Pulse, Part Eleven

by Tangerine

 "Go away."

 Bobby's words came out gargled, not strong like he had tried to make them.  He didn't want anyone to see him like this, so blasted weak and crying like a child.  Crybaby, they had called him in elementary school.  Crybaby.  Crybaby.

 Faggot.

 Bobby buried his head deeper in his arms, his pants damp with the salty water of his tears, and he willed himself to stop crying, to be a man.  Be a man, Bobby, men don't cry, my son doesn't cry, you won't cry, boy!

 Why do you hate me?  Dad, please, I never wanted, I never meant ... Daddy, please, I don't know how to fix myself.  Dad, fix me, Dad.  I'll be however you tell me to be.  Dad, please, make me better.

 'I am ice.  I will not feel.'

 "Please, just leave me alone."

 "If you wish."  Shatterstar turned to leave but held back, his pale eyes burning into the back of Bobby's skull.  "But if you should need me, I will listen.  I will most likely be of no help.  I apologise for that."

 Bobby laughed though it came out as a rather rueful snort, and he shook his head, knowing how his reaction would appear.  "I am not laughing at you, Gav.  Never at you.  You can't even possibly understand where I am right now.  And I can't stop crying!"

 "Julio used to cry.  It is not so wrong," Shatterstar said awkwardly, pausing for a moment before sitting down and putting his chin on his folded hands thoughtfully.  "I think I would cry if I knew how.  It is not as easy as people think."

 "Why would you cry?"  Bobby asked, a harsh bitterness to his voice that he did not intend.  Shatterstar looked at him, and Bobby stared back, light eyes meeting dark, same eyes greeting with a shyness that neither understood.

 "I want to be human very much and I am not," Shatterstar replied and stood, stretching his muscled body and raising his face to the sun.  With the soft wind blowing his long hair across his face, he turned to Bobby.  "She would like you to return.  A problem has arisen."

****

 As they emerged from the greenery, Bobby caught Betsy's eyes on him, watching with a slight smile on her lips.  Bobby brought his hand to his face, conscious that his eyes were red and his skin was still damp with tears.  Betsy shook her head, the smile vanishing and being replaced by something else.  Bobby looked away from her before it became too much.

 "So Apocalypse has finally reared his ugly head?"  Bobby asked, sitting on a log of rotted wood and leaning forward, his legs outstretched.  Shatterstar sat next to him without a word.  "What happened to Domino?"

 Betsy frowned, her brow creasing and distorting the red image of the Dawn.  "Apocalypse gutted her.  In a blink, there was blood everywhere, and I could do ... I did nothing.  I have given her to Emma.  I do not know if she is not dead."

 Bobby controlled his reaction.  Losing it again would not help.  "So there's just the three of us?"

 "I can find Remy.  I will find Remy.  We will stay here tonight, for Apocalypse will not find us."  Betsy ran her hand through the sand as the other clutched at her abdomen, her fingers searching for something Bobby saw she couldn't find.  "Tomorrow, I will bring Remy to us, and together we will go to Sinister.  He is our only ally."

 "We could go to Boston, to Sean and Emma," Bobby said quietly, watching the hand drift away from the pregnant belly, giving up.  Bobby felt worry for Betsy's baby rise to the forefront of his mind.  "It's a dangerous game we're playing here with Sinister, Betsy."

 "I will not endanger those children," Betsy replied sharply, "and if that is what you fear, I will not endanger you either.  Forget it, Bobby, forget me.  I am so very tired of this fight, and we have lost so much already."

 Despite his attempts otherwise, he considered her words, pondered the selfless offer, and he imagined himself walking away right now as though nothing had ever happened.  Eight months pregnant without anyone in the world to give her badly needed strength, the man whom she loved with all her life dead in the ground, and Bobby thought about abandoning her.  That realisation made bile rise in his throat, but the traitorous thoughts did not go away.

 "I am a warrior, but I am also a freedom fighter," Shatterstar said, moving from the log and kneeling before her, his russet hair draped in the sand, "and I will fight for you.  I am not afraid of my future if it should lie in death."

