by Cascade and Alicia McKenzie
"OW!!!"
Domino gave Bobby Drake an exasperated look. "Give me that before you kill yourself," she growled, stretching out her hand for the hammer.
Bobby was too busy looking around to see if anyone else on the 'afternoon shift' was watching him make an idiot out of himself. Domino sighed and took the hammer away from him, rolling her eyes as she turned back to the task at hand.
Everyone was hard at work on the joint wedding present--Sam and Dana's little 'love-nest', as far too many of the X-women were referring to it, Domino thought with a sort of tolerant disgust. All they were doing was knocking out a couple of walls to create a small suite, redoing the decor and furnishing the place, but you'd think the fate of the world was at sake, all the 'debates' that had erupted over paint shades and so on.
"An X-Man for years, and you can't even hammer a nail for a picture straight," she grumbled.
"Hey, give me a break, Domino--"
"Shut up, Drake." She was hot, tired, and thoroughly pissed off at the world. They should have had this apartment finished three days ago. Unfortunately, efficiency didn't seem to be in the vocabulary of most of the X-Men, at least not in this area. Too many cooks spoil the soup--
#Stop grumbling,# Nathan sent amusedly from where he was over helping Hank McCoy put up some shelving. #We're almost done, aren't we?#
About bloody time, she sent back, hammering the nail in to the appropriate point and then turned, giving Drake a warning glare as she looked around for something else that needed doing. Nate's backward glance was amused, and she couldn't help bristling. So I have a low frustration threshold, she said, going over to offer her advice to Storm and Cecilia on the placement of the furniture on that side of the little 'sitting room'.
#That's putting it mildly. And I used to think I was bad in that--# His voice trailed off. Domino stopped, turning to see what had provoked that sudden, wary silence. In the moment it took her to do that, to process the sight of Nathan standing there like a statue, not moving, not blinking, not even breathing, Hank was already noticing Nathan's sudden stillness and asking him what was wrong.
She was already reaching out along the link with the same question when a scream both telepathic and vocal burst from Nathan, the force of it, along their link, nearly dropping her in her tracks. Reeling, she managed to keep to her feet, an involuntary gasp escaping her as she saw Nathan crumple to the floor, Hank leaping forward to catch him.
She managed to make it to his side before her knees gave out on her. "Nate," she gasped, trying to remember how to breathe again. Nathan was already trying to get back up, feebly pulling away from Hank, but he was ashen, his eyes completely unfocused, and the surging panic coming up the link threatened to overwhelm her. She reached out to support him, but he flinched away, shuddering. Part of her would have been offended if she'd thought he actually knew it was her. "Nate, what the hell--"
"Goddess! What--" Storm was cut-off in mid-question by Cecilia pushing past her, kneeling down beside them.
"Nathan, take it easy," she said crisply. "Don't try and get up--"
"It's him!" Nathan blinked rapidly, his eyes starting to focus again. "He's--alive--HERE--" His voice was hoarse, ragged, full of a disbelieving horror that bludgeoned at Domino relentlessly, as if trying to pull her down into it. Shaking her head desperately, she tried to draw back from the link, just enough to be able to think clearly, but Nathan was clinging to her telepathically, and wouldn't let go.
"Nathan, you need to calm down," Hank said as he checked Nathan's pulse, exchanging a worried look with Cecilia. "Whatever you sensed--"
"It's HIM!" Nathan snapped, pulling away from all of them and staggering to his feet, swaying. There were no words to describe his expression at the moment.
"Him who?" Drake asked in a surprisingly level tone. He, unlike the rest of them, had kept his distance--quite sensibly, Domino thought distractedly as she rose, still trying to sort out the impressions coming down the link.
"Him--" Nathan muttered in a softer voice, his eyes still wild. "Here?"
Nate, she sent along the link as calmly as she could, projecting reassurance for all she was worth. Settle down, babe--what's going on?
He backed away, right into the corner of the room, his eyes roving back and forth in panic that would have been obvious even without the link. She couldn't sense anything from him that even resembled logical thought. It terrified her. What--who could possibly be frightening him so--
'Him'. 'Alive'.
"Oh, God--" she whispered.
***
Logan blinked and then grinned as Sulven walked out of the bathroom wearing nothing but her hair. "You, um, gonna get dressed, 'Ven?"
She blinked at him, a little blearily, and he straightened, frowning. "What?" she asked almost dazedly.
"Dressed," he growled concernedly, getting up and approaching her. "You don't look quite with it, darlin'. What's up?"
She blinked at him again. "Not sure," she whispered, her eyes actually crossing. He reached out, taking her by the shoulder, almost at the same moment that her eyes rolled up into her head and she cut loose with a shriek that could have woken the dead.
