January's Children

by Alicia McKenzie

Nathan Dayspring was confused. To all outward appearances, he was sitting out in front of a sidewalk caf?, having a cup of coffee with Stryfe. Coffee, with Stryfe. And Stryfe wasn't making any aggressive moves, and Nathan couldn't quite bring himself to rip the bastard's throat out.

And the tablecloth had daisies on it.

"They're an ugly flower, don't you think?" Stryfe said conversationally, sipping at his espresso. "I'll never understand why people think they liven up a room."

"I like daisies," Nathan murmured, and took one from the vase that hadn't been there a moment ago. He rolled the stem back and forth between his fingers, experimentally. It felt real, although that proved nothing. The unreal could be very solid at times. He'd learned that lesson long ago. "They're small and bright, and they don't bite you. They're not full of themselves, either. That's a good thing in a flower." He offered the daisy to Stryfe, who took it calmly and stuck it behind his ear.

"What do you think?" his brother asked.

"I think you look ridiculous."

"Mm. Point." Stryfe tossed the flower aside. It fell to the cobblestones and turned into a small green snake with a white stripe down its back and bright gold eyes. "Go away," Stryfe told it irritably. It hissed at him and then slithered towards the river.

The river. "The--Seine," Nathan said slowly, looking back up at Stryfe. There was something very wrong with this whole situation, besides the obvious. He should be reacting, but his body insisted on going through the motions, raising the coffee cup to his lips and then lowering it again, and his thoughts felt--slow. "We're in Paris."

"We'll always have Paris, brother dear," Stryfe said extravagantly, and then looked back over his shoulder at the Eiffel Tower. "STOP STARING AT US!" he bellowed.

Nathan twitched violently, losing his grip on his coffee cup. It fell, shattering on the stones, and the coffee turned into ants that ran away, giggling.

"Your coffee's getting away, Nathan," Stryfe said calmly, turning back to him.

"I know," Nathan muttered, folding his shaking hands together. "Let it."

"That's not like you."

"I don't feel like chasing it." He heistated, then tried doggedly to drag the conversation back to something resembling sanity. "Who was watching us?"

He'd asked that question before, he thought distantly. He just couldn't remember the answer--and knowing who was watching them was important. Because they were waiting, he knew. Waiting to see what he and Stryfe were going to do.

"The usual. Them."

Them. Trying to focus on Them provoked a sense of unease that threatened to spiral upwards into outright panic. Nathan let speculation fade away, and took refuge in what was--or what seemed to be.

"So they're watching. Do we maul each other, then?" he asked, thinking of tigers circling one another in the ring.

"Well, that would be old familiar territory, wouldn't it?" Stryfe leaned forward, his eyes narrowing. "It would feel good, though," he murmured almost gleefully. "It's been so long since we just--had at each other. I miss the old days, Nathan."

"You mean, you miss thinking you were unique and I was just a copy," Nathan said, staring down at his hands. They weren't shaking any longer. "You miss that unshakeable belief in your own superiority."

"Who's to say my faith was ever shaken?" Stryfe bared his teeth. "You never actually beat me, Nathan."

An odd thing to say; true, though, and Nathan wondered distantly why that didn't disturb him more. Letting the puzzle fall away, he stared across the table at Stryfe and took the next step. "You didn't like finding out that we're not separate after all," he said. Stryfe jerked backwards, and Nathan gave him a faint smile, feeling a distant flicker of amusement at having scored a hit. Honesty. It always had more impact than any lie. "You're so predictable. Brother."

"Shut up," Stryfe snapped as he leaned forward, his posture threatening and one eye glowing balefully. "I may be your clone, Dayspring, but trust me, we are most definitely separate people."

"Poor choice of words. Let's say you didn't like realizing how much our lives revolve around one another." Stryfe opened his mouth to protest, but Nathan continued calmly, knowing he was on the right track. "I wouldn't be who I am if you'd never existed. Don't you feel the same way? Don't we define ourselves in terms of each other?" He raised a fist, and watched Stryfe move instinctively to block him. "One of us acts, the other reacts," Nathan said, letting his hand fall back to the table.

Stryfe leaned back in his chair, shaking his head. "You're an idiot, Nathan," he said contemptuously. "A dull-minded fool who thinks simplistic philosophy can substitute for the cold, hard reality of life."

