Pulse, Part Fifteen

by Tangerine

 Shatterstar had managed to find a space open and large enough to do his exercises, jumping and twisting through the air as his blades cut at imaginary foes.  He realised the moment he was being watched but made no move to acknowledge the presence.  It was not the audience he desired.

 "You are the son of the mutants Longshot and Dazzler, are you not?"  Sinister asked, watching the youth arch backwards through the air and land in front of him, crouched low to the ground and ready to fight.  "Well?"

 "I am of their genes.  I am not their son," Shatterstar replied, backing away and falling back into his movements, his muscles contorting and bending with every slash of his sword.  "I was raised a hundred years from now with the sole purpose of destroying Mojo.  They do not know I am the fetus they gave to the banks to be harvested."

 "You must be very powerful.  Dazzler had vast potential.  I would be interested to gauge how much of that ability she passed on to you."

 Shatterstar turned to him, annoyed.  "I do not like what you imply."

 "You are no X-Man.  Surely you must realise that."

 "I see that I am here as a favour to them and for no other reason than that, and I will fight with them until it is no longer necessary.  That makes you my enemy.  Of that I am entirely sure.  I would prefer if you no longer spoke to me."

 Sinister laughed a cold a laugh, shaking his head at the obvious foolishness, or obvious stupidity, the boy seemed to possess.  Either way, Sinister was intrigued, as he always was, by the second generation, the children who were no longer mutants but natural born.  To give the illusion of victory, Sinister left with Shatterstar watching him warily.

 Shatterstar shook his head and went back to his workout, but his concentration was gone.  He could not focus, but he did not want to admit the reason lay with that madman.  He stalked around in circles, thinking of a better reason for being on edge.

 "Fekt!" Shatterstar cursed, pointing his swords at a lone, destitute chair sitting in the corner and slaughtering the antique with his mutant power, blasting it to smithereens.  Anger, one of the few emotions besides annoyance that he had mastered.  It did not please him.

 "What's up?"

 "Bobby!"  Shatterstar said, jumping and facing him.  Had he never said Iceman's name out loud before?  Is that why it felt so odd to say and have it ring off the barren walls?  And why had he not noticed him?  "I did not see you there."

 "People don't tend to notice me, I'm not offended."  He smiled weakly, crookedly, alternately leaning on his right then left leg, shifting restlessly.  "Remy is looking after Betsy.  She's in labour it seems, but the baby probably won't be born for awhile.  Sinister did something.  I don't know."

 "Sinister spoke to me."

 Bobby raised his eyes.  "Oh?  What did he say?"

 "He asked me about my genestock."  Shatterstar looked at the ruined chair, a thousand shards of splintered wood scattered across the smooth floor.  "I told him of my heritage.  I do not think I should have done that."

 "Probably not."  Iceman glanced around the empty room.  "What is your heritage?"

 "I am the child of Longshot and Dazzler," Shatterstar replied nonchalantly, trying to see whatever it was that Bobby saw.  There was nothing at which to look.  It was all empty.  So what did Bobby see that so controlled his attention?

 "You are?  But you're not a Summers?"

 "No," Shatterstar replied, sparing Bobby a look that plainly accused Iceman of insanity.  "It is hard to explain, just that I am the fetus they sacrificed so that I could conquer Mojo in the event that they could not.  It is all very logical."

 "They gave you up for that?"

 Shatterstar looked at Bobby and nodded, noting the alarm on Bobby's face and not understanding the reason for it.  "It is not as though I think of them as my parents.  I have met Longshot.  I did not tell him.  It is of no concern to me."

 Bobby hummed and shrugged.  "So, you really gave it to that chair, huh?"

 Shatterstar smiled.  "It deserved it.  It was looking at me funny."

 Bobby burst into laughter, pressing his hands to his mouth as if he hadn't meant to laugh.  He dropped his hands long enough to half punch, half pet Shatterstar.  Whatever it was, Shatterstar decided, it was the proper move.

 "I knew you had a sense of humour!  I knew it!  We humourous guys have to stick together, you know.  It's vital for the survival of the human race ..."

 Before Shatterstar could understand exactly what his legs were doing, he had crossed the distance between them and towered over the smaller man.  Bobby looked up at the movement, his words trailing off as Gaveedra wrapped his fingers around his upper arms.

 "What?"  Bobby asked, his voice low and throaty.  He chuckled awkwardly as a blush crept up his neck, flushing his face.  Shatterstar found his fingers were drawn to the red skin, wanting to see if a blush could make an Iceman warm, but he kept his grip.  "Do you want something?"

 "Yes," Shatterstar replied, judging the position of the various features on Bobby's face with a serious, intense glare.  Yes, all right, he would make the first move if the Iceman would not.  It had to be easy or the act would have come with instructions.

 "I'm like warrior men, too," Bobby mumbled.

 "Then this will be all the more pleasurable for you."

 And Shatterstar kissed him.  An awkward kiss at first, tentative and innocent, but then the arms came into play and the hands, warm hands, cool hands, mixing and twisting, grabbing and touching.  It could have gone forever, Gaveedra knew, but not here, not now.  They pulled apart, both flushed, both smiled shyly, not quite sure of the words to say.