"Sulven!" he barked, an icy fear closing its fist around his heart as she sagged in his grasp. "'Ven--"
Her eyes fluttered closed for a moment and then flew open, full of stark, terrified disbelief. She wrenched away from him, spitting a stream of curses in Askani as she ran for the door. Ran, not teleported--that, more than anything, showed him how shaken she was.
Swearing himself, if in good, old-fashioned English, he took a moment to grab her bathrobe before he followed her. Bishop was standing out in the hall, a peculiar look on his face, and gestured to the left.
"That way," he said, still looking mildly bemused. "Was she not wearing anything, Logan?"
***
Thousands of miles away, in the ruins of a town once called Akkaba, a tall, powerful figure in shining silver armor shook off the effects of the cross-time jump and regarded his surroundings with a broad smile.
"A whole new world," Stryfe whispered almost blissfully, and then laughed, throwing back his head and letting his laughter echo to the desert sky.
***
"Alive," Scott repeated stupidly. "Stryfe?"
"Not the Stryfe you knew," Sulven said rapidly, staring at the table rather than looking at any of the faces around the War Room, either those there in flesh or those displayed on the screens. A 'general meeting' had been deemed to be in order, after Sulven and Nathan had settled down enough to explain what they'd sensed. "A different Stryfe, from a different timeline--how he managed to break through cross-time to get here is utterly beyond me."
Scott, looking around at the faces of his teammates and family, realized that he wasn't the only one for whom it hadn't yet sunk in. On the screens, Alex looked shell-shocked, Kurt seemed like he was trying to hold back a thousand questions, and Terry and Roberto just kept blinking, almost in unison. Under different circumstances, it might even have been funny. He could actually feel the tension from the people actually IN the room--he didn't know whether he was just being uncommonly perceptive, or if Jean was picking it up and passing it down the psi-link. Hell, he KNEW how tense SHE was--he could hardly avoid knowing.
"I don't understand," Cecilia said slowly. "Is there some kind of different between time-travel and CROSS-time travel?"
Sulven glanced up, and then at Nathan, who was sitting across from her, staring numbly at the table. Scott started to say something, and then stopped himself. An attempt at reassurance wouldn't go over very well at the moment, he knew that, but all his paternal instincts were telling him to do SOMETHING. He only wished he knew what. Knowing now the full scope of what 'their' Stryfe had done to Nathan, he couldn't imagine what was going through his son's head at the moment.
"I--yes, but it's difficult to explain," Sulven said, almost in frustration. "It would take too long, and it's not really important at the moment. Suffice to say, he should NOT be here, and we may even be facing some cross-spectrum temporal disruption as a result--"
"'Ven," Logan growled, very gently, from where he stood behind her. "Dumb it down for us, darlin'?"
"It's not IMPORTANT," Nathan grated, hands clenching into white-knuckled fists on the table. "The why of any situation--"
Domino reached out, laying her hand over his. "The question is, what do we do about the bastard?" she asked evenly. "Knowing what kind of trouble 'our' Stryfe got himself into, I don't think we want another one running around."
"One act of destruction on the scale of the Legacy virus is quite enough, yes," Hank said bleakly, and turned to Scott. "Far be it for me to advise you on tactics, Scott, but a preemptive strike may be in order."
"How?" Warren asked bleakly. "We don't know where he is--we don't know what he wants, to predict where he might go--"
"He must want something!" Kitty leaned into view on the screen showing the commsuite on Muir Island. "We just have to figure out what--"
"That is easier said that done, perhaps, kitten," Storm said worriedly.
"What if he's not--well, psychotic?" Bobby ventured, with an attempt at diffidence, and promptly winced as Nathan's head whipped towards him. "Whoa--Cable, I'm just pointing out the possibility. If he comes from another timeline, he might not be--"
"Be what?" Nathan asked in an outraged voice. "He's STRYFE, Drake!"
"Robert has a point, mein freund," Kurt pointed out very delicately. "We shouldn't jump to conclusions--"
"CONCLUSIONS?"
"Nathan," Jean started imploringly, but Nathan had already jumped to his feet, raking the room with an angry glare. Most of those present winced, or looked away. Logan nodded to himself, as if he'd just realized something, while Sulven's features quivered in obvious distress as she watched Nathan pace back and forth. Domino, oddly enough, hadn't visibly reacted at all. She was staring down at the table in front of her, her posture fairly screaming tension. "Nathan, calm down--"
"CALM DOWN?" Nathan stopped dead in his tracks, his face ashen and incredulous. "Excuse me? Did I hear you right? You think now's the time to be CALM?"
"Nathan," Scott said awkwardly. "Bobby's right. We don't know WHAT'S going on--"
"I don't CARE! This is the Chaos-Bringer we're talking about! You can all sit here and debate what to do, but I'll be damned if I waste any time talking!"
