Transfiguration: Part Two - Ankara
He had no safehouse in Ankara. An oversight, really, one he needed to rectify sooner or later, but knowing that didn't help him today. He resorted to a mid-scale business-class hotel, anonymous and nondescript, and made it very clear at the desk that he didn't want to be disturbed for any reason, including housekeeping. In the state he was in, he'd probably take the maid's head off if she startled him.
A few of his usual traveling gadgets sufficed to secure the room, just in case. The only problem with finishing his precautions was that it left him with nothing else to do. Nothing to do. Locked in a room. Nathan gave a shaky laugh, and looked at the clock.
Nearly a whole day. How had it taken that long just to get from Istanbul to Ankara? He'd gotten on a flight somehow, but nothing was really clear again until he'd stumbled off the plane at the airport here. Swearing softly, Nathan sat down on the edge of the bed and sorted restlessly through his pack.
He hadn't been carrying a lot of gear with him as he traveled - there was no point when he could stop at any of his safehouses and raid the supplies there - but there were things missing that should be there. It looked like he'd packed in a hurry.
Running again. The room was air-conditioned, but he felt hot and dizzy again as he tried to focus on the memory of the cafˇ. Psylocke. The images were fragmented, scrambled somehow in a way that made him wonder whether they could possibly be real. Just his mind, playing tricks on him?
That had to be it. That couldn't have been Betsy. He didn't know the woman very well, admittedly, but that had been some--thing, a hungry shadow with Betsy's face.
Not real. He'd seen so much that he knew wasn't since he'd left the States. He was doing so much hallucinating that it was no fucking wonder he was losing touch with reality. Nathan laughed wildly, the sound horrifying in the silence of the room. Sometimes he though he'd never gotten out of the T-O cocoon, that none of this was real--
Air. He needed air. He got up and went over to the balcony door, his hands shaking so badly that he was barely able to get the lock undone and open it.
The heat was like a towering wall. It smashed into him, and he swayed, but stepped out doggedly, moving to the edge of the balcony and gripping the railing. Anchoring himself. Ankara stretched out around him, and he reflected hazily on how much--less it was, than Istanbul. Istanbul was solid, real on too many levels for it to be a trick of his perceptions. Ankara wasn't, and it would be so easy just to--
"What's wrong?"
Jean was standing at the opposite corner of the balcony, watching him. She was in the green and gold Phoenix costume, this time. All the other times she'd appeared to him in the last few weeks, she'd been wearing civilian clothes.
She moved toward him slowly, one hand outstretched. "Nathan," she said, her voice very soft, but there was wariness there, too. Like she expected him to--run, or throw himself over the edge.
"Where's Psylocke?" he said hoarsely.
Jean's hand fell back to her side, her eyes widening slightly as she watched him. "Betsy?" she asked with a bewildered look, as if he'd just dropped a complete non sequitur into the conversation. Which he had, he supposed. "I--I'm assuming she's in England, still. The last time I spoke to Logan, he said she'd gone back to visit her brother and Meggan--" The wariness came back, all in a rush. "Why ask me about Betsy? What's going on, Nathan?"
Nathan laughed weakly, and rubbed at his eyes, wishing his vision would clear."I--nothing, Jean. Had a little too much sun, I guess." He supposed it was possible that Betsy had concluded her family visit and decided to vacation in Turkey, but--no, he'd just been hallucinating. Psylocke wasn't some sort of psi-vampire, and even if she had been, she wasn't a strong enough telepath to be able to find him, across a continent.
And he didn't believe in coincidence. Not anymore.
He turned abruptly and went back in, not bothering to close the door behind him. She'd just walk right through it, if he did. It wasn't as if she were real, after all--
Jean sighed. "You're still stuck on that?" She was sitting on the bed now, studying the contents of his bag, so he went over and sat down on the chair in the corner, as far away from her as he could get and still be in the room. The sounds of the city came in through the open balcony door, like discordant music. "It's me, Nate," she continued, when he would have closed his eyes and listened. "It's easier to travel the astral plane now than it was, that's all."
"All these changes," he muttered, trying to make the words light and failing miserably.
