Starlight and Moondust

by Jaya Mitai

So.

The battle with the Twelve is over. My rather . . . overzealous sister had been right all along. Of course, predicting the past while existing in the future can't be that difficult. This history was written, in another timeline, and she was chronovarient in nature. Hardly prediction. In fact, her saying it might be the only reason it happened.

Funny ending. I'd figured Dayspring would walk in and be killed, but significantly weaken Apocalypse, and his cohorts could have finished the job. Even that whelp of a near-clone could have done it. Idiot boy tripped over his own two feet and nearly bought it, I hear. Sounds like something Nate Grey would do. What I could have done with his powers, oh, it could have been exquisite.

Don't need them now, of course. Apocalypse never knew the extent of them, and neither did you. Though he has those memories. How they must burn him, to know that he created me. That I made his doombringer that much more handicapped might please him, though.

It was never my intent to please you, Apocalypse. Father.

It was never my intent to have him kill you, Cyclops. Father.

Odd, how I can think that now. Now that, of course, your mind has been crushed into a point so infinitesimally tiny you cannot bear the pain of it. Perhaps you have winked out altogether. It's possible to fight Apocalypse. I could do it now, if I chose. Not as a child, as a stupid pup, like Nate Grey, but now . . . now I could. Now I'm strong enough.

Odd how dear not-Mother pulled Dayspring off you, Summers. Odd that she didn't stand there in shock and wail. Perhaps I give her too little credit. You would have preferred Dayspring finish the deed, of this I am certain. Anything is . . .

Well, you know all about that now, I suppose. You will probably be too fractured to understand even an inkling of this message. And I am probably too fractured at this point to properly express myself to you, as primitive and undeserving as you are of it.

In a way, you've made this decision so much easier. I learned from Sanctity that your dear daughter had ‘prophesies' about me, as well. That I was to run free, that I had a part to play in her desire to destroy Apocalypse. She is the reason I was taken. She is the reason I lived how I have. She is ultimately the reason why you are where you are, as I write this.

But she is not the reason I will free you, Summers. I am the reason.

I have not forgiven you. It is beyond what you deserve, and I will not give you the self-gratification such a thing would bring you. No one thought of me in all this, which goes to show how far from mind I am. Far from mind .. . well, an extended exploration of Hell will do that to you.

Perhaps you're already familiar with what I'm talking about. Perhaps this is all for naught. I couldn't even tell you what possessed me to write it.

I will save you, Father, from my father, but nothing will save you from me. I will restore you as is in my power, but I will not care for you.

I will extract you from Apocalypse, Summers, because in a strange, twisted way, you did the same for me, a long, long time from now. And when I have done so, and he is confined to another, harmless body, then I shall make it so he never . . . well, in my mind. That timeline is written, and shall not be unwritten. I can't believe for the life of me that Cable thought differently. He's remarkably stupid in many ways.

No more stupid than I, for sharing my thoughts on the matter. As little as they'll mean to you, and as little as your knowing means to me.

Welcome back, Scott Summers, Destroyer of Apocalypse. You are the embodiment of Dayspring's complete and final failure, and that knowledge shall be my only reward. Live long, Summers, and live well, for you shall both.

* * * * * * *

The scream startled him into jumping, belying just how tense he was. Fingers that had been playing with hem of his shirt froze, and he narrowly avoided sloshing the bottled water everywhere. He didn't like it much when she wandered off, and liked it less when she drew him on with enticing offers that answered nothing.

But there was no doubt the scream was Anais', and she sounded like she was in a terrible amount of pain. Inarticulate, agonized screaming that grew more frantic even as he reacted, then began to die off in a barely perceptible decrescendo.

It wasn't loyalty that drove him to quicken his pace, to run, dodging through the abandoned cobble streets and trying to screw the top onto his water before tossing it irritatedly to the side. The roads were too bumpy and winding to use even the most primitive vehicle, this tiny little town in eastern Egypt, so they had started to journey on foot. It was a nice, picturesque little village, if not dry and hot. And not the place you'd think a person like Anais would need to fear for her life.