"So what are you going to do?" Hank said, frowning. "Nathan, you don't even know where--"
"So WHAT? I am going to hunt him down, wherever the flonq he is, and then I'm going to kill him!" Nathan's eyes were wild and unfocused, his breathing ragged. "I'm not giving him the chance to do any more damage--"
#He's not going to be rational about this at all.# It was Betsy's voice in his mind, and judging by the way Jean reacted, glancing over at her fellow telepath almost defensively, it was directed at both of them. #Trying to talk him out of this is probably a wasted effort--#
Sulven suddenly stood up. "Sounds like a plan," she said crisply. "How do you want to start?" Logan sunk his face into his hands, and she turned, glowering at him. "Keep your objections to yourself, Old One," she snapped. "One does not rend the fabric of time asunder by traveling cross-time unless the need is dire indeed or one's intentions are less than honorable. And unless the timeline he came from is completely different, chances are he was fully trained by that traitorous witch Sanctity, just like the Stryfe of this timeline was."
"In which case, the sooner he's dead the better," Wisdom's voice said from the Muir Island screen.
"You cannot be proposing to murder him in cold blood," Storm protested, looking at Nathan again. "Not when he has offered no threat--"
"Him being here, now," Nathan said with deliberate harshness, "is all the threat I need as justification."
"I agree," Bishop said bluntly.
Scott suppressed the urge to follow Logan's example and block out this particular distressing scene. "I can't--WE can't support you in this, Nathan," he said reluctantly. "Not until he's shown his intentions--"
"At which point," Nathan grated, "it's almost certainly going to be too late." His glare was enough to burn a hole in concrete. "And I don't recall ASKING for your help, Scott."
Well. That was pretty clear, at least. Scott swallowed past a lump in his throat. "Just--be careful." Images of that battle on the moon flooded through his mind, memories of watching Cable and their version of Stryfe sucked into that temporal vortex, supposedly to their deaths. He couldn't bear the thought of that happening--the idea of losing his son again.
Jean reached out, took his hand. #He needs to do this,# she sent. #We can talk to him some more when he's calmer--#
Nathan's expression darkened. #You're a pair of mother hens, you know that?# he snapped at them, and then whirled, leaving the room. Domino gave them both an apologetic look, and then followed.
Scott sighed painfully and looked at Sulven. "I don't suppose--"
"Don't look at me," she said in a soft, dangerous voice. "I'm looking forward to seeing his blood on my psimitar every bit as much as Nathan is."
***
The network station in Nairobi was usually quiet. There wasn't a great deal of Dark Rider activity in Kenya. The station's main function was to serve as a listening post. Thus, it was an easy target.
The explosions that demolished the small, nondescript building on a nondescript street were not caused by conventional explosives, or any normal kind of sabotage.
Unfortunately, there was no one left alive to notice.
Moscow station, in comparison, was a high-profile, high-security installation with a complement of nearly seventy-five operatives, twenty of them alpha-class mutants. Theirs powers did them no good against their attacker. One operative survived for long enough to get a panicked distress call off, but by the time reinforcements arrived from the St. Petersburg station, there was nothing left but rubble.
Geneva.
Beijing.
Rio de Janeiro.
Helsinki.
No pattern, no apparently rhyme or reason. Only destruction, as random as it was inexorable. Unstoppable.
A telepath in Hong Kong managed to send an image of her station's attacker, her powers boosted by fear and approaching death. No one in the 'inner circle' of the network was surprised to hear Cable's brief, emotionless description of a fiercely grinning, all too familiar face only half-visible beneath an elaborate silver helmet.
And the death toll rose.
***
"Bonn station is gone," Gwen Cruz reported in a monotone, and then winced as her putative leader slammed a metal fist into the wall. The blow left a considerable dent. "He seems to be focusing mostly on Europe, now," she continued, trying to keep her tone level. "Olivares is--upset."
"Olivares can go flonq himself!" Cable snarled. "Oath! What does he expect us to do?"
"Nathan," Domino said, stepping up behind him where he was hunched over the communications console here in the operations center of the Niagara station. She reached out and laid her hands on his shoulders, wincing as she felt the tension there. "You need to rest. You've been scanning for Stryfe for almost twelve hours straight--" She knew that at least a little of her headache was due to her own tension, but the pounding, unceasing pain coming down the link was all his, and entirely due to how hard he'd been pushing himself. She eyed his left side warily for a moment, half-expecting to see the T-O virus spreading.
