Transfiguration: Part One - Istanbul

by Alicia McKenzie

In the darkness, the clock marked time. Each tick was a violent thing, fracturing the silence and leaving no peace in its wake. Nathan Summers sat huddled in a chair by the window, shivering fitfully even in the omnipresent heat as he stared out over the Bosporus.

He'd been in Istanbul three days, and the restlessness was beginning to overwhelm him already. It had driven him across Europe, and seemed likely to drive him onwards. Unfamiliar places. Wasn't that what he'd wanted? To find somewhere to lose himself?

"Still can't sleep?"

Closing his eyes, he let his head sag sideways against the high back of the chair, and didn't answer her. The words had been soft, almost tender, but the sound of her voice shredded at his nerves, left him feeling sick and unsettled. He was too tired to be angry. That was beyond him these days.

He just wanted to be left alone.

"Talk to me, kiddo."

"Don't call me that," he muttered fretfully, shifting in his chair and glaring blearily at her, goaded by the familiarity. "Just--don't."

She sighed and tossed long red hair over her shoulder, sorrowful green eyes lingering on his face. So real, he thought faintly. He could almost believe she was actually there.

He looked away, back out at the strait. Ships were moving out on the water even at this hour, heading north to the Black Sea and south to the Sea of Marmara. The city was far from asleep, as well; he could feel its pulse, hear it breathe in all those minds pressing against his. The silence here in the nondescript waterfront house, his little-used Istanbul safehouse, was only an illusion. Like so much else.

"So I'm not real now, am I?" She sounded almost amused.

"You're still in the States," he muttered, shifting in his chair. "Alaska, right?" She would have gone back, returned to her self-imposed exile. He knew she hadn't been ready to go back to the X-Men. He knew because she'd been there when he'd woken up, after the T-O cocoon had cracked. At his side, in his mind--until he'd told her to get out. "So you can't be here. I'm dreaming, or you're traveling the astral plane--"

He wished he could be sure which. Swallowing hard, he brushed lank silver hair out of his eyes. It was getting too long. He remembered the uneasy feeling he'd gotten, seeing his reflection in the mirror that morning. Quite frankly he looked like shit, however many years the flonqing cocoon had knocked off his age. He'd lost weight, muscle tone--even his reflexes were sluggish. Really, he should be a little more bothered about that than he was.

"You look horrible." Her voice stayed soft, but it was edged with real concern now. Cutting edges, slicing deep into what was left of his defenses. He closed his eyes, writhing inwardly, and felt the anger heating somewhere deep within, like a long-dormant fire. "And I don't mean your standard, not-enough-sleep, too-much-stress sort of horrible, Nathan. You actually look sick."

"I'm fine." He rubbed a hand along his stubbled jaw, trying to remember the last time he'd shaved. Not that it really mattered.

She was suddenly right there beside his chair. On the other side of the room one instant, beside him the next.

Nathan managed not to jump out of his skin. "Go away," he muttered as she reached towards him. He felt something--not quite a physical touch, but close, too close, and he flinched away from her, shrinking back as far as he could into the chair. "Don't touch me," he rasped, shaking. His hands closed spasmodically over the arms of the chair, wood cracking in his grip. "Stop following me, stop haunting me!"

Jean tilted her head, those green eyes glowing faintly from within, liquid with grief. Meeting them, he felt like a monster. Like a selfish child--"You make me sound like a ghost," she murmured.

Wasn't she? Weren't they both? Nathan laughed raggedly and pushed himself up, out of the chair. His balance was as bad as if he'd been drinking all night. Funny, when he hadn't touched a drop of alcohol since he'd left Paris. "Just leave me alone, Jean," he muttered, staggering over to the bed and collapsing. "I left for a reason. Leave me alone."

He could still sense her there. Clawing at the rumpled blankets, he buried his face in the pillow and tried to think of something else. Nursery rhymes, babble, anything to fill his mind and block her.

"Nate, stop that."

#Fuck off.#

"Nathan!"