The cobbles were slippery and uneven, worn smooth by the hooves of pack animals and the soft sandals of the people here. He'd seen only five or six of the darkly tanned Egyptians, two of them children offering him flowers for whatever coins he had on him. He still carried American currency, though he had no recollection of where he'd gotten it, and the merchant a mile back had had no trouble taking a dollar in exchange for some water poured into a bottle that had seen better days. Anais had hissed something about the United States, and fallen silent, slipping away as she periodically did, leaving him alone with his thoughts and empty skull.

He wasn't sure what she was, though she seemed oddly catlike in her movements and thinking, cunning and without great affection. How anyone in this tiny town in the Nile valley could have surprised her, attacked her, caused that scream –

God, that scream. It had ended, the last echoes bouncing to him from the wide, sunbleached face of a mosque looming over the diminutive village. He wasn't sure whether the absence of it bothered him more than the presence. If she died . . .

The last corner put him skidding to a stop, sliding and nearly losing his footing. He halted before a smoldering, stinking heap of flame-licked bones, still live bones, attached to a skull that was terribly intact, the skin about her neck singed and flaking from the heat that had ended her, eyes wide and mouth turned in a terrible mask of agony and anger.

The stench nearly made him retch even if the sight itself wouldn't have, and he kept his stomach in line by sheer will. The blackened flakes of skin littered the ground beneath the bones, even beneath his feet, a large circle where she had likely danced in the agony of her skin and soft tissues burning to ash, and her fingers were still connected by singed tendon and ligaments, curled in an oddly animal-like fashion.

The air was deadly still, and silent, and the smoke curled up into the air like so much poisoned incense. No one had come out of their homes to see what the scream had been about, thought it had been long and loud. The only sign that the village was inhabited at all was a door to his far right that looked to have been recently scratched, and the muted sound of a child crying inside. The village was quiet enough that he could hear the clatter of the plastic bottle as it rattled down the street he had just traveled, as if following him, wondering why it had been discarded.

Not that water would have extinguished the flames that had consumed her. What could have done this? How fast it had happened, and live flesh wasn't precisely the most flammable substance on earth. What sort of heat had not singed the buildings nearby, or even her head, the highest part of her body?

It was when he was dragging his eyes away from the waving, beckoning smoke that he saw him.

Him referred to the silver-haired stranger before him, one eye glowing with baleful hatred, the other shining with disgust. Hands were curled into fists at his sides, and his smile, his expression . . they weren't quite right, like a cheap jigsaw puzzle that hadn't been cut all that precisely and didn't fit together quite seamlessly.

"You fled the last time we met, Father." His voice was soft, oddly gentle, and accented, but quite articulated. "Now there is nowhere left to go."

Well, that certainly cleared some things up. His son. Was older than he was. Father. Perhaps he had been a priest, a man of some faith? Perhaps he had been a mentor, a teacher? He knew he was a mutant himself, though he didn't recall his powers and hadn't really learned much of them over the last week. He knew that there were mutants looking for him, though . . . perhaps he had led a cult? That might explain Anais' words and behavior . .
.

The man was looking at him with such palpable hatred, as though he had committed a heinous crime . . . He choked a little on the smoke, shifted his stance to a more defensive one.

As if incinerating someone wasn't heinous enough.

"I don't remember our last meeting. You would be . . .?"

The man before him sneered, took a step towards him. He was over six foot, and muscular, covered in a bright, shining clean silver. A carmine cape fell over both shoulders casually, kept there by lethal barbs extending from the shoulders and gauntlets of the . . . of the armor. This man was prepared to do battle, and he was obviously a mutant. The outfit seemed a bit pretentious, but if he could incinerate someone with a look . . . perhaps generated from the glowing eye? Another, more cautious step, back towards the corner he had rounded seemed prudent. Cover didn't seem like the worst idea at the moment.

"Let me refresh your memory."