"And I didn't flonqing well sense him anywhere NEAR Germany!" Nathan growled in agitation, pulling away from her. It wasn't really a rejection, she knew, so it didn't particularly sting. But she could feel how much pain he was in, how badly each report of death and destruction rocked him, and she just wished he'd ease up on himself just a little. Just for a while--her instincts told her he was going to need every bit of strength he had to deal with this, and right now, he was burning himself out. There was no other way to describe it. "What use am I, if I can't even flonqing FIND him?"
"Sulven hasn't 'spotted' him either," Eddie Cruz pointed out, very calmly. Domino gave him a quick, grateful look. Cruz had more than proved how level-headed he was over the past three years, but he was really shining in the midst of all of this uproar. Somehow, he managed to keep both his own personnel and the jittery station chiefs who called in calm. Nathan certainly wasn't helping matters any in that respect, Domino thought on a very private level. "If it was just one or the other of you, I might be questioning it. But if neither of you--or any of ours or the X-Men's telepaths--can find any trace of him, he's got to have hidden himself somehow."
"That doesn't help, Cruz!" Nathan snapped. Domino bit her lip, not liking the hysterical edge she heard in his voice. This situation was far too much like his worst nightmares--there was the same helplessness about it, the one thing that could drive Nate over the edge more quickly than anything else. "He's out there killing hundreds of our people! Does it really matter what kind of shielding trick he's using?"
"No, but you've got to keep that in mind," Cruz repeated, oh-so-patiently. "Don't you get it, Nathan? He probably WANTS you exhausted and doubting yourself--that can only work to his advantage. Hell, he'd probably get a kick out of it if he knew!"
Nathan straightened, turning to glare at him blearily. "Stop trying to--" His voice cracked with fatigue and he swayed on his feet.
Cruz nodded briskly to himself, as if coming to a decision. "Okay, that's it," he said crisply. "You're not being productive here, Nate, you're just getting in the way now. Domino, would you steer him in the direction of a bed before he falls on his face?"
Nathan's expression was positively baleful. "I don't need to be mothered," he said, enunciating the words very carefully.
"Of course you don't," Cruz said with a barely-there smile. "Dom?"
Domino adroitly took Nathan by the arm and hustled him out of the room before he could gather his scattered wits enough to retort. He started to pull away, to head back into the operations center, but she pulled him back with an angry growl.
"Don't you dare!"
"Dom," he protested, blinking owlishly at her. "I have to--"
"You have to rest, you pig-headed asshole!" she barked. He kept trying to pull away, and she snapped. "Listen to me!" she almost shouted as she pushed him back against the wall, pinning him there with all her strength. It was a sign of how exhausted he was that he didn't simply move her aside. He blinked down at her, his soul in his eyes. All his pain and confusion and frustration and helplessness and grief cascaded down the psi-link, and she had a hard time holding back the tears that threatened to escape. "Listen to me," she repeated, blinking desperately, willing her vision to clear. "Nate, you're dead on your feet. You can start fresh in the morning, but right now you have to rest."
"I can't!" Tears spilled down his cheeks--Nate, crying. Nate, who hadn't shed one tear that whole endless bleak year they'd spent in the future, not until he'd stood in that garden in New Canaan at the end. "It's happening again, Dom--he's doing it again, and I can't stop him--"
Nightmares, coming true. And there wasn't a damned thing she could do except hold him.
***
Sam watched as Dana looked anxiously out the window of the cab. He chuckled and shook his head. "We were only gone for a week."
She looked back at him and sighed. "I know. And don't get me wrong, it was the best week of my life, but I miss them all. And, I don't know-- I just have this feeling that something's-- different."
"You're paranoid."
"I can't be paranoid. I'm too busy being in love." She leaned in to kiss him, rather more perfunctory than she'd intended. But she couldn't shake that nagging unease, and worse, he knew it. This empathic link of theirs could be a real nuisance at times.
He slid his arm around her. "Dana, they would have called us if something had gone wrong. We told them to. We gave them our number. Nobody called."
He made sense--perfect sense. She only wished she could make herself believe him. "I swear, something is weird. Everybody is uneasy about something." She sighed impatiently. "I can show you through the link."
Sam sighed. "Ah probably wouldn't understand what ya were showing me anyway. Ah've always been a little slow at learning that kinda stuff."
"You weren't very slow at learning desire, passion and lust," Dana snorted. "Don't push me, Guthrie. I know how much of an act the innocent farmboy routine is, now--"
Sam chuckled. "Dana? Everything. Is. Fine."