"Is that why you killed her?" Nathan looked away from Stryfe as he asked the question, wondering why he felt light-headed instead of angry.

"To teach you a lesson? Hardly." Stryfe sipped at his coffee, that moment of anger gone. "Did you ever ask yourself if I even knew she was in the camp? Or was it more satisfying to think that I did it deliberately, to hurt you?"

"You did."

"Are you sure?"

"Positive," Nathan said, and got up to go in search of his coffee.

***

Stryfe reeled as a large, techno-organic fist smashed into his jaw, sending him staggering against the ropes. "Do you mind?" he asked as acidly as he could, swaying a bit as he straightened. "I thought we were talking."

"We were. Now we're not," Nathan said calmly, circling him with all the intensity of a neo-shark contemplating its prey. "Pay attention, Stryfe. You're letting your guard down."

Stryfe growled and lunged forward, telling himself that the red silk boxing trunks he was wearing were really quite flattering, and not all that different from the loincloths he'd worn sparring with the Dog Soldiers. "I'm going to beat you into a bloody pulp, brother," he hissed, savoring the thought. "You'll beg me for mercy."

"Been there, done that. Passed on the t-shirt." Nathan followed up with an uppercut that left stars spinning in front of Stryfe's eyes.

Stars, or tiny Phoenixes. Phoenixii?

"Since when did you worry about grammar?" Nathan asked, and in one smooth movement, slipped past his guard once more and threw him to the mat.

"Cheat," Stryfe wheezed, staring up at his brother's face as it wavered and shimmered in the bright lights from above. He should have seen that coming, given that he was at least as experienced in unarmed combat as Nathan was. "You--cheated. This is a boxing match, remember?"

And why in the name of all that was unholy had he said that? He should be getting up and depriving his brother of the use of a limb or two, not lying here babbling about breaking rules.

"Was it? I guess my attention slipped."

Nathan offered him a hand up. Stryfe glared at him incredulously for a moment, then slapped the hand away and sat up on his own. "Get away from me," he growled.

No. No, that was not the way. He didn't ask, or even command. If there was someone he wanted removed from his personal vicinity, he simply removed them, and tried not to leave too much of a mess on the carpet. Really, he was completely losing sight of the essentials here.

Nathan tilted his head and continued to stare down at him. Stryfe truly despised that particular mannerism. He'd spent several years training himself out of it.

"I used to want this, you know," Nathan murmured.

Nathan's boxing trunks were blue silk, Stryfe noticed. How very trite. He was surprised they didn't have a little X-emblem, done in gold. "What did you want?" he asked, for lack of anything better to say, and pushed his hair out of his eyes. Long hair. Long hair like he hadn't had for decades.

"You and me, in a sparring circle," Nathan said quietly, his tone almost wistful. "No powers. Just the two of us. Me beating you--"

"Hah!" Stryfe shook his head. "I would have won, Nathan."

"You didn't win here."

"Because you cheated." And he was still cheating, dwelling in the past like this, Stryfe thought absently. It wasn't time for them to lose themselves in the past, not yet, but Nathan didn't seem inclined to wait.

Nathan gave him a thin smile. "Look who's talking," he said, and then looked out into the darkness beyond the boxing ring, where the audience should have been.

But there was no audience. Ordinarily, Stryfe would have felt the lack of one quite keenly, but maybe he could overlook it, this once. Since he'd lost.

"It's not happy," Nathan murmured. "It doesn't like it when we're not honest with each other."

"Flonq it," Stryfe growled, and spat blood. It tasted real enough. "Flonq all of this!" He hated feeling helpless, loathed being swept along by someone--something else's whims.

Nathan gave him a reproachful look. "Your choice," he said, and melted back into the shadows before Stryfe could lash out at him.

And something skittered in the darkness. Stryfe stiffened, hearing the beating of his own heart accelerate rapidly as the boxing ring went dark around him, leaving him sitting alone in a small circle of light.

The something was still skittering. Moving back and forth, clicking at him. He knew that sound. He'd listened to that sound while he sat in a small, dark room beneath the citadel of New Canaan, and every so often, it still haunted him.

"Go away," he muttered. It came out high and petulant, like a child might have said it. But soft. Very soft, because he knew that if he screamed, they'd swarm out of the darkness, and he wouldn't stop screaming for a very long time.