"Tell me about it," Jean said, smiling faintly "You know, I couldn't levitate a bar of soap out of the cupboard this morning when I was in the shower? But my telepathy's gotten so much stronger." She sighed, slipping off the bed and crossing the room to stand in front of him, as if she were waiting for something. "And you've just gotten stronger all around. I'd be happier for you if I could be sure you were safe, Nathan. But your shields are in such a mess--"
Nathan pressed himself back in the chair as far as he could go, glaring at her. Deja vu, he thought weakly. Hadn't there been a moment like this that last night in Istanbul? It seemed like he said the same things over and over, and the whole world refused to listen. "Stay out of my mind," he hissed. "I don't want you--" He faltered, unable to say it, to tell her that he didn't want her in his mind, seeing his guilt and telling him it was unwarranted. He thought he could handle just about anything from her, except that.
Green eyes lingered on his face, full of sorrow. "I know," Jean murmured. "I don't think you could keep me out if you tried, but I'm not going to force the issue."
His head was spinning. Change the subject, he had to change the subject. This was dangerous ground, and he wanted off it.
They'd been talking about something else, before Jean's little digression. He fled back to that subject like a man running for high ground in a flood."It's what we wanted, isn't it?" he muttered, clenching the arms of the chair tightly. Jean tilted her head, giving him a questioning look. Like a bird, somehow. "What's happening to us--the changes in our powers. It's all because of what we wanted." He'd wanted the virus under control, and that, at least, he had. Jean had wanted control over her grief, over her feelings, and so her telekinesis, the physical side of her powers, was dwindling in favor of pure telepathy, greater control over the intangible, over matters of the mind. It was so very clear. At least to him.
"I'm not following you," Jean said softly, perching on the edge of the table beside him.
Nathan swallowed, trying to think of some way to explain it. The cocoon had trapped his body, but his mind had been--wandering, somewhere, overwhelmed by sensory input it couldn't define. Seeing through different eyes. "What was in your mind, when our powers came back?" he managed, struggling to put it into words. "What did you want, when we were woven back into the astral plane?"
Woven--a bad choice of words, really. It had been like a--pop, like the feel of a dislocated joint snapping back into place. It wasn't a bad analogy. Every use of his powers afterwards had been tentative and edged with pain, a feeling that still lingered all these weeks later.
Jean was silent for a long moment. "I've never thought of it that way," she finally said. He risked looking up at her, and flinched at the faint radiance surrounding her.
"Are we shaping, or being shaped?" he muttered in Askani, turning away and desperately willing her to stay out of his mind. He felt--raw, and vulnerable, and he just didn't want to be touched--
"It's all right," Jean said with a sigh, and laid an entirely too real-feeling hand on his shoulder as she leaned closer, as if to hug him.
Nathan flung himself out of the chair in a sudden panic, barely noticing that he passed right through her because he was stumbling as soon as he was on his feet. His coordination deserted him so utterly that he couldn't even begin to break his fall, and he landed badly. Jean knelt beside him instantly, reaching out, but he flinched away from her.
"Leave me alone," he said wildly, pleading with her as he snatched desperately at the remnants of his shields, trying to pull them together into some semblance of a wall. A wall to keep everyone out. "Jean, please!"
"Nathan, stop it!" Her cry echoed in his ears and his mind. He could almost feel her arms around him, and could sense all too keenly the storm of emotions she was fighting to hold back. "Come home, please," she begged him. "I need you. Neither of us has to go through this alone, we have each other. Please stop running away--"
The wall kept crumbling. He reached out feverishly, trying to push her away, wanting her to leave him. Willing her to see that there was nothing left to say, that he'd left because he loved her, and everyone he loved died--
There was nothing there. Shaking, Nathan pushed himself up to a sitting position, his eyes searching the room.
No Jean. She'd left, just like he wanted. He let himself slump back to the ground, swallowing a moan.
Alone. Just like he'd wanted.
He squeezed his eyes shut against the sting of tears and curled up on the carpet, wishing he could sleep.
***
The fog reminded her of home. Odd that she should find it comforting, but she'd take what reassurance she could get. Betsy Braddock strode carefully across the wet grass beneath her feet, wondering whether she was on the astral plane, or had just stumbled into some shadowy corner of her own mind.
It didn't matter. Under normal circumstances, she would have hoped for the latter and for the extra element of control that being on her own ground would give, but she wouldn't have had that, anyway. Not when her mind wasn't her own.
"Where are you?" she screamed out into the emptiness, wondering why her mind had created a landscape, such as it was. She saw this as real, so real that she could speak, and hear her own voice--why? Some subconscious attempt to grasp at a shred of control, a delusion that she could somehow put herself and Farouk on equal footing? "Show yourself!"