Dana looked out the window at the mansion as the taxi pulled to a stop in the driveway. "Well, at least the house is still standing." Sam got out of the car first. He opened Dana's door gallantly and gave her a hand out of the cab. She stood up, surveying the front of the mansion critically. "I missed it Sam," she admitted. "I really did. I didn't think it would feel so much like home." Sam handed her her suitcase from the trunk. "Maybe that's what it was," she continued, hopefully. "Maybe it was just a bit of homesickness." Now, if only that didn't feel like I was trying to convince myself--
"Probably," he said as he returned to her side with his own luggage and the taxi started to pull away. He rested his free hand in the small of her back and started towards the front door.
"You know, we should probably be glad we had an uninterrupted honeymoon. That's more than Scott and Jean got," Dana said quietly. Change of subject time, she told herself firmly. There was no point in stewing about it, at least until she knew if there was something odd going on.
"That's a Summers thing, Dana. Cable, Scott, Alex, Corsair--if they get through a whole month without being interrupted by a crisis in the timestream or a reappearing second cousin twice removed, Hell freezes over."
"You know, we've been referred to a couple times as Cable's adopted children. You better hope you don't inherit the Summers curse." Dana paused. They were nearly at the door, but no one had come out to greet them yet. She chewed on her lip nervously. She really didn't like this. "Sam, something's wrong. I know it."
He stopped and looked at her. "Ah can feel that you're worried. What can ah do?"
Dana sighed. "Nothing besides going in and finding out what's up, I guess." She frowned. "Just give me one last kiss before it all hits the fan, okay?"
He chuckled. "Sure." He pulled her close to him playfully and kissed her deeply and lingeringly.
Dana heard a polite cough after a few moments. She opened her eyes to find Wolverine leaning against the doorway and looking at them somewhat amusedly. Flushing, she broke off the kiss abruptly. Sam looked at her confusedly for a moment before Wolverine caught his eye.
"Uh--hi, sir."
"Welcome home, you two," he said gruffly. "It's good to have you back."
"It's good to be back, sir." Sam said while Dana nodded in agreement. "We'd both be lying if we said we didn't miss this place a little."
Dana looked at Wolverine, waiting for him to break whatever bad news had struck while they had been away, but he said nothing. Instead, gesturing for them to follow, he merely led them upstairs to look at their new rooms.
The mansion was suspiciously free of casual activity. "Logan, where is everybody?" Dana asked as they walked down the hall. She didn't like the quiet. It was unnatural. And there was something almost--suppressed, about the empathic atmosphere. As if people were controlling what they were feeling so tightly that there was only tension where there should be emotion.
"They're around. Hank's down in his lab. Cyke, 'Ro, Rogue, and I think Bobby are down in the Danger Room training."
"Are we on alert?" Dana asked, getting to the point.
Logan refrained from answering her question for a moment, instead opening the door to their new 'apartment.' They'd both seen the plans, and had had some say as to the decor, of course, but to see it finally built was an incredible feeling.
Sam tightened his arm around Dana's waist. Dana's eyes lit up as she looked through the doorway. "It's OURS. Our home," she whispered lovingly, everything else forgotten for a blissful moment.
She was about to go through the door when Sam swept her up into his arms. She squeaked in surprise just like she'd done on the first night of their honeymoon.
"Threshold," Sam explained quickly as he carried her inside, mindful not to bang her head on the narrow doorway. Logan chuckled at them both and followed them inside at a safe distance.
Sam set her down again once inside and then the two of them went on a quick tour, hand in hand. The first room was a livingroom/receiving room. On the left side of the room was a door that lead to the bedroom. On the right side of the wall was a small closet for coats or linens or general storage. After checking the size of the closet they headed to the bedroom.
"How in the world did they get THAT in here?" Dana asked upon entering the room. Dominating the bedroom was a large four-poster bed--a Guthrie family heirloom and Sam's mother's wedding gift to the couple.
"'Ven 'ported it in," Logan said. "Needed something to take her mind--" He bit back whatever he'd been about to say. Dana noticed, but before she could ask, Sam continued.
"That somehow looked a lot smaller in Mom's house. Ah shouldn't have let her give that to us. We could have used something much smaller and less extravagent."
It crossed Dana's mind to mention to her husband that as close as they had been during the honeymoon they would have had plenty of space on half of a single mattress, but she remembered that Wolverine had exceptional hearing, and that wasn't the sort of thing she wanted him to hear.
There was another door in the bedroom that led to their large private bath. Dana toured the rooms for a while longer, mostly to gather her composure before she finally turned back to Logan.
"Logan, you're going to have to tell us sometime, right? What happened while we were away?" she asked, trying to be matter-of-fact about it. A teammate, requesting a briefing. Whatever it was, she thought, frowning inwardly, he was definitely bothered by it. He was covering it very well, but she could sense it.
Logan nodded slowly, his expression almost sad for a moment before it hardened again. "Stryfe's back," he said simply.
Dana gaped at him. "W-What?"