***

"Wake up." The voice was rough. It sounded like the owner of the voice had been crying, but Nathan knew that couldn't be true, because the owner of the voice was Stryfe. And Stryfe didn't cry. Stryfe stood over you and laughed, and played the role of dominant twin to the hilt.

Nathan opened his eyes, and swore, ignoring the way his head spun as he sat up and started to brush the tiny spider-crabs off Stryfe's clothes. They'd bit Stryfe countless times already, tiny pincers tearing through cloth and flesh like razors, and they bit him as he flung them away. They didn't swarm again, but skittered down the sand of the beach, back to the murky water.

Stryfe sat there, huddled and miserable, making no move to help himself. "What's wrong with you?" Nathan growled, throwing the last of the spider-crabs towards the water and shaking his lacerated flesh and blood hand with a curse. The tiny wounds were already beginning to sting and burn. Verisimilitude. You had to love it. "Those things are venomous, you flonqing idiot!"

"How would you know?" Stryfe asked petulantly, hugging himself even more tightly. He sounded like a child, Nathan thought, noticing the redness of his brother's eyes and refusing to let himself feel any trace of sympathy.

Besides. It wasn't real. He had to remember that.

"They were in my cell, remember?" Nathan said curtly to Stryfe. "You stood outside the door and watched." The cell had been in the lower levels of the citadel, and the flonqing things had come in through the water conduits. Every time the tide had come in--

He'd laid there in his cell, and listened to them. Just the memory made him shudder. It was a good thing they hadn't liked the taste of him. He'd left them alone, and eventually, they'd left him alone. A mutual non-aggression pact.

Or not. They'd bit him this time, he thought as the burning sensation spreading up his arm. They'd bit him because he'd fought, and back then, he hadn't. He'd just laid there in the cell, broken, wanting to die--

"I remember. They were in my room," Stryfe murmured distractedly. "You were in my room, too."

"What in the Bright Lady's name are you raving about?" Nathan snapped harshly, edging away from Stryfe and nursing his bitten hand.

Inwardly, he was still brooding over the memory, knowing it was dangerous, that he might be drawn into it, but unable to help himself. It was a puzzle, and--

--he knew the answer. The spider-crabs hadn't attacked him in the cell, because they didn't eat carrion. They had no interest in the dead. And Nathan Dayspring, the real Nathan Dayspring, had died in that cell.

The thought should have made him angry at himself, disgusted with the admission of defeat. But it didn't. He felt--serene. Tranquil, like back at the caf?, when he'd brought up the bond between them. Honesty. That was the key.

"My room," Stryfe said, turning that disturbingly red-eyed gaze on him. "Don't you remember? I told you I put you there for a reason."

"It was a cell, you idiot," Nathan said impassively.

"It was my room," Stryfe tilted his head and stared out at the water. The wounds were all healed, and even the tiny rents in his clothing were gone. His voice was full of the same calm that Nathan felt. "When I first came to New Canaan."

Stryfe's room had been a cell? He and Haight had never really seemed to get along, but--no, he knew where this was going. Nathan shook his head, suddenly angry again. "Are you trying to make me feel sorry for you?" he said witheringly.

Stryfe turned back to him, managing a haughty look. "Why would I care what you feel towards me?" he said, rising smoothly to his feet. Looming, and Nathan caught himself leaning back, starting to edge away. "All I ever wanted you to do was fear me. To look at me and know that you could never be as strong as I was."

"Ignoring the fact that you just contradicted yourself," Nathan said tightly, "I was never afraid of you."

"Weren't you?" Stryfe asked viciously, his eye suddenly glowing fiercely.

And Nathan fell heavily against the cold metal table, struggling against the restraints. "Stop it," he growled shakily. He wanted the beach back. He didn't want to be back here--

"You were afraid," Stryfe said, his voice ringing with certainty, and Nathan could sense the other Canaanite telepaths moving into the room, ready to begin the interrogation, to go through his mind neuron by neuron until they found the information they wanted. "It doesn't like it when we're not honest with each other, remember?"