The mutant extended a hand, sharply, almost in a position to offer it for shaking, and then there was pain, fire burning in his chest and abdomen, and hard cobblestones battered his head. The ground, he'd been flung to the ground, he was burning –

No! He had been struck with energy, and had cracked ribs, but there were no flames, he wasn't dying, blazing as Anais had. He didn't know why, actually, but the ribs seemed a little better as he rolled to his feet and answered the attack with one of his own, which bounced off nothing, and bought little but time to gain his balance and feet. His breath came fast, from the pain as well as having the wind knocked out him. He was outclassed, there had to be a way to talk this man down, whoever he was . ..The mutant sneered at him again, coming step by angry stalk towards him, eye still burning with the promise of tortures to come.

"You stupid old fool." Scorn flaked from his voice in the dry desert air, empty now without the ring of Anais' death cry, and it made him want to shudder from the sheer lack of compassion. Filled with resentment for some unknown crime, overflowing with accusation, yet curiously hollow.

He made his voice sound confident despite the way he felt. "Look who's talking. I don't know who you are, but whatever it is you want –"

A further sneer, this one more malevolent. "As if what I want was ever in question. The time for games is over." Much darker, much less calm.

The plastic bottle, forgotten, bumped over the last few cobbles to knock gently against his foot.

The mutant ignored it, though his eye glowed more brightly. "You were careless, Father. You don't even know how he has weakened you, you don't even sense it. I'm surprised Farouk didn't beat me here." Still no move to attack, and that bothered him greatly. He was doing something, he was – he was telling him he was going to kill him, obviously, but where was he supposed to go? How was he supposed to defeat a man that could incinerate him with a look? He inched another step towards the stucco hut beside him, kicking the plastic bottle in the process. It dislodged from the slight valley that had been imprisoned in, and continued its journey to bump into the remains of Anais.

He was used to fear. He'd been scared pretty much as long as he could remember, from finding himself in rags to meeting that strange mutant that called herself Anais. He didn't know what urge was bringing him to Egypt, he couldn't remember anything of his life or anywhere else to go. But what twisted his gut now was something much, much stronger that his fear. It was his need to survive.

"Your form doesn't matter . . . did you think taking Summer's appearance would make me hesitate as did Dayspring? Do you think I hold a soft spot in my heart for the man that never bothered to acknowledge I even existed?!" His voice was wild, barely restrained, and his fists rose several inches, trembling with the pressure and tension his clenched muscles were putting on one another, and his face was terrible to see. "Very unwise."

His pulse was fast in his ears, but not from the pain. It was fading with every breath, as though the ribs were healing all on their own. He didn't understand his own powers, how was he supposed to come up with away to defeat this man -?!

Talk. Work it out. "I'm deadly serious when I tell you I don't know who you are –"

The mutant snarled, taking another step forward. Even with his face partially in shadow from the sun, it was obvious his eyes were inturned, thoughtful, out of place in a face straining to keep rage and hatred in check. "Your appearance and this verbal dance is pointless. Dayspring has failed, but where he failed, I shall finish the task."

That sounded ominous. He had to act, there was no way to keep this from combat, and the desert sun was keeping his powers strong. A further, far more concentrated blast had some effect on the shields, and sent the mutant reeling back a step with a curse in a curious language. A step?! That was the strongest optic blast he knew how to produce, and nothing! A follow-up, sustained blast was only redirected by the air, shattering the building next to him and showering them both with sandy material and the scream of a goat.

He felt the air move around him, and leapt for the cover of the building he'd just pulverized, but far too late. Another wall of nothing hurled him towards the ground with deadly, stunning force. He couldn't breathe, he couldn't see, he couldn't focus –

And someone else was in his head.

All he saw was the play of sunlight on the bottle of water, the liquid inside unbelievably clear and bright, dancing like mercury diamonds across his blurred vision. Diamonds against the pure ebony of ashes, surprisingly satin-looking from this angle, lying on the cobbles. He fought for breath, for consciousness, and he heard the mutant in his skull. First a snarl of surprise, then a bellow of rage -

Then he was standing shin-deep in cold water, and found himself wishing for the previous, acrid stench. Anything had to be better than the impression he was standing in rotting vegetation and human waste.

He couldn't see, and exploratory fingers discovered a length of cloth wrapped around his eyes. Some instinct was telling him not to take it off, but he ignored it, ripping the cloth away to find himself in a dark, rather rank sewer of some kind, indeed up to his knees in rotting vegetation, filthy water, and human waste. He was wearing rags that were meant for ten years' less wear and a much larger frame, and he couldn't smell anything past the vapors drifting towards him from the water below.