Sam ran his hands through his hair. "Holy shit. He's back?" His voice broke. "How?"
"We're not really sure what happened. It's not--OUR Stryfe, it's a Stryfe from a different timeline. Nate and 'Ven sensed him come through. He's been striking Cable's safehouses one by one. Hit and run stuff. Network folks can't ever get there fast enough to do anything but clean up." Logan glanced at Dana measuringly. "You all right, darlin'?"
She felt sick to her stomach. "How bad is it? Do you need me to do anything?" She dropped her bags in the corner of the room, suddenly buisness-like, putting her game face on, but he could smell the fear in her.
"No, Dana. There's nothing to be done now. We're just waiting for Stryfe to make another move." He snorted, shaking his head wearily. "We're reacting, here. Can't do anything but. Why don't you two just hang out for today? I think Cyke'll want to put you back into the Danger Room rotation soon, so you should probably take advantage of your free time." He smiled wanly, and turned to leave. "It hasn't been that bad so far, Dana. Well, it's been BAD, but nothing like what 'our' Stryfe did in the future. Not yet, anyway." On that less-than-encouraging note, he nodded at them briefly, and left.
Sam took a seat heavily at the foot of the bed. "Well, that sure ruined the mood." The joke fell rather flat.
Dana paced in agitation, rubbing her temples. "I cannot deal with this now. I finally got everything in order, and now this gets thrown at me? This is so not fair." She sighed. "And I'm whining, I know. God--I can't believe this is happening." What Nathan had to be going through--she couldn't even imagine!
Sam reached out to her, and she took his hand and let herself be pulled onto his lap. "Ah've seen Stryfe in action. It was bad-- but something tells me you saw something worse than ah ever did. Is this why you never talk about the future?"
She touched his face. "Part of the reason, yeah." She'd seen the scars of his work in the future, the ruined cities of the Protectorate, all those people who'd lost their families in the holocaust that had followed the battle at Anikia. Touching their pain had been bad enough, but to stand at some of the sites of the worst atrocities, to feel the agony still lingering in the empathic atmosphere, even after the passage of years--it still made her ill to remember.
"Do you want to talk about it now?" Sam asked.
"No--I just can't, Sam." She didn't want to relive all of that, not now. Giving him an apologetic kiss, and sighed and rose. "I guess the honeymoon's over," she said as she walked over to the dresser and opened one of the drawers. "I didn't expect the transition to be that sudden. I thought we'd have a little while to gross everyone out with how disgustingly romantic we are before we had to go back to dealing with one crisis after another." She ran her fingers through her hair, knowing how blatant of a nervous mannerism it was, but unable to help herself. "We told them to call us," she muttered. "Why didn't they let us know about this?"
***
"Dana, they wouldn't have called us if the mansion was under attack and we were their last hope. They wouldn't have interrupted us for anything. You know that." Sam smiled faintly as she put her things away in the left hand drawers. It seemed odd to him that the little things had come together so quickly. Things like who slept on which side of the bed, what side of the closet was who's. They'd never really talked about it, but somehow they had instinctively agreed. When they had put their things away at the hotel room, she'd gone straight for the left side of the closet, and he the right. When they had fallen into bed together on the wedding night, it had been haphazard, but by the time they'd fallen asleep in each other's arms, she was pressed tightly to his left side-- a position they hadn't altered since.
He chose to take it as a sign that they fit together.
She suddenly balled up the sweater she was holding and threw it against the wall. "This sucks!" She kicked the chest of drawers and then sat down heavily on the bed, arms folded.
Sam went to pick up the sweater and then sat next to her. "Hurt your foot?" he asked with a knowing smile.
"Yes," she pouted, "so wipe that stupid grin off your face."
"What did that dresser ever do to you?"
"Knock it off! I'm wounded here!" she said, bringing her knee to her chest and holding her foot.
"And the poor sweater--ah think they both deserve an apology." He started to chuckle, trying to cajole her into a better mood.
"I'm not in the habit of apologizing to inanimate objects." She finally let a smile grace her features.
He kissed her and leaned her back onto the bed. "That's my girl. You're so much prettier when you smile."
Her smile faded at that. "I don't feel right about this-- I mean, Stryfe's out there somewhere-- shouldn't we be doing something productive?"
"Danes, you've only been doing this for a few years--"
"Four years," she corrected.
"Four years," he acknowledged, "but one of the things ah've learned is that when big bad guys are out and about, you've gotta squeeze in the joy you can or else you just get frustrated. You can't punish yourself by witholding things from yourself, that'll just make you miserable. You train and you fight, but if you get a few free moments don't use them to berate yourself. Use them to center yourself--to remind yourself what you're fighting for." He took her hands in his. "Ah'm fighting for you. Ah'm fighting for a world where you and I can just live as normal folks and raise a family and grow old together without worrying about folks like the FOH and Stryfe and Apocalypse. A few moments in your arms and ah can believe in a world like that-- enough to lay my life on the line in order to make it come to be."