It was them, Nathan thought wildly, trying to free himself. It was in the shadowy forms of the other telepaths, seeing him through their eyes, living the memory through another perspective. "Flonq you," he spat, trying to stop trembling. This wasn't real. It was all in his mind, and if he just concentrated on that, it wouldn't--

White-hot daggers ripped through his mind, and he choked back a scream, spasming against the restraints.

"Just admit you're afraid of me."

Nathan forced his eyes open, glaring up at Stryfe's blurred face. "No," he rasped, and knew he was lying. "I'm not afraid of you--"

Nausea twisted in his gut, accompanying the words, but bringing with it a flash of fever-bright clarity. This was wrong. It hadn't happened this way. Stryfe hadn't been here, and the other telepaths had laughed about that, as if it were a joke.

The question and the images didn't match. This wasn't Stryfe proving a point to him, it was--

The shadows pressed closer, and the scream slipped free this time as the pain started again, slamming into him like a tidal wave, leaving him clinging to a few tattered shreds of conscious thought.

"You're shaking, Nathan," he heard Stryfe say. Felt a cool hand touch his forehead, just for a moment. "Tell me the truth."

Not real. He had to remember that, remember the way everything was changing around them. Get back control--

"Tell me why you were crying, Stryfe," he wheezed, fighting for breath, fighting against the certainty that he'd pay for this, that some price would be exacted for not answering the question truthfully. But he needed to remember why, and he wanted out of this room, out of this memory. It hurt too much to be here--

"I wasn't."

"You--were. I saw you--"

"Did you? Or did you just look in the mirror?"

The next wave of pain hit, and he passed out.

***

Stryfe spun, his eyes darting around wildly. "Flonq," he hissed, clenching his hands into fists to still their shaking. The change in his surroundings was definitely not for the better. He stood in foul-smelling water that reached to his knees, surrounded by rough stone walls on all sides. The only 'ceiling' was a metal grating, ten metres above his head.

A sewer? Whatever it was, he wanted out of here. It felt like a cell--like a cage, and he'd had more than enough of those in his lifetime. The sensation of being trapped surged up, nearly overwhelming him, and he laughed wildly. Laugh instead of cry. It really was a good philosophy. Always had been.

"Oh, Nathan!" he called out, trying to keep his voice sing-song and mocking, to keep it from cracking. "Are you up there? I know you're up there. You must be."

"Where else would I be?" Nathan's voice drifted down from above. Stryfe flinched, but managed a savage grin as Nathan moved into view, standing on the metal grate. "Have you figured it out yet? Being evasive is worse than being stubborn. Try to keep that in mind next time."

"Stop talking like you know what's going on," Stryfe snarled, realizing immediately what Nathan meant. He'd been evasive, and so he'd lost control. It was that simple. Their positions were reversed now, and the fact that he'd done it to himself only made it all the more galling. "You never do, remember? You're always one step behind me."

"You talk like we've done this before," Nathan murmured, turning something over and over in his hands. Stryfe couldn't see what it was from here, but there was something--familiar about the movement. Like he was looking in the mirror, or--

"We have, you idiot!" Stryfe snarled, wrenching his mind back onto its previous train of thought. They had, too, only they never remembered, not until things were well on their way to their inevitable conclusion. It was always this way. They struggled and fought and danced until they were both dizzied by it, both reeling, and it never resolved anything. Never. Because neither of them could ever take that last step--

--what on earth was Nathan toying with? The sense of familiarity was so sharp, suddenly. "What are you doing?" Stryfe asked, taking care to make the question sound suitably diffident. He didn't care. Just curious.

"So much destruction in such a tiny little package," Nathan muttered, and then went rigid and pale, staring down through the grate at him. "Stay out of my head," he breathed.

Stryfe tried very, very hard not to laugh. "Well," he said, his voice coming out strained, "first of all, that's fundamentally impossible--"

The memory hit with the force of a physical blow. So much destruction in such a tiny little package, he'd murmured, standing on the rock face above the Clan Chosen camp, turning the therm over and over in his hand, savoring the moment before he'd turned and gave the therm to the soldier with the launcher. Let's let it out, shall we?

"That is not a moment I particularly want to relive from your perspective!" Nathan hissed, his face twisting into a mask of pure hatred.