 Betsy turned to look at Bobby, her eyes desperate, but Bobby met her glance and shook his head slightly, so afraid, so sick with worry and fear, "Betsy, I'm not sure I can.  I just don't know ..."

 The hint of betrayal was faint in her eyes but he was sure he saw it.  "Then I do not want you to come with me.  Bobby, promise me one thing, should anything happen to me, anything at all that prevents me from being the mother I had hoped to be, promise me you will take my baby and raise my child as your own.  That is all I ask of you."

 All she asks, Bobby thought, because I could not grant her the first desire.  He realised she didn't seem surprised and that perception brought a thought to his head that he didn't want to think about, that summed up everything that had ever been said or thought about him.

 Betsy Braddock hadn't expected anything noble from him.

 "You think I'm a coward," Bobby said suddenly, pointing at her with bitter accusation.  As if she knew what it was like to be him!  As if any of them understood!  When it was far in the future and the X-Men were a distant memory, no one would remember him.  Of them all, he was the one most easily forgotten.  "I just can't trust Sinister, Betsy."

 "Bobby, if you think I am angry, you do not know me at all," Elisabeth responded quietly.  "I am asking you to be a father to my baby if I do not make it through this, and Bobby, that might possibly be how this ends."

 Father.  Bobby reeled at the word, a thousand thoughts running through his mind.  He was too young, too blasted stupid to be a father.  He could hardly take care of himself, but raising his eyes to Betsy, he found he could not tell her that.  "If that's what you want."

 "I trust no one but you," she whispered.  "Shatterstar, I appreciate and thank you for the fact that you wish this to be your fight, but it is not, and you are still young.  I want you to live your life.  I want you to find out what happiness is."

 Shatterstar frowned.  She was not flattering the warrior in him.  "I do not know how it is on this world, but I do not think pregnant women make good living weapons.  I would think your size makes you slow."

 Despite his sour exterior, Bobby laughed loudly, choking because the laugh came so abruptly to his lips.  Betsy shot him a wicked look, but he chuckled harder, clutching his side.  "Gav, man, tact, remember what I said about tact!"

 Shatterstar looked at Bobby, oblivious to the joke, and it wasn't until he shifted his eyes to Betsy that he understand.  Tabitha had given him a similar look when he had pointed out that she had gained weight one eventful morning in practice with X-Force.  "I did not mean to imply that you are fat."

 Betsy suddenly smiled, chiding him with a mocking look..  He had said it with such innocence that it was impossible to take offense for long, and he sighed deeply, knowing he had placed his foot in his mouth once again.  "But you are right.  I am in no position to fight which is why I go to Sinister.  For reasons at which I dare not guess, he wishes that this child comes to no harm.  If nothing else, he will keep Apocalypse from me.  Now, I need to rest.  In the morning, all the decisions will be made final.  Do try to sleep."

 "Betsy?"

 She stopped and looked at Bobby.

 "Take my coat, will you?  I don't want you to get cold," Bobby said, shrugging the leather jacket from his shoulders.  He would be a gentleman to his death.  Betsy took it with a quiet whisper of thanks and sat down at the edge of the forest, laying back on the sand and resting.  Bobby looked to Shatterstar and gestured with his head, inviting him for a walk.

 "Do you know where we are?"  The warrior asked, his hands held brusquely at his sides.  He had left his shirt back in Westchester by the riverbed, but the weather was warm enough that he felt little discomfort.

 "Probably somewhere near Florida, maybe even the Carribean.  If Betsy knows, that's fine by me.  Hell, for all I know, we're in Asia.  Whatever."  Bobby kicked at the sand, aware as it shifted into his shoes, and he kicked his runners off, pulling the socks from his toes and tossing them to the wind.  "So, have a girlfriend?"

 Shatterstar regarded him with an odd look and shook his head.

 "Boyfriend?"

 The minute Bobby said it, he kicked himself, and he refused to look up, focussing all his attentions on his dirty feet.  When Shatterstar still had not said anything, he ventured a look and raised his glance.

 "Why do you say such things to me, Bobby?"  Shatterstar asked with a pitying shake of his head, a quietness to him Bobby had not seen before.  "Julio hit a man once for less than that then I hit him for questioning my ability to defend myself."