And stab her eyes, he could almost feel her weight settling on the bed beside him. He wanted to cry, quite honestly. If it wasn't bad enough that she was tormenting him with her sad eyes, his imagination was embroidering on it, making her more real than she needed to be.

"I'm worried about you, Nathan."

"I don't care," he whispered hoarsely, hearing the thickness in his voice and hating himself for it. Hating her, for stopping him from finishing Apocalypse in Akkaba, and dooming them both to this limbo. Dead was dead, alive was alive, and Scott was neither--

#Shh.# She was in his mind now, slipping past what was left of his defenses and curling gently around his thoughts, emanating grief and love too strong for him to shut out. #Go to sleep, Nate. It's all right.#

He didn't have the strength even to curse at her as she nudged him over the edge, into the darkness.

***

The hotel room was too small. It was a suite, really, and a palatial one at that, but with sunset, it had begun to seem smaller and smaller, like all her rooms did lately when darkness fell. It was past midnight now, and the walls were still closing in.

Elizabeth Braddock gave a gasping laugh that was more than half a sob, and curled up more tightly on the bed. It was taking all her willpower not to get up, walk through that door and out into the night. She wanted to, so very badly. But she'd spent all these long, tortuous weeks fighting that hunger, and she wasn't going to let a--a bloody coincidence derail her plans.

Her plans--what plans? She laughed again, a harsher sound this time, and raked sweat-damp violet hair out of her eyes with a shaking hand. There was no plan. She'd left the States to keep the others safe, to find some space to fight this battle on her own--

--only to have random chance laugh at her altruism. Betsy closed her eyes, trying not to weep. She could almost hear the laughter, when she cried. Mocking laughter, blowing like a cold wind through her mind from the place she knew he was. Even if she couldn't see him, she could feel him. A darker shadow, within the shadows.

The hunger was his doing, of course. Memories flickered erratically through her mind of the time on Muir Island, of how Lorna and David had been used. What he'd done to her was different. Subtler. She could feel the dark chains linking them, the link that had somehow endured even through her loss of her powers and the disruption of the astral plane the High Evolutionary's machinations had caused.

Had the High Evolutionary even understood what he was doing? She wondered sometimes.

How simple it must have seemed to him. Devolve mutants across the face of the globe, affect them on an individual basis for the greater good of humanity. Never anticipate that the astral plane would be wounded. Wounded and angry, and searching for its missing parts, for the brighter threads ripped so brutally out of its tapestry. Searching so determinedly that the borders between it and the physical were blurred.

She wondered how long it would take before Farouk tired of using her to feed and walked off the astral plane. Perhaps a year from now, they would look back on Onslaught fondly.

The hunger surged inside her, a feverish, demanding wave of it, too powerful to resist. The only victory she could claim was that she stayed in the room and didn't even rise from the bed. It was a very small victory, because her mind was moving through the city, following the pull to that other mind, the one that shone like a star beside the Bosporus.

"Cable," she murmured brokenly, hands going to her temples as she fought for control.

Why him? Why here? He was one of the few people she'd realized, at the outset, that she had to avoid at all costs. Too powerful, too inexperienced. Too much of a tempation for the monster inside her.

And yet their paths had intersected. Chance, pure chance--or was it? Too much was hazy now. She couldn't be sure her actions were her own, that the choices she made were uninfluenced by him--

Laughter. She was sure she could hear it. "Say something, you bastard," she whispered raggedly, trying to project all her hatred, all her contempt, into the shadows. "Fight me--or are you afraid you'll lose like the last time?"

Nothing. She'd been tormented by the hunger, aware of his presence, since the day her powers had returned, but he'd never spoken to her, never revealed himself.

He didn't need to. He had her, right where he wanted her.

Shuddering, fighting back nausea, Betsy closed her eyes. Sleep. She had to sleep, muster enough strength to leave the city in the morning.

It was just getting--so hard. She'd held him off for so long. Nearly two months, now. The things she'd done, the compromises she'd made--but she hadn't crippled anyone's mind. Hadn't killed. It was a victory, of sorts. His corruption might have spread throughout her soul, a dark rot she might never be able to excise, but she was still fighting.