The fog rippled, and Cable stepped out. Betsy took a step back, falling instinctively into a defensive position. This wasn't what she'd expected. "Nathan?" she whispered finally, staring up at him.
He shrugged, a wry smile playing on his lips. "Are you shaping, or being shaped?" he asked.
Betsy stared up at him, not understanding. "Nathan, I--"
"What do you want, Elizabeth?" Nathan reached toward her, and Betsy lashed out instinctively, striking his hand away. He shook his head at her. "I just want to lose myself," he said softly, his mismatched eyes roaming the fog. "East into Mordor."
This was not happening. Nathan wasn't lingering in her mind, making Tolkien references--bloody hell, she didn't even know that it was him. It could be a trick, could be Farouk--"I want my mind back," she grated, answering his question anyway. "I want my life back."
"Then take it, Psylocke," he said with a sigh. "Take it and leave me alone. You're giving me a headache." With that, he turned and strode back into the fog. It swallowed him without a trace, before a reply had even begun to form in Betsy's mind.
She stared after him, shaken. Not what she'd expected at all. Had she failed to break the link she'd established? If she had, Farouk could still use it, still feed off him--
"No!" she snarled, rage coiling inside her like an incandescent snake preparing to strike. She looked upwards, into the greyness of the not-sky, and hated him, with all her strength. "No more! You can't have him, Farouk! I won't let you!"
The sky fractured, and she saw the darkness behind the fog. No stars, but then, she hadn't expected any. Laughter echoed on the wind.
"Listen very carefully, Elizabeth," a piping voice said beside her. Betsy jerked away, staring in horror down at the child from the cafˇ, the blank-eyed little girl who'd watched her and Nathan without reacting, as if she saw psychic vampirism every day.
The child. She'd--intended to scan her, to see why she was so unresponsive, but things had gotten hazy again so soon, and she hadn't--
The girl reached out and took her hand, rubbing a grubby finger over the pulse-point at her wrist. Betsy shivered and tried to pull away, but the girl's grip was too strong to break. "Listen VERY carefully," the girl repeated with a bright smile. Her eyes were still vacant, utterly empty. "You want me to go, don't you?"
"Go--" Betsy muttered, blinking desperately. She felt so--sleepy, suddenly. So tired.
"You want to have your mind all to yourself again."
"Yes--" More than anything, she wanted that, wanted to be free. She was so tired of being used.
"Then you have to let me have him," the girl said, a piercing sweetness in the look she gave Betsy. "I need to be strong to leave. It's not easy to walk off the astral plane, you know."
She should--be fighting, Betsy thought sluggishly. She was sitting on the ground, now - when had she sat down? - and the girl was sitting in her lap, being held close. A motherly embrace. The wrongness of it tore at her, but she couldn't do anything about it, couldn't even seem to move--
"I need him," the girl said coyly, toying with Betsy's hair. "You were cunning enough to catch me, but you're not strong enough to make me strong. You're weak, and I'm using you up, anyway. I want him." She looked up with a mischievous smile. "You should look at this as an opportunity. Didn't you want his father, Betsy?"
Scott. Betsy felt color surge to her cheeks, a rush of embarrassment surfacing amid the haze. "No," she murmured. "It wasn't me."
"Oh, it was you," the girl giggled. "He's his father's son. And his mother's--all his mothers. But that doesn't matter." The girl snuggled trustingly against Betsy. "I'll have him. And then we'll have you. Just to say goodbye, before I have him bring me back into the world. Won't that be nice, Betsy?"
What good was crying, when the tears weren't real? The thought gave her strength, somehow. Betsy moaned and pushed the girl--pushed Farouk away. "I'll warn her," she choked out as the girl sat up and gave her a pitying smile. "Jean. I'll--I'll tell her what you're going to do--"
"You won't do anything I don't want you to do, Betsy," the girl said brightly. "And you'll do everything I say--won't you?" The blank eyes flickered with a light of their own and Betsy moaned, doubling over as the hunger came back tenfold, so fierce that it wiped out all thought of calling for help, everything--
"Besides," she heard Farouk said in that incongruous child-voice, "what do you think Grey could do? She's not a strong enough telepath to defeat me, Betsy. I nearly had her once--"
*But I saved her.* Betsy clung to the thought, pushing it away into a corner, hiding it where Farouk couldn't find it. She'd saved Jean--not by being stronger or more skilled than Farouk, but by avoiding direct conflict, choosing the right moment to strike--
She'd saved Jean. She could do the same for Nathan.