He had to get out of here. Wherever here was. There was a terrible urgency, that he needed to be doing something, but much like his dreams of late, that goal was hiding somewhere in a thick, suffocating void of not-memories.

The stones formed a very narrow walkway, roughly four feet above the level of the water, and he leapt upwards, snagging the rot-coated edge and hauling himself out of the drainwater and up to solid land. It was covered with a dead moss and muck, and it bore telltale footprints, some not old at all. Yet the arched stone tunnel carried no sound but that of the water, splashing and tinkling as his sudden exit and drippings agitated the surface of the water, making it call out and protest its treatment to the waters in connecting segments.

No people. Too eerily like the town he'd just . . . left. Or had he? Was this some sort of telepathic trick, something to distract his mind while something happened to his body? Not that it had even been necessary, despite his strange healing. There was no need for this . . . hostile mutant to go to this extreme to kill him. And Scott? His appearance?

So many questions. So many questions, and the only one that offered any answers was dead! He swore, loudly, to the sewers, and they reverberated back sympathetic curses, occasionally adding a stutter here and there for inflection purposes.

Well, the answers weren't here, unless it was to point out that his life, currently, was a cesspool of shit. Inspecting the tiled ceilings, he did manage to locate a light source, though there was no way he could make his way out the tiny vents. So, walking it was.

The rags tied around his feet were sodden with moisture, splatting around quite efficiently on the slime and causing him to slide more often than not. He wondered at the ancient look of the pipes. This was turn of the century stuff, if not before . . . and the tiled portion . . . was he in a part of New York? He stopped, startling a clot of dried moss.

If he was under a city, where were the city noises? He was in a sewer. Where were the rats? There should have at least been insects! But there was nothing, nothing alive in the water, nothing alive that he could hear above. Even the moss was dead!

He leaned hard into the wall in frustration, ignoring the filth. Dammit! All he wanted were some answers! He wanted to know who he was, he wanted to know where he was, what the hell was going on, why he had the urge to wander into the Egyptian desert to look for those answers . . . why couldn't he remember?!

Hitting his head repeatedly on the walls of the tunnel did little to enlighten him, though it did demonstrate that the mortar between the bricks was loose, like there was nothing behind it. Intrigued, he shoved. They gave, but only marginally. Checking and finding the structural integrity of the shape of the tunnel to be sound, he took a few steps back and lightly blasted the bricks.

They tumbled in a spray of dust and sand into the dark, cold void that had been behind them. He stepped closer, listening intently.

They never hit the bottom.

The air in that void was frigid, and he knew with a certainty in his soul that if he fell in that void, he would fall forever, and the fall would be frozen, so that he never moved, he just fell, forever and irrevocably.

The thought terrified him, and sent him half-stumbling, half-running down the walkway before he got his composure back, and slowed his frantic feet. He'd never been so frightened in his life. He was in hell. No memories, nothing familiar, nothing even made _sense _ anymore.

All he wanted was to know who he was, and why he was fighting in the first place.

He was fighting. Yes, he knew that. He was fighting with some crazed telepath, that was for certain, but there was something more. His dreams. This wasn't quite like his dreams, but it was . . . it was close. The sewers were familiar to him, like he'd been there before.

He couldn't have been here before. It looked so old, like something out of a museum. Not that he remembered distinctly ever going to a museum . . . but this looked far too metropolitan to have stayed in this shape. And he certainly wasn't old enough to have been rambling around in a sewer like this at any age. Particularly not in these clothes, that looked so old-fashioned, almost . . . almost Victorian.

As he'd been rambling, lost in his thoughts, he'd come across a branch in the tunnels, one very well-lit. Upon following it, the stinking water receded, shallowing and losing current, and a large, impossibly bright circle shone brightly at the entrance to the sewers. Warily, he approached it, poking his head out tentatively.

Bright sunlight met his eyes, and a canal leading to a large river stretched before him. All around it, high above on the primitive concrete, lay a Victorian-style city. A particularly famous bridge stretched off in the distance, though he couldn't put a name to it, and somewhere he could smell the sweet scent of bread baking.