Still fighting. But she could still sense Cable, could still feel the urge to sink herself into his mind, to drain him dry. Her urge, her hunger. That was the worst of it, that she wanted it, too.

She reached out involuntarily, brushing against his mind, and moaned softly, hands clenching into fists on the sheets and her whole body cramping with unrelieved desire. Heat flared in her mind, along the link with Farouk. He wanted this, so very badly. Craved it, like an addict craved his favorite drug. Tears trickled down her face as she gave in, just a little, and siphoned some of the power spilling from that radiant mind like dancing light. Just a taste, enough to sate Farouk for now.

Cable would never know. And in the morning she would leave.

***

Nathan was fairly sure he'd felt worse when he'd first woken up after the T-O cocoon had cracked than he did this morning, but it was a near thing. It really didn't make sense, he thought hazily, slumping back against the wall of the bathroom and wiping his mouth. He'd had a couple of cups of coffee yesterday, and that was it--nothing that should have made him this sick. Or maybe not eating was the problem?

Not eating. Generally bad, yes, but he hadn't had much of an appetite since the cocoon. His stomach churned with nausea again, and Nathan swallowed determinedly. Done with this, he was DONE with trying to throw up the nonexistent contents of his stomach. With all these years of Askani discipline, he should be able to control his body a little better than this. Taking an involuntary six-week nap wasn't a good excuse for forgetting that mind trumped matter in nearly every situation.

But his mind just wasn't behaving. That was where discipline was truly breaking down. He'd woken up tangled in the sheets this morning, unable to move freely, and for a moment he'd flashed back, thought he was back in the cocoon--

"Stop it," he hissed at himself, his voice shockingly loud in the quiet of the bathroom. That was over and done with. What was, was.

He needed fresh air. Fresh air and more coffee, that was the key. Hauling himself back to his feet, he staggered the few steps to the shower and turned it on full blast, as cold as the water would go. He stayed under the water until he was numb, and then stumbled back out.

The shock of the heat, even in the bedroom, left him feeling light-headed and dizzy, but he ignored it and got dressed. Outside, the streets were already crowded, even this early. Istanbul, the city that never slept, Nathan thought as he drifted through the crowds, deeper into the Old City. There was a reason he'd come here. So many people, so much history--there was a solidity about Istanbul that was lacking in too many places these days, with the astral plane so altered. He was tired of falling into the astral plane every time his concentration slipped, as it did too often lately.

The sun was beating down on the city like some relentless hammer. It reminded him too much of the desert, of--

Nathan stumbled to a stop, leaning a hand against the wall of the house beside him for support. The sound of his own heartbeat pounding in his ears and the rasp of his breathing seemed like the loudest things in the world, drowning out the noise of the city around him. It took him a long moment to wrestle himself back under control and push everything back to the locked corner of his mind where it belonged.

Just a little healthy repression. Memories shouldn't have that much power behind them anyway.

He forced himself to start walking again, one foot in front of another, not really knowing where he was going, or caring. That had been the story of this whole trip, after all. No fixed destination, an itinerary that changed with the whims of the wind.

More often than not, he'd found himself thinking of the compass points, making his decisions that way. Simplistic, but it made things so much--clearer. South was definitely out, for example. He didn't want to be anywhere near Egypt. West was out, because that meant turning around--going back. "I will diminish, and go into the west," he muttered faintly, knowing he was misquoting something, but not sure what. It fit, at least.

So that left north, or east.

East. It had been a long time since he'd been to some of the places in that direction. Empty places. Nathan gave a terrible, mirthless smile and rubbed the back of his hand across his burning eyes. Maybe if he wandered the steppes for long enough, he'd meet himself. He had to be out there somewhere, after all.

He was almost to the Galata Bridge, he realized, as the unmistakable smells of the spice market started to lend an exotic tang to the air. There was no breeze, not even as he drew closer to the water. The heat was so steady, so unrelenting. That light-headed feeling was coming back, and this time he didn't even try and fight it. He wasn't reeling down the street in a way that would attract undue attention, which was all that counted. Besides, he didn't mind the surreal edge to everything. It worked for him--

Someone whispered his name.