A half-hearted, uneasy laugh slipped free before Stryfe could stop it. "You really have no self-control at all," he said. But then, Nathan was always betraying himself. Losing little pieces of his soul, every moment of every day of his life. Too many compromises. "Not like me," he muttered fiercely, looking away from his brother's murderous glare. "I won't give myself up like you did, Nathan. Life's a bitch, and I'll spit in her flonqing eye before I go quietly!"

Nathan swayed a little, his face still ashen but his expression almost sickened, now. "Oath, how I hate you," he said, his voice cracking. "I don't think I've ever hated anyone as much. Not even Apocalypse."

"You have a very bizarre list of priorities," Stryfe sneered.

Nathan's jaw clenched. "Maybe," he whispered harshly "Have you ever wondered what it felt like?" he went on, his voice brittle. "How much it hurt?"

"Flonq you," Stryfe growled automatically. Part of him wanted to scream, but he wouldn't. Nathan wouldn't get the satisfaction. "You think I don't know what pain is, Nathan?"

Nathan gave him a thin, wild, bitter smile. "There's pain, and then there's pain, little brother."

And he dropped the therm. It hit the water with a splash, vanishing into the depths. Stryfe stood there and stared up at Nathan hatefully, not bothering to kneel down in the water and search for the therm. There wasn't time.

The world vanished in white light.

And it did hurt. Rather a lot, actually.

***

"You can't die."

Stryfe's voice, and Nathan blinked down at the entirely implausible sight of his younger self, crumpled in chains on the floor of the cell beneath the Canaanite citadel, with a similarly younger version of Stryfe kneeling beside him, holding a flagon of water to his lips so that he could drink.

"I am not seeing this," Nathan murmured. Neither of them reacted to his words, and Nathan wondered a bit dazedly when he'd become the ghost. Wasn't that Stryfe's job, now? Haunting people, jumping out from around the corners of their mind and shouting 'boo!' at the top of his lungs?

"You are not allowed to die," the younger Stryfe grated, a strange, indecipherable edge to his voice. His movements as he helped Nathan's younger self to drink were crisp and efficient, as if he was performing a distasteful task he wanted to finish as soon as possible. "If it helps to know, I killed the guards. After all, I did remind them that your fate was mine to decide, so the fact that they took it upon themselves to try and beat you to death was really quite presumptuous. Good help is so hard to find these days."

He wasn't seeing this--he didn't remember anything like this, so surely it hadn't happened. Except, from the look of his younger self over there, there was a good reason why the memory might have slipped his mind. The other Nathan wasn't even trying to struggle with Stryfe, and that was--disturbing, to say the least. Surely he knew that Stryfe was there.

"You're mine to kill, Nathan. You're not allowed to die this quickly."

Nathan swallowed, glaring at the younger Stryfe. "Nothing new," he muttered almost savagely. This was supposed to be a revelation? He could do without this sort of brotherly feeling, quite honestly.

"Are you sure?" Stryfe murmured from behind him. "Look a little more closely. Look from inside, this time, since you don't remember--"

And he was his younger self again in that moment, aware of pain and very little else as the person bending over him forced him to drink. Swallowing hurt. Breathing hurt. He just wanted to let go, to fall into the darkness lingering so close, waiting for him.

But there was something else besides the pain, after all. Thoughts that he couldn't help but hear, with his mind raw and stripped bare, all his shields gone.

Stryfe's thoughts. And there was triumph there, but fear, too, and a sense of confusion, a tangled ball of emotions that shouted 'I won!' and 'what now?' and 'why aren't I happy?' and 'why can't I just kill him now?', all at once--

"No," he muttered, or tried to. His voice was gone. Shuddering, he tried to draw away, back into himself, ready to let go and fall into the dark right now. Anything to get away from the knowledge that he was helpless, that he was in Stryfe's power with no way to escape, no way even to fight--

"You WERE afraid," he heard Stryfe say. "You were afraid of me. Admit it."

No--guilt, not fear. Guilt, and anger, and loss--

"Admit it."

--and fear. Fear of Stryfe, and what he'd do to the Clan. Fear so overwhelming that he'd turned all his energy inward, fighting for whatever control was still within his reach. Only he'd lost, in the end, and by then he hadn't had enough strength to do anything but lay there on the cold floor of the cell and wait for death--

The admission should have plunged him back into that bleak emptiness, but it didn't. Instead, that strange serenity returned and the pain vanished.