If there was bread baking, there had to be someone there to bake it.

But there was no noise. Absolute silence reigned over the city. No chimneys pumping out smoke. No seagulls crying in search of their breakfast. Not so much as a flying fish marred the surface of the river that glinted like mercury diamonds in the sunlight, quiet and unusually still for a river.

Nothing. Empty windows watched him impassively, and empty stores displayed their wares with apathy.

The city was dead.

He climbed out of the tiled tunnel onto land, to find green grass beneath his feet. He stripped himself of the fetid cloth wrapped around his feet, wriggling his wrinkled toes in the warm sunlight before planting them solidly in the cool green grass. This, at least, was alive, and he plucked up a piece, put it between his lips. Slightly sweet, tasting of green and .. . and mowed yards. It tasted of sweat, and heat, and the scent of skin sunburning, and mowed grass.

He'd mowed a lawn! The near-memory shouldn't have been that exciting, but he felt the first smile cross his face in what seemed like forever. Maybe .. . maybe there were other memories to be gotten, maybe he was on the road to finding his answers after all.

"You know," a quiet voice said conversationally to his left, "standing there with grass in your mouth, grinning, is a rather foolish thing to be doing."

He jumped, tensing, and was surprised to find his hand had wandered to the hem of his shirt again. A mannerism he simply didn't remember?

It was shuttled away at the sight of a gray tomcat, a little thin and a little mangy but muscular, licking a paw and staring at him thoughtfully. The tomcat was perched on the stonework behind him, and had a slightly damp look about him, like he'd been out when the dew had first settled. Waiting, then. Waiting for what? It wasn't like a torrent of rats lived in the tunnels and would exit come the morning sun.

Waiting for him, perhaps? And then there was the whole subject of it _talking _ . . . He felt more than a little stupid. "Ah . . . what did you say?"

The cat put the paw down distastefully and licked its lips like it tasted something unpleasant. "I said, you're being foolish. Continue to the bakery. There you will find a few of the answers you're looking for."

He blinked, momentarily stunned to hear the cat speak to him, and it looked up, eyes alert and head cocked, before darting into the canal with a quiet splash.

Though he waited almost five minutes, the cat didn't resurface.

Cats that turn into fish, he considered a little wildly, turning onto the smoother cobbled streets and following his nose. Well, you are what you eat.

He wasn't sure where that had come from, and he laughed. He couldn't help it, the concept of turning into a loaf of bread or pastry after all this was just too amusing to ignore. Or maybe it was just a cover for the panicked sobs that were contemplating bubbling from him. He'd been scared in the past week, but this was . . . this made the last week look like a week in paradise. He could not panic. He would just . . . walk. And get his answers, and things would be okay.

The cobbles of this town were far more even, and smoother still from countless carriage wheels and shoed horses, though the evidence of passing animals was nowhere to be seen. There were even raised cobbles where crosswalks would be, as if to help the absent citizens of the city to wade through the muck that rainfall would bring. But the streets were clean enough to eat off.

For some reason, he seemed drawn the bakery, making many turns through the winding blocks that he wouldn't normally have, wondering how anyone ever wandered this city without a map. It was not laid out in the nice, square, even blocks of a contemporary city, but patchworked together like a crazed cross-sticher's quilt, sporting uneven, steep hills and alleys between establishments.

The lack of trash was almost as frightening as the lack of people. It was as though this place were waiting patiently for people to come inhabit it, perfectly laid out but dormant, unused. Like a spare city, for when the first was destroyed.

It made the scent of baking, carried on no wind, that much more disturbing.

The establishment wasn't that difficult to locate, its sign painted brightly with cakes and pastries, the familiar brown long and round breads stoically taking up the background on the wooden advertisement. The door, too, was a thick oak, and it felt warm under his fingers as he shoved his back against the wall beside the door and threw it open. At least if someone threw a rolling pin, it would miss him . . .