Nathan stopped in his tracks, his eyes darting back and forth, searching for the source of the voice. A few people bumped into him, giving him dirty looks or muttering imprecations, but he barely noticed.

The whisper came again. In his mind, he realized. Jaw tightening, he clenched shaking hands into fists at his side and squared his shoulders. If this was Jean, taunting him, he was going to--do something thoroughly inappropriate. He didn't know what. But this was just too much, too--

#Nathan.#

He whirled. An older man gave a protesting yelp as Nathan nearly knocked him off his feet, but Nathan ignored him, not even offering a token apology. Something was drawing his attention across the street, to the door of a ramshackle cafˇ.

Betsy Braddock was leaning against the doorframe, wearing a sleeveless white sundress a little too revealing for this area of Istanbul. Cool and unruffled, seemingly unperturbed by the heat, she gave him a faint smile and then turned, vanishing back into the cafˇ. Into the shadows.

Rattled, Nathan hesitated for a minute and then followed her. Inside in the dimness, it was only slightly cooler than out on the street. Betsy was alone in the cafˇ, save for a smudge-faced child - boy or girl, Nathan really couldn't tell - who sat on a high stool next to what might have been a bar, save for the lack of anything resembling alcohol, and watched them with a blank, unblinking stare.

Betsy tilted her head at him. Nathan opened his mouth to ask her what the hell she was doing here, but thought better of it and sat down at one of the tables. After all, he told himself, he really didn't need to be standing up to argue with her. Despite the fact that he was out of the sun, the dizziness was worse. Rubbed briefly at his temples with hands that still trembled slightly, he squeezed his eyes shut, willing the sensation to pass.

"Feeling under the weather?" Betsy murmured in his ear, the sound of her voice and the scent of her hair suddenly, shockingly close.

Nathan jerked away, so violently that he nearly toppled out of his chair. Betsy gave a soft, almost husky laugh, but didn't move away. She sat down in the chair next to him instead, her hand lingering on the back of his chair.

"You didn't sense me coming up behind you?" She tsked. "Not a good sign, Nathan."

His heart still pounding, Nathan straightened and glared down at her. "Since when were we on a first-name basis, Braddock?" he asked, as icily as he could manage. "And what the fuck are you doing here, anyway?"

She gave him that delicate, elusive smile again, but her gaze never wavered. He couldn't tell the color of her eyes in this light, he thought distantly, and then couldn't figure out where the thought had come from.

"Vacationing," Betsy murmured, still smiling. "Having an interesting time, too. How about you, Nathan?"

"I--" Why wouldn't she back off a little? How could a telepath be so blind to the fact that she was seriously infringing on his personal space? He tried to push his chair backwards, but his brain's command to the rest of his body to move got lost somewhere along the way, and he was left dazed and frustrated, not quite sure what to do. Betsy leaned closer, elegant fingers tapping out a strange, syncopated rhythm on the back of his chair. "I'm not--I didn't expect you--"

She looked him up and down for a moment before locking gazes with him again. "You don't look well," she said, arching an eyebrow. "When was the last time you ate, Nathan?" A oddly dark chuckle escaped her. "We do strange things when we're famished."

He wrenched himself out of the hold of those strange eyes and stared down at the tabletop, wondering why he was shaking again suddenly, why he felt so--

"Don't be afraid," she murmured.

Indignation stirred inside him. He stiffened, preparing to bristle at her. The perfect cutting retort started to form in his mind.

Only to disintegrate, fading back into the hazy morass of his thoughts as she reached out and brushed a hand across the back of his neck, cool fingers lingering there, almost in a caress. The tension in his muscles started to ebb, and his eyes drifted shut, seemingly of their own accord, as a strange, dreamy lassitude descended on him. His head started to sag forward, towards his chest, and he couldn't seem to stop it.

He couldn't quite feel the chair anymore, either.

"That's better."

