by Alicia McKenzie
DISCLAIMER: The characters belong to Marvel. No money involved, don't sue. This is set just after the Cable/X-Man/Stryfe crossover...yes, I've chosen to acknowledge its existence, and yes, hell has frozen over. And if you don't know the story of Horatius and the bridge...::sweet smile::...look it up. ;)
No food.
No sleep.
Not since he'd come back from Latveria, parted ways with the woman who wasn't quite his mother and the kid who wasn't quite his brother.
No food.
No sleep.
No rest.
No peace.
Only the feel of his psimitar in his hands, cool and comforting, familiar even after all these years.
He was far from the brash young man who'd first used a different psimitar a lifetime ago, in Ebonshire. Even farther from the rebel leader whose symbol of office had been yet another psimitar.
But it still felt so--
Right.
Even after it had failed him.
Anger lent sudden strength to his movements, turned a graceful arc into a vicious downwards slash. The weapon hadn't failed him, Nathan Dayspring told himself savagely. He'd failed himself.
A weapon was capable of only as much strength as the arm wielding it.
The air around him was alive with energy, half-strength telekinetic attacks lashing out from the blade of his psimitar as he went through the exercise.
A simple exercise. As basic as they came.
He knew it as well as he knew the lines of his own face in the mirror.
He remembered.
Aliya. Showing him how to fight with a psimitar.
A dance, Nathan, her words echoed in his mind. Severe and somehow amused at the same time. Think of it as a dance.
A dance.
Whirling as he brought his psimitar back up to a defensive position, he staggered, suddenly light-headed, exhaustion abruptly catching up to him. Disgust flared inside him, cold and angry.
Weak.
No control.
Stupid, STUPID son of a flonq--!
Stryfe had thrown her in his face, and he'd lost it.
Lost his control, lost his focus. Some rescuer he'd turned out to be.
Stab his eyes--
Not just Stryfe. Both of them. Stryfe and the kid.
So much power.
So much--ability.
And here he was, his powers even more crippled than usual, relying on an oversized spear to help him fight. Not quite a mundane weapon, but a tool.
A crutch.
A snarl burst from him, a snarl that might have been a profanity if he'd had the breath for it. He threw himself into the pattern of the dance with a mad, rage-fueled burst of energy.
The psimitar began to blaze, its golden fire filling his field of vision, flaring around him with each movement he made. Clear, pure light, the antithesis of the bitterness that etched at his soul like acid.
Stryfe.
Nate Grey.
Stryfe--
He turned too fast, pushed too hard, and felt something tear in his knee. Another wave of dizziness hit him, almost simultaneously, and he couldn't regain his balance, couldn't prevent himself from crumpling to the ground in an undignified tangle of limbs and psimitar.
Slow, sardonic clapping broke the silence.
"Oh, very nice. What's the saying in this era--I give it a ten?"
The voice echoed out of the darkness, and Cable swore under his breath as he pulled himself back to his feet, favoring the injured leg. He raised a hand, wiped sweat from his forehead and glared out into the shadows.
"Go away," he growled exhaustedly. Part of his brain was pointing out helpfully that there was Something Very Odd about Stryfe being here. Another part was screaming at him to attack.
But the part of him that might have been able to make a decision, one way or another, was still drowning in the same sense of futility, the same angry despair that had been weighing him down since he'd come back from Latveria.
"Now, why would I want to do that?" Stryfe asked with a charming smile. He stepped out of the shadows, light from somewhere glinting off his armor, and began to reproduce the exercise Cable had just been doing, without the psimitar.
Perfectly.
Flawlessly.
Each attack was smooth, focused. Perfectly measured, not one bit of energy wasted.
For Stryfe, it was a dance.
Stryfe came to a stop, his cape swirling around him, and chuckled. "So very basic," he said, amusement in his eyes. "Shall I show you again? Really, it's not hard. A little more practice and you might be able to make it all the way through it without falling over your own two feet."
Bitterness flared into anger, and he lashed out with an attack that should have neatly bisected the mocking figure in the silver armor. Instead, the psimitar went right through him, meeting no resistance, and pulled him off balance enough that his injured leg refused to hold his weight and he ended up on his knees again.
"Oh, VERY nice," Stryfe said with a brief quirk of a smile, staring down at him. "I always did like you on your knees, Nathan, did I ever tell you that?"