He closed his eyes.

***

And opened them again, to find himself on a beach. Nathan smiled faintly out at the turquoise water and the door that hung there, seemingly in midair.

His smile faded abruptly as he saw that it was still closed. Closed. He'd expected it to be open. Wasn't that how it went? The door was closed during time of war, open during time of peace--and he'd done his part, this time.

Which left the fault squarely on someone else's shoulders. "Nice," he muttered, and looked sideways at Stryfe, a bit balefully. He hated wasting time. "Very nice going. At Ieast I know that's not my fault this time."

"Why?" Stryfe growled, staring out at the doorway with a strangely haunted look. From somewhere behind them, a soft breeze blew, and the fronds of the palm trees that ringed the white sand crescent of the beach rippled gently. Almost mockingly, Nate thought. "Because you made a breakthrough?" Stryfe continued sarcastically. "Because you admitted that I did break you, once upon a time?" He glanced sideways at Nathan, his gaze stormy with emotion. "Newsflash, brother. You've admitted that before. A number of times. I think it must really bother you, given how often you've dredged it up."

Nathan felt his mouth quirk upwards, almost despite himself. The peacefulness he'd felt back in the cell was still there, more or less. Telling the truth could be such a release--and wasn't that what this was all about? "Well, pardon me for harping on the fact that you spent the better part of that spring torturing me."

"Oh, please." Stryfe looked back at the door. Still glaring, as if its very presence offended him. Nathan supposed that wasn't a bad way to phrase it. Part of the problem, after all, was that Stryfe was afraid of what was on the other side of the door. "It would make you so happy if I walked through there and out of your life, wouldn't it?"

Nathan opened his mouth, but then closed it again without saying anything, his sense of calm fracturing briefly as he thought about Stryfe's question and realized that he couldn't give the instant affirmative it really deserved. "Maybe not," he said, almost hesitantly. Oath, that stung to say.

Stryfe sneered. "What, don't tell me you'd miss me?"

"In a very peculiar way," Nathan murmured thoughtfully, "yes." He'd have to face his own dark side if Stryfe was gone, face it and admit that some of the same--predilections and tendencies Stryfe exhibited were there in his own personality, as well. Some were latent, others far too active.

It wouldn't be comfortable. And there'd be a void. A Stryfe-shaped void, and he was sort of used to the Stryfe filling it at the moment. "Everyone needs a hobby," Nathan said, more briskly. "You torment me, I look down on you, and eventually we reach some sort of higher level of understanding through sheer perversity."

Stryfe gave him an aggrieved look, and sat down on the pristine white sand. "Flonq you sideways, brother," he said, and proceeded to pout.

Nathan sighed and rubbed at his temples. "I have a headache," he muttered.

"No, you're just dreaming that you have a headache. But good. You deserve one."

"We deserve each other," Nathan said with a faint laugh, and wished that he'd remember this, the next time the loop began again.

But he wouldn't. It would start over from the beginning, and they'd be working from scratch, yet again. It was hard to tear down the walls when they reappeared in all their glory just as soon as the dream ended.

Hard to tell the truth, when you woke up and started living within the shelter of all those comforting lies.

"Life could be a dream," Stryfe sang, very loudly and off-key, "if I could take you up in paradise up above--"

"Be quiet," Nathan said with an exasperated sigh. "Do me a favor?" he shot back over his shoulder as he turned away. "Next time, at least try and remember that this is for YOUR benefit."

"Is it?" Stryfe said, and looked up at him, an almost wicked glint in his eye.

"I take it back," Nathan said with a tight smile. "I can't wait until you move along, brother. My dreams will be a lot quieter."

"And what fun would that be?" Stryfe smiled happily, and started to sing again. "I'll be seeing you, in all the old familiar places--"

"Stop it," Nathan muttered menacingly. "You're frightening the fish."

Stryfe mimed making a cast with a fishing rod. "Begone," he said dismissively, flicking a hand at Nathan. "Go sleep it off."

"Go to hell."

"Already there, but thanks."

Nathan sighed heavily and turned away, walking towards the palm trees. He could sense Stryfe settling in to wait. Not going anywhere. The thought was almost comforting.

In the midst of reflecting on how wrong that was, Nathan woke up.

fin

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