the moonlight.
"I'm worried the mistake I made in Philadelphia won't be the last mistake. That I'm going to risk your lives, your... life, by being too emotional about things. It's been my strength. Erik's strength. It's how we work, and why we've survived when others haven't. And now it's... gone."
The worry on her face, the sense of being lost from who you once were, was clear as the day that had long since lingered from the skyline. "The Brotherhood needs me more than ever, and I feel myself- failing-" she stopped short, and took an even breath.
She just wasn't sure how much longer she could do it. Or if she was going John any good by sitting here with him, or by continuing their affair. Nothing seemed right. And when things went wrong for Raven Darkholme, changes were made. Big changes.
She looked at him, searched his face, his eyes, and hoped he wasn't going to be the one to die this time.
He sat in respectful silence as she poured her heart out to him and he knew a sudden cold chill in his veins. This wasn't right. Mystique was his strength, the solid core of his existence as the leader of the Brotherhood. To hear her expressing her self doubts made him realise his own shortcomings, and he knew he had many of them.
It didn't mean he liked acknowledging them, though.
"You listen to me, Mystique. I know that there's plenty enough people who look at us as we are now and laugh. 'The leader's just a kid', they say. I know they do. But they don't know what I do. They don't believe like I do. Like YOU do. Because you still believe in the cause, I know you do. What is it about this place, this Sombra Corporation that's affected you like this? Is it because of the children? I'll make them regret what they've done, I promise you that."
Mystique laughed in a whisper, a smile brightening her face. The surge of happiness that shot through her when he promised vengeance had come as a total surprise, like being tickled when you were in a black mood. She leaned over to him and kissed him briefly, slipping her free hand around to caress the back of his neck.
Then the kiss became something more, something deeper, and how much she really had missing came pouring over her hurt and doubt. She murmured behind the kiss, needy and almost desperate. Breaking the kiss but not their close contact, Mystique's voice shivered a little.
"I did miss you..."