***

It was almost too much to be so close to him. She could see the power, glowing beneath his skin. Leaning closer, she checked his pulse at his throat. Slow and steady, even if his breathing was fitful. There was no resistance in his mind, only half-submerged flickers of fear, undirected and thus no threat. On some level he knew what was happening. It added a certain savor.

She reached up, framing his face with her hands, holding his head upright. His eyes roved back and forth beneath closed lids, restlessly. "Dreaming of me?" she murmured, the words coming on their own. "I was dreaming of you."

Dreaming of doing this, of slipping past shields like ancient, ruined walls where barely one stone stood atop another. A great deal had gone into the destruction of those walls, she knew. Grief and guilt and anger and out-and-out physical and psychic trauma. A civil war of the mind.

There were obstacles she hadn't expected. A minefield of memories like broken glass, ready to slice her to pieces if she tried to pass through. So she danced, instead, finding the clear path, glorying in the laughter and the psychic equivalent of applause that emanated from the shadows behind her. She curtsied, as she reached the other side, and the shadows vibrated with mirth.

Cable's breathing was ragged now, each indrawn breath sounding more like a sob. Light blazed up in front of her, beating like furious wings, blazing with defiance. If she touched it, it would burn her, she knew. Ashes, ashes, they'd all fall down. That strength was something she couldn't match.

But she hadn't come here to fight, had she? She laughed, and let cobwebs of shadow stream from her astral self, strands of blackness that wrapped themselves around the light, trapping it. The light screamed and burned hotter, but the darkness flowed into her, lending her its strength. Cable shuddered, moaning like someone being tortured as she leached all the fire and fury away, drinking it in, its warmth flowing through her and into the darkness within.

#More,# the darkness urged and gave a deep, obscene laugh. #I want all of it, my darling girl. Every last delicious spark.#

And somewhere deeply submerged in the darkness, the consciousness of Elizabeth Braddock awoke with a scream, thrashing free of the shadows. Horror gave her the strength she'd lacked last night when she'd given Farouk a taste of what he was gorging himself on now. When she'd let him in too deep, until he'd engulfed her completely--

#NATHAN! Wake up!# she screamed, pulling desperately at the chains, hearing Farouk roaring angrily in her mind as she snapped the link between her and Cable. #NATHAN!#

Powerful arms came up, breaking her hold. Betsy cried out as she was pushed away so hard that her chair went over sideways and she hit the floor with bruising force. Nathan's chair followed suit, but only because of his speed in vacating it.

Tears pouring down her face, Betsy looked up and saw him staring down at her as he started to back away. His face was ashen, the trickle of blood coming from his nose a startling contrast to the pallor of his skin. His eyes bored into her, wider than she'd ever seen them. The shock and confusion and fear she sensed from him was something she'd never expected to see in this man.

"Run," she gasped out. Farouk was growling in her mind, promising that 'you'll scream for this, Braddock, do you hear me?' and she had no time to appreciate the irony, the perfect bloody irony that it was only his choice to finally break his silence that had warned her, awakened her to her surroundings and what she was doing. Still staring wide-eyed at her, Nathan swayed on his feet, but didn't move, and she wanted to scream. So she did. "Get out!" she shrieked at him. "Get out, you stupid bloody bastard--get away! Go!"

Something surfaced in his eyes, overrode the shock for a moment. It was something that didn't belong in human eyes, the look of a hunted animal.

She saw it only for an instant. The next moment, he was turning, staggering out of the cafˇ.

Betsy covered her face with her hands and wept. She had to get out of here, away from Nathan.

#You think it's that easy, Braddock?#

The memory of how good it had felt to feed on his power was still there, too fresh, and she choked, fighting back nausea.

The darkness inside her seethed with contempt. #You're mine, girl. If I tell you to take him, you will.#

She couldn't let this happen, Betsy thought wildly. She wasn't going to let this happen, not even if she had to--

#Mine,# Farouk hissed, and Betsy moaned, feeling the cobwebs tangle around her mind, this time. Tugging her back down into the darkness. #Both of you.#

to be continued...

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