No projectile or curse came out the door, and after a moment, he leaned off the wall and peered around the frame. Heavy tables supported heaping piles of pastries, cookies, rolls, sweetbreads and more. Finely decorated cakes sat in a place of pristine aloofness beside a giant ledger, in the shadow of an ivory ink well and a lapis fountain pen, of either ceramics or perhaps metal.

Curiously, he took a step inside, now able to see the right wall, a series of wooden boxes forming cabinets holding long breads, round breads, and every type of sweetbread in loaf form imaginable. Toward the back of the shop, another wide doorframe, minus door, showed the actual bakery itself, with a fire burning brightly beneath the huge oven taking up almost all the space he could see. Various cooking utensils hung from metal hooks on the ceiling, and there was a bit of flour on the ground in front of the slate-black oven, like something had been dropped but they hadn't had time to sweep the floor.

The entire place smelled heavenly, and his stomach grumbled loudly, as if to remind him that if this was the only food to be had, he might as well have. No telling when it would disappear like Egypt had.

No telling if it was all poisonous, and a little old witch was going to pop out and try to shove him into the black oven.

He blinked, momentarily startled out of his wandering thoughts, as the door closed softly behind him.

There was a window, actual glass rather than the waxed paper he had seen on a few houses near the sewers, and as he looked out, he saw not a living thing. It was impossible to tell if a wind had finally come up, since there were no plants nor trash to watch blow, but the oak door was solid, and heavy. He would have heard the air moving before the door had shut.

Okay, so it was surreal, and he didn't yet understand the rules. At least now he was completely sure this was just telepathic, and not real. As such, if he ate poison, wouldn't he just wake up? Or would he poison his mind . .. ? His mind was already poisoned, he thought wildly, if doors were shutting by themselves.

His feet were nigh silent on the smooth, cool tiles, though he wasn't chilly, as a fireplace on the wall that separated the store from the bakery was merrily crackling away, keeping everything warm, and the scent of cooking bread, as opposed to the sewer, it was overwhelming. Obviously the lunatic was trying to make a point.

But what about the cat? It had said he'd find his answers here . . . the ledger.

He crossed the tiles carefully, looking for but not finding any traps, and turned the ledger book towards himself, careful with the dry, brittle pages. They didn't seem old, neither yellowed nor cracked on the edges, so he assumed it was just the paper of the times. This telepath was doing his damnedest to keep this whole thing period. The question was, why?

The ledger was a list of names and items in shorthand beside them, totaling at the end. Pages and pages of just that. Nothing more. No great light as he opened to any pages, no sudden scrawling of "You are so-and-so" . . . though the telepath had said he had taken Scott's visage.

So he looked like someone named Scott. Could he possibly be that person? And why wouldn't he be that person? Was he a shapeshifter, that he could look like someone else? Or a telepath himself?

Almost spitefully, he tossed the ledger back, so that it teetered dangerously on the countertop, and marched over to a section of chairs, most likely for the absent patrons, sitting in one. Well, he was through playing. He would sit here until he rotted, or until the telepath got bored and stopped playing games. The sense of urgency was no less strong, but he didn't feel drawn to anywhere else in particular, so there was no point in exhausting himself running around a city that had no answers.

Then again, he supposed he could always just _ask _ the telepath. By now, whoever he was, that telepath had to know that he really didn't know who Scott was, or who he was, and didn't know what the mutant had been talking about.

"Hello?" It was pretty loud, though speaking-voice pitched, and it bounced very little in the bakery, unlike the acoustically agreeable sewers.

Nothing.

Sitting bored in a bakery full of warm baked goods when you're anxious is not the most intelligent thing to do. And he _was _ hungry, had been before this mess, before he'd decided to buy water rather than questionable looking honey-fried dates.

But he ignored his hunger, his personal stink, and the bakery, and waited.

And waited.

And waited still.

And no telepath lost his patience.

That man had been a ball of barely controlled rage, and he really doubted he had the patience for this. Perhaps this was someplace he had to escape, and something was going on that he didn't know about? That thought terrified him, though he wasn't sure why, and he stood, beginning to pace. He was not drawn to do anything else, to go back to the sewers or explore the city. It was like . . . it was like he was in the place he was supposed to be.

A prison? Then why did it feel so . . . so right. So close to answers.