She would. She had to--
"Miss?"
Disoriented, Betsy blinked up at the stewardess leaning over her. The grass, the fog, the girl, everything was gone. In its place was the passenger cabin of a plane--first-class, from the size of the seats, Betsy thought hazily. This didn't--when had she gotten aboard a plane?
"We'll be landing soon," the stewardess said with a pleasant smile. "You'll want to buckle up."
"Yes," Betsy said, appalled by how hoarse her voice sounded. "T-Thank you."
The stewardess smiled and went on to the next pair of seats. Betsy stared blankly into the spot where the woman had been standing. Landing? Landing where? She could remember, very dimly, making reservations for Athens, the morning after she'd sensed Nathan's presence in Istanbul.
Had she managed to get on the plane after all? Was that the reason for the dream, that she'd slipped Farouk's control enough to get out of Istanbul, away from Nathan? Betsy fastened her seatbelt with clumsy hands and peered out the window--
Her heart, soaring with desperate hope one moment, fell like a stone the next. The position of the sun told the tale, even if she hadn't been able to see the ground far below them. They were flying east, not west. Deeper into Turkey.
East into Mordor, Nathan's words echoed softly in her mind.
#The land of Mordor, where the Shadows lie,# Farouk laughed softly, almost tenderly in her mind. #I'll have you again as soon as you step off the plane, sweet Elizabeth. Just as soon as you see there's no going back.#
Betsy fought back the desolation, forced herself to smile. "Perhaps," she whispered, her eyes burning with tears. "We'll see."
***
He'd bought the jeep outright. The people at the rental place hadn't wasted an instant in saying no, once he'd pushed enough money at them. A bit of a splurge, maybe, but he had no intention of coming back to Ankara in the near future, and he didn't want to have to worry about returning the car.
The road east was narrow, in poor repair, but he'd driven worse. Nathan smiled faintly and adjusted the driver's-side mirror. It showed nothing but the empty road behind him. There was nothing in front of him, either; he seemed to be the only one out here today. The depth and texture of the silence in his mind was dizzying.
It had that in common with the scenery. He was on the Central Anatolian Plateau now, and the land was very different. There were mountains in the distance, and ravines breaking the pale stretches of wheat fields that stretched out on either side of the road. Clouds gathered on the western horizon, iron-gray and ominous. He'd welcome the rain, if it came.
It was cooler here, or at least the wind was. And it was just wind, too, carrying no voices, no mocking echoes of everything he was running from. Nothing to shield against. He could let his defenses down and let his mind go numb. Nathan took a deep breath, filling his lungs, and then let it out slowly.
Jean hadn't come back. He didn't know how to feel about that. It was what he'd wanted, or thought he'd wanted--oath, he was pitiful. His hands tightened on the steering wheel. Maybe when he got to Cappadocia he'd do the world a favor and arrange to fall down some particularly deep hole--
He came over the next rise, and saw Scott standing on the road, fifty feet in front of him. In uniform, arms folded across his chest, his father stared straight at him and didn't budge.
Before his mind could process what he was seeing and point out that this was just another hallucination, Nathan was swerving the jeep desperately. Not enough room, his mind chanted at him frantically. Not enough room, Scott wasn't moving, not enough room, he was going to hit him, kill him again--
The jeep spun off the road, down to a bone-jarring stop in the ditch. He was thrown hard against the seatbelt, so hard that it drove the air from his lungs and left spots dancing at the edges of his vision. For a moment all he could think about was breathing.
Scott, he thought faintly, as soon as his mind started to clear. Scott had been there, right there. Dazed, Nathan pulled the keys out of the ignition and fumbled with his seatbelt until he could free himself from it.
Scrambling out of the jeep and up the side of the embankment, he looked around wildly, searching for his father's familiar figure. He'd been right here, right--
Nothing.
"Seeing things again, idiot," he muttered shakily, and went back to check on the jeep.
Not much damage, thankfully. He went about the laborious task of pushing it back up to the road. It took some profligate use of telekinesis, and by the time he was back behind the wheel, he felt wrung out, exhausted again.
Tired. That was all. He wasn't going to think about the disapproving expression Scott had been wearing, or the anger visible in the tight line of his jaw. His breath caught in his chest, in a sob he wouldn't let out. He wasn't going to think about it--
He wasn't going to think at all. He was going to be numb. His vision blurred, but he told himself harshly that it was just the wind.
Numb.
to be continued...
[FOOTER]