 "I can see why people enjoy it," Shatterstar said finally and nodded in appreciation, his hands still on Bobby, laced lightly over the slender shoulders, holding him in the room and ready to trip him if he so much as moved.  "Now you and I will train."

 Bobby could only stare in shocked amazement.

 And Shatterstar finally understood the limitations of spandex.

****

 Betsy smiled to herself, the buzz of Bobby's excitement in her head.  Perhaps Shatterstar was not the ignoramus she dismissed him as originally.  Perhaps she had mistaken him with Bobby.  "You were saying, Remy?"

 "Nah, you aren't listening to me anyway," he replied, flipping a cigarette between his fingers.  If he wasn't going to smoke it with her in his presence, he was going to use to it take his mind off his addiction.  "Don't listen to what Sinister said, Elisabeth, about Warren."

 "It's not as if I had not thought it," Betsy replied quietly, stroking her belly thoughtfully as she closed her eyes, relaxing slightly.  "But Warren died for a purpose, and I both admired and respected that reason until the bitter end."

 "I know.  Just, what he said, he did it to hurt you, and that's not right," Gambit mumbled, scratching his rough cheek.  "Listen, I would have come back sooner if I'd known you needed me, chere.  I didn't realised you were in such a bad way."

 "There's nothing you could have done."  Betsy tightened the ponytail she had pulled her hair into, yanking the hair until it fell perfectly into place.  She was aware how tired and weary she looked, how horribly drained and lifeless.  She had not meant it to be so obvious.  "I did this to myself.  I have made one error after the other.  The first was letting Warren go."

 "You couldn't have saved him."

 "You forget my connections to Otherworld," Betsy replied coldly, tearing the elastic from her hair and letting the long locks of purple settle on her shoulders.  "There is always another way.  I was stupid not to have thought of it."

 "Maybe it was his time to go."

 "He left me alone and pregnant.  How do you rationalise that?"

 Remy raised an eyebrow at the harsh anger in her voice, reeling back from the viciousness of the comment.  "You mad at him, chere, for taking that road?  It seems to me, Elisabeth, that you're blaming him for doing the only thing he could."

 Betsy shook her head rapidly, clutching her cape to her chest.  "No, no!  I ... do not blame him for wanting it to end."  Betsy sniffed, feeling the hot burn of tears in her eyes.  She thought she was over this, over him.  It had been so long.  "I miss him so much, Remy."

 "As you should, chere."

 "But ..." Betsy stopped as if she should not say anything more, but the time had come for telling someone else all that she knew.  "Remy, there's a good chance my baby is going to be born with severe disabilities.  Good chance!  She *will* be born with problems."

 Remy stopped playing with cigarette and leaned forward, looking at Betsy's tired expression and feeling nothing but pity.  "And you don't think you can raise her without his help?  You aren't alone here, Elisabeth, we'll all help in any way we can."

 "She might die."  Betsy sobbed raggedly, trying to hold the cries back with her lips, but it didn't work, and she thrust her face into hands, weeping quietly against her palms.  "I can't lose them both, Remy, and if I do, if she dies like he did, I won't go on.  Do you understand?  If she dies, I will die too."

 Remy didn't so much as blink.  He only nodded.  "No one would blame you."

 "Oh, yes, they would!"  She snapped angrily.  "You wouldn't, maybe not Logan, but Bobby would and my brother would and everyone else, they'd remember me as the one who wasn't strong enough."

 "A lot of them would not have made it to where you are now."

 Betsy looked at Remy, hearing the simple fact flow from his mouth and understanding that he saw like she did, in black and white, in right and wrong, yet in reversal of everyone else, those who saw the light as good and the dark as bad when it was the other way around.

 "So you gonna have a daughter?"  Remy asked with a charming smile.  "That's sweet.  She's gonna be a looker like her mother, that's for sure, or her papa for that matter.  She's gonna be a fighter, Elisabeth, don't you worry about her.  She can handle the world."

 "But I am afraid, Remy, because she is being born into a world of madmen who want her for their very own."  Betsy stood up, a dull ache low in her stomach, and she wrapped her arms around herself in a tight hug.  "This was never supposed to be me, Remy.  I'm not a mother.  That was Jean's role, we all knew it, but it's not her, it's me."

 "You're doing a fine job so far, Elisabeth," Remy said, "a fine job."

 "Thank you, Remy," she whispered, tears threatening to destroy her composure.  It was all wrong, all of it, but he didn't see it with the clarity she did.   "But Remy, I have to tell you something: the shadows will not give me my freedom much longer."

 She felt his head rise sharply, cutting through the air, and the eyes rested on her back, trying to guess at her expression.   "And when that happens, you're afraid of what's going to happen to the little one?"

 "Bobby will take care of her," Betsy said quietly, putting her palm against her face to stop the tears.  "The light hurts me already, Remy, but I bear it because it keeps me here, human and not undercloak, or whatever it is Tar desires me to be.  I don't know why he wants me, just that I feel him here," she tapped the centre of her head, "whenever I let my guard down."

 "I should have come back sooner," Remy muttered, crushing the cigarette between his fingers.  They had never been close, he had irritated her and she had been rude to him in turn, but he understood what it felt like to lose control, and she had lost control.  "I'm here now."

 "Just in time to see my fall," Betsy said with a light laugh.  "I am so afraid."

 "We all are, Elisabeth, we all are."

[next part]

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