Not real. This was exhaustion. Maybe even shock. He'd fought on the Helicarrier, then been thrown on a plane to Latveria almost as soon as he'd pulled himself out of the East River. And before that--oath, he wasn't even sure what day this was, how long SHIELD had had him.
No flonqing wonder he was seeing people who weren't there. Didn't make it any less disturbing, though.
"I would think not," Stryfe said as Cable let himself sag into a sitting position. Stryfe crouched down, regarding him with amusement. "You're dreaming all the time, even when you're awake. That's why you're so confused, Nathan."
Dreaming. Cable gave a hollow, desolate laugh before he could quite manage to stop himself. Dreaming--yeah, that was what he was doing. He was dreaming to think that he had ANY chance at doing what he was meant to do.
"Ah," Stryfe said wisely. "A moment of revelation."
Revelation. He'd been useless, absolutely useless in Latveria.
All that training from Blaquesmith, to be able to look at a situation and see how it could be changed, how his presence, his actions could affect it. A mixed blessing, really. Because when he looked at what had happened in Latveria, he couldn't see that he'd made any difference at all.
"Well," Stryfe said, eyes wide and somehow innocent. "You shouldn't be so hard on yourself. You're working under somewhat of a disadvantage, Nathan. Really, you do so very well for someone considerably more than half-crippled--"
His grip on the psimitar tightened spasmodically. He clung to it like a child to a favorite stuffed toy, or security blanket.
He needed it.
Hated it.
Crutch and symbol both.
THAT was reality.
"And I'm not?" Stryfe murmured. "I think I should be insulted. What would you be without me, Nathan? This false duality you're so fond of gets VERY wearing at times."
"Go away," Cable muttered again, pulling himself laboriously back to his feet and restarting the exercise.
"Seriously, Nathan. Where would we be without each other?" Stryfe asked with a broad smile, rising and beginning to mirror each of Cable's movements, his flowing grace in mocking counterpoint to Cable's awkward, limping progress.
"Happier," Cable gritted.
"Oh, now, speak for yourself, brother of mine," Stryfe said with a laugh, never breaking stride for even a moment. "You were everything I swore to myself I'd never become."
Bastard. Why wouldn't he just go back to hell and leave him alone?
"Weak. Not in control. Swept along by events--you're as helpless as a baby, you know. I could almost pity you--"
Cable stumbled out of the pattern, glaring at Stryfe. "Stab your eyes," he breathed. He still felt so light-headed, as if he wanted to do nothing more than lie down right there on the floor and let unconsciousness sweep over him. So--flonqing TIRED--
"You're getting old, Nathan," Stryfe said almost gently, continuing on into the next part of the exercise, his blood-red cape flaring out almost dramatically. "You can feel it, can't you? Your time running out. As much as you try to ignore it, you can feel your life drawing to a close."
"Shut--UP," Cable rasped, turning to stagger away. He didn't have to listen to this.
"Five minutes to midnight on the doomsday clock, Nathan! And you're the only one standing between life and death. Really quite frightening when you think about it, isn't it?"
He could hear the clock. He'd heard it for most of his adult life, but only in the quiet moments, when he had time for reflection.
Now, he heard it all the time.
"Horatius at the bridge for all of humanity," Stryfe's voice said mockingly. "God help them all."
Cable fell to his knees with a moan he couldn't quite suppress.
Horatius at the bridge.
The battle wasn't even here, yet, and already he was drowning in the Tiber--
The door slid open, and he blinked up at the light, wincing as Blaquesmith stepped out of it.
His mentor looked around, almost measuringly, and then gave him a direct, if refreshingly non-judgemental look. "You must rest, Nathan." His tone was incongruously gentle.
Cable looked back over his shoulder, half-fearfully, half-angrily, at the empty room. "I--" His voice was hoarse, too uncertain.
"Shadows, Dayspring," Blaquesmith said briskly. "Only shadows. Now come--you should eat, before you rest."
Cable dragged himself back to his feet, ignoring the way Blaquesmith's eyes narrowed as he saw him limping. "All right," he said roughly, clinging to his psimitar with a white-knuckled group.
Shadows. Only shadows.
But sometimes you didn't need the
light to see the truth.
fin