Renere, 'to unspin, to undo, unravel what had been spun'

by Lise

VII.
~

Now

*

Nate came back this time, worse than ever, and proceeded to get drunk and fall over in the middle of the bar. Domino's passed out in the hallway outside their room, and I wonder why she even came out in the first place-- last I heard, they were fucking like rabbits, and then I find her, face first in the carpet.

I step around her, and go to use the bathroom. It was probably where she was headed, too.

It's so quiet around the place tonight, and all I can hear is Nate's quiet snoring, and the chirping of small insects. Insects-- that's a good sign. Everything was so deathly quiet for a while, that even the irritation of a buzzing mosquito would be welcome now.

It means that we're rebuilding.

~

A shout went up from the western edge-- just two feet from where Bobby Drake hung himself-- and two women were thrust through, almost hitting themselves on the iron plating of Drake's old shack. Domino, as usual, carrying an older woman, greying hair, thin, looking a hell of a lot like--

Franklin rushed up, carrying our medical kit and wearing a frown. I followed him in a daze, and thought back to the cover of volume eleven. It had a little spirally pattern drawn very precisely, curves aligned and center seemingly disappearing into the very page itself. A perfect spiral.

This Irene Adler wasn't wearing sunglasses, and she had bright blue eyes.

Franklin patched her up, and I hovered, trying to help as much as I can. So far, she hasn't said a word, but a lot of survivors that come here are fairly shell-shocked, so it's not that surprising. Franklin gave her to the only trained nurse we have because she wasn't that badly hurt-- Ilsa, I think, and she's also a weak telepath-- and looked at me grimly. "Well?" I said.

"It's Destiny, all right." I held my breath. "But Ilsa says she's mute."

~

Mute.

Intellect in tact. Mind and senses and soul-- and gift?, my mind whispered-- in tact, but mute. Unable to speak to us, unable to share herself with others.

I helped settle her in with Mikhail-- he took to her instantly-- and then I went to our room and started to cry.

Lorna found me, some time around supper. She held my hair back from my face akwardly, and then she murmured something about getting the potatoes on to boil, and she left.

And I kept crying.

Franklin came to cheer me up next, with a plate of mashed tubers and a piece of water buffalo meat. The grazing goats weren't ever enough to feed that many people, and so they frequently went out hunting. He asked me what was wrong, and I couldn't tell him.

The hard copies of the journals had been destroyed with our Blackbird in Egypt, so many months -- years? -- ago, but I kept the data on a zip disk around my neck, in a Shi'ar case. It had scorch marks from intense heat, and I had swam through sewage-- I don't know if it would even work, even if I did have a computer.

But I kept it, nonetheless, just like I kept track of the days and nights above my headboard.

Franklin took my hands in his, and stared into my red eyes, my tearstreaked face, and I saw he was well and truly worried. "What's wrong, Kitty?"

Instead of answering him, I said flatly, "I need to speak with Irene Adler."

And if she couldn't tell me what I needed to know, at least I could wring her neck for Remy, who'd promised vengeance on the woman who used two dead thieves -- friends of both of us-- just to make a point. He might be dead now, but I can do that for him.

~

"Where did you come from?"

Irene was seated at the kitchen table, hands folded serenely in her lap. I was numb-- I felt nothing except Mercy and Logan's deaths, saw nothing but Remy's dead eyes. Nate was echoing her sign language telepathically for the rest of us. She looked confused, and signed, <From the shifts.> She gestured around to everyone watching the little display, and added, <Like all of us.>

"So you admit to knowing what they are."

She continued to look confused, and Franklin put in hastily, "I've told her what we knew-- I thought having a precog around might help..." He trailed off as he saw the anger in my face.

"You have your power, then, Irene."

She nodded, but continued to look confused. <What troubles you?>

It was almost too much not to smash her nose in. Behind my eyes, all I could see was Remy's grief-stricken face when they buried his Guild-- over a dozen members, eaten by sharks in an early shift, Mercy's tombstone standing out in sharp relief-- no epitaph. Beside him, Logan's skeleton lay dormant, in a sea of acid. "What troubles me, Destiny-- what troubles me!" I threw my hands up in the air.

"What troubles me," I murmured, "You have some nerve, Irene Adler." Her eyes followed my pacing. Finally, I prompted, "Your diaries?"

Now Franklin and Lorna looked as confused as Irene, but still she stayed quiet. Nate was calm. I couldn't read his expression.

In the back of my mind, something was clawing, wanting to take out all the stress and nerves that I'd been bottling up out on this facimile of the Destiny that had haunted me for so many months-- I yelled, "You kept the last two from me, Irene! You made it so I couldn't find out how to stop this until it was too late!"

Some part of my logical brain knew that, even if I'd managed to find the last two, it wouldn't have stopped things in other realities, other places, other worlds. But I was irrational, I didn't want to listen to that part of myself.

Still she watched me, silent, enigmatic, and I couldn't help myself-- I lunged for her throat... Remy's voice thick in my ears, tears running down his cheeks for the fallen. "They're all dead, Irene!" I shrieked. Nate and Franklin held me back, and through my tears I yelled at her, "Raven Darkholme was a bitch and a psychopath, and you-- you both hid them! You and Mystique hid them!"

Still, she was silent, eyes bright and full of pity, concern.

"Where did you hide them! Your last two diaries! Where did you and Raven put them!" I screamed at her.

Irene's eyes bore into me, clearly seeing everything around her. It dawned on me, in a horrified stupor, that this Irene saw everything -- she was never blind, never saw the apocalypse, never was Cassandra -- right before she signed, <I'm sorry, child. I've never met anyone named Raven.>

~end~

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