 Bobby dropped his eyes, feeling stupid, no, more than that, feeling like those stupid kids who used to make fun of him ruthlessly, who set out each day to make him cry.  "Listen, I'm sorry.  You know me, idiotic to a fault.  I was trying to be funny."

 "It was not funny," Shatterstar decided, stopping at the shore of the salty water.  He crouched near to the ocean, running his fingers through the coolness.  "If you want to know the nature of my sexuality it would be best just to ask."

 "Why would I want to know?"  Bobby said with a scoff, digging his toes into the cooling sand.  "I mean, it's none of my business, right?  Whatever floats your boat, pal.  That's my motto, you know?  To each his own."

 Shatterstar looked at him.  "I do not understand you.  You say one thing, and you mean the other, and I cannot make sense of anything you say because of it.  You are playing with me.  I would like it if you would stop.  You know I do not get these human emotions easily.  You know it and still you do it.  You mock me because I am still new to this world."

 Bobby shook his head.  "I'm not doing that at all.  I'm just trying to make conversation."

 "If that is what you call it," Shatterstar said sourly.  "I have heard from my friends how the X-Men can plague lives, how things seemed so much worse whenever one of you affects a situation.  I had thought it superstition. I am beginning to see their point. You have made me feel pain when I thought it was impossible.  If this is what you meant by human I would rather we not continue with the bargain.  You are cruel.  You think I do not have a soul.  You are wrong."

 Bobby realised the extent of what he had done, and he stared at his feet, wondering, wondering, always wondering and never actually discovering.  It had been a day, one lousy, meagre day, yet his heart wouldn't stop jumping into his throat, and he couldn't deny how right it seemed.  One stupid day!

 And suddenly his life, the lies that were a part of it and the denial that ran so deep Bobby wasn't sure his world could exist without it, seemed like it had been nothing until now.

 Bobby took a deep breath, steadying his face the best he could.  "Could you tell me the nature of your sexuality," he asked, quoting the previously spoken words, and Shatterstar looked up at him, searching.  Bobby wished for a thousand deaths in those seconds before his answer.  It was too long.

 Shatterstar chewed at his hair, a nervous habit he had developed while on earth, and sat down, crossing his legs as he pulled them to his body.  He rest his chin on his knees, staring at the dark water.  "Julio said that I should not tell people, that this was not how it was done here and I had to change myself to fit in, but on my world, it was an honour to love your fellow warrior."

 Bobby blinked slowly.  "Warrior men or warrior women?"

 Shatterstar smiled then put his fingers to his lips, shocked that he had.  "Warrior men."

 Bobby's ears shook with the words, but his mind had others plans.  Unbelievably awkward with women, Bobby proved he was something far grander with men.  Before Shatterstar could say anything more, Bobby turned and fled, his lean body turning to ice.

***

 Apocalypse stared across the dunes of the Egyptian desert, all-seeing eyes scanning like a bird of prey.  His horseman stood behind him, the useless fools, watching, waiting, thoughtless.  Only two of his had ever thought, and he had lost them both.

 "The Resurrection has not come," Apocalypse said, his harsh voice bellowing against the stone walls of his underground fortress.  The Horsemen did not move, did not so much as breathe.  "It has not come!  My son surprises me time and time again, but his stubbornness will not save him.  Retrieve him."

 "Yes, my Lord," War said carefully, bowing low to the ground as the other Horsemen followed suit.  Apocalypse watched them, knowing they were nothing in the grande scheme of his vision.  He had seen the mutinous glances, the petty jealousy, the hatred of his chosen heir.  They knew they were lambs waiting for the slaughter.  "Yes, my Lord?"

 "Kill any who try to stop you," Apocalypse said, "but leave Essex to me.  It is high time he and I rectify the situation between us.  He, like his brother, is foolish to think he is free from me.  I am the rock against which they break, and they will be broken."

 The Horsemen mounted their beasts, waiting to be dismissed.  Apocalypse nodded his fearsome head, watching them fly to retrieve his wayward sheep.  "Yes, Essex will play the role he was meant to play.  My beautiful War, my prodigal son, his was something Sinister."  Apocalypse raised his head again, clutching his fist.  "He is Sinister."

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