She hugged him fiercely. "You know, I'd go crazy without you."
He laid down next to her on the bed and looked deeply into her eyes. "That's why we got married-- so we wouldn't have to go without each other." He took her left hand in his right one, interlacing his fingers with hers. He squeezed it gently. "We're together through everything, right? No matter what?"
She nodded. "Yeah." She let go of his hand and traced a design in the comforter with her fingernail.
"Hey, how 'bout we finish unpacking, grab some dinner, say hi to everyone, and then run back up here and go to bed early tonight-- then we can get an early start tomorrow."
She snuggled into his arms. "Sounds good. Just make me forget that Stryfe's around tonight, okay?" She gave him a tentative smile.
He wanted to make that smile reach her eyes. He wanted to get rid of everything in the world that could cause her even a moment's insecurity.
He settled for a promise. "Ah'll do my best."
***
Forgetting Stryfe was around and saying hi to everyone proved to be mutually exclusive. Everyone was serious, even Bobby. Instead of watching sports and sit-coms on TV, everyone was tuned to CNN. None of the media had figured out what really was going on, of course--the network's security was too good for that, and the rescue parties, though always too late, had 'sanitized' each destroyed station before the authorities could get there. As far as the media knew, this was random terrorism, which they attributed, somewhat amusingly, to mutants. Sam and Dana got some welcome back hugs and fielded some 'how was the trip?' questions, but it was hardly the homecoming they had expected.
Everyone's bleak mood was slowly pulling Dana down. She went to sit on the edge of the couch and quietly watched the news with everyone else, flinching every time bystander casualties were mentioned. Sam stood awkwardly off to the side of the scene, not really knowing what to do.
He was new to this whole husband thing, and it seemed awfully unfair to test him with a crisis like this so early in the game. He rubbed his neck as he thought. He didn't know what was best for Dana-- to cheer her up and get her to forget or to focus on something 'productive' to do. For that matter, he didn't know what was best for him. The last time Stryfe had showed up, the last time they'd fought him, Cable had--died. At least, they'd all thought he had, and the memory of those haunted weeks afterwards, trying to step into Cable's place and lead his team while keeping his grief to himself, almost made him shudder.
A flash of something came through the link to him then-- recognition, he decided belatedly as Dana's head turned expectantly towards the door. He took a few steps toward the door, noticing that Dana was sitting up straighter, ready to rise from the couch to greet whoever was coming.
The door opened and Cable marched through, looking not happy in the slightest. Sam glanced back at Dana. She'd shrunk from Cable and was gripping the armrest so tightly in worry and fear that her knuckles were white.
"Sir?" he greeted tenatively. Cable glanced at him, his eye glowing angrily. "Um--hey." Hey? Oh, nice try, Guthrie. Might as well have kept your mouth shut, boy--
Cable paused for a moment and visibly collected himself. "Sam-- Dana-- good to have you back," he said curtly, nodding at the others, who were all giving him a uniformly wary look, before he continued upstairs.
Sam let out the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. Cable had seemed so happy at the wedding and now-- well, it reminded him of the first time he'd met Cable all those years ago. It left him quaking in his boots.
***
The knock came unexpectedly and Cable opened the door out of habit, before he remembered that he really didn't want company right now. He would have shut the door in whoever-it-was's face and gone back to brooding, but his unwelcome guest had slipped through the door and under his arm before he managed to follow through.
Sighing, Cable sighed and turned to face Dana, his hand still on the open door trying to make it very obvious that he wanted her out. Don't say anything, he told himself harshly. Don't initiate a conversation, or she'll jump on the opportunity. He knew her too well.
She didn't take the hint. "I wanted to talk," she started, pointedly ignoring the door.
Oath! And I used to think Dom was stubborn-- "I'm really not in the mood for light banter," he said, opening the door a little wider and not bothering to keep the acid edge from his voice. He really, REALLY didn't want to talk. Bad enough that none of his own flonqing station chiefs would let him stay at a station more than twenty-four hours, 'just in case' an attack came while he was there. He was willing enough to admit, in his kinder moments, that he missed Dunworthy, but a revival of her 'first commandment' was not a desirable thing. He certainly hadn't expected it out of Cruz, who should flonqing well know better--and the fact that Dom was still there, finishing up some things before she joined him back at the mansion, REALLY stung.
"No light banter--check. So let's talk about really heavy serious stuff." Dana went to sit down on the edge of his bed, drawing her knees up to her chest. The posture gave her the impression of youth and innocence, but also that she was completely immovable.
He stayed by the door, refusing to acknowledge the message she was sending off, just as she was ignoring his message to leave. She finally took a long look at the door, looked back to him, and then back to the door again. "You going somewhere?" Her expression was the picture of sheer innocence, and for a moment, just one moment, he almost smiled.
The urge died quickly. Glaring at her, he shut the door, muttering something savagely in Askani. "I didn't catch that last bit," she put in. "Something about my dad and inbred herdbeasts?" He scowled at her, and she smiled faintly. "Well, if you were going with that where I think you were going with that I'd agree with you--my dad IS a jerk--but it's physically impossible. With his gut he's not that flexible."
"You're not going to leave, are you?" Damn her. Damn all of them! Why couldn't they see that he had to DO something--that he didn't want to sit around and analyse his flonqing feelings on the subject?
"Nope," she said, almost cheerfully. "And I'll follow you if you try and run away from me." Cable glared at her and went to another part of the room, wishing it didn't feel quite so much like a retreat. "You keep forgeting I remember as much Askani as I do, don't you? I have to admit, I'm not as intimidated by your curses now that I actuallly know what you're saying. I'm half convinced that you were just making up scary sounding stuff before."
"Well here's something that shouldn't be too hard to understand. Flonq you! Get out!"
Cable had to give her credit. She didn't even flinch.
"Well, technically, I've already been flonqued today, but I'll go off and get flonqued again, just for you as soon as we're done here," she retorted with an absolutely straight face.
"Oh, don't hold off on my account," he snarled bitterly, realizing he was pacing again. Swearing under his breath, he forced himself to stop, to stand still. "Go find Sam and flonq to your little heart's content. I'VE got nothing to say to you right now."
"We're not done. You only JUST started yelling." That damned serene note was back in her voice.
He hated it, the feeling of being poked and prodded just so that he'd react, and give away what little she wasn't able to pick up with her empathy. As usual, though, he fell for it. Frankly, one needed much more sleep before one tried to match wits with an overly perceptive Askani-trained empath. "What do you want from me?" he almost exploded. "Do you want me to say, "Oh boy! Stryfe's back! Time for one of those wild and crazy Summers Family Reunions!" The bastard killed my family-- my clan-- my friends--" Cable bit off the rest, glaring at Dana. The outburst would have reduced most people to a cowering mass. Domino would have just given him a scolding look.
Dana merely closed her eyes for a minute as if absorbing the information, and then looked back up at him again, completely open and waiting for more.
Swearing, he walked away from her again.
"Look," she began quietly, none of the earlier bravado in her voice. "I'm scared out of my mind--Sam's scared, even if he'd trying not to show it. He doesn't know what to say to me--"
"I can't offer you any comfort." Comfort. Comfort was an illusion. He couldn't offer any comfort, or reassurance--or HELP to the people he owed it to--he couldn't do ANYTHING. The thought didn't make him angry, not really. The anger was a defensive reaction, the only one he could manage at the moment. Deep inside, he was just--cold.
"I'm not asking for any! I just want to hear from your lips how you're doing. Mi'tirvan--" The Askani endearment nearly broke his resolve, right then and there. And she knew it, she HAD to know it, because she just kept right on going. "I just want to talk--"
"Well, I don't!" He hurled the words at her furiously. "Don't you understand?"
"No, I don't understand!" She met his eyes unwaveringly. "I'd thought you'd learned that you can't deal with everything on your own--that it's not a crime to need a shoulder to lean on once in a while. Especially--"
"Get out!"
"ESPECIALLY," she continued almost ruthlessly, sliding off the bed and approaching him slowly, as if she expected him to bolt, "since this IS Stryfe we're talking about here." Her eyes, in comparison to her voice, were soft, full of compassion he could hardly stand to acknowledge. "You think I don't know how you're feeling? I saw your face when we were at Anikia. I saw what was left of Bigraia and Siriava--"
"Stop--it--" He'd managed to hold it all in since that moment with Dom in the hallway at the Niagara station. Even when he'd woken up from the nightmares, screaming--when he managed to sleep--he'd wrestled his self-control back from the grip of that dark emptiness growing inside him.
She put her arms around him, hugging him tightly. "But you're not alone this time," she said almost fiercely into his chest. "You don't have to do this alone. We're going to help you--we're all in this together, remember?"
He didn't know quite when he'd put his arms around her. "Bit of a tough concept for me," he whispered hoarsely. "Always has been."
"I know," she whispered, the soothing emotions rolling off her so powerfully that they couldn't help but penetrate the miasma of exhaustion and despair that had been all he'd felt for days. "So I guess we'll have to just keep saying it until it gets through that thick skull of yours, right?"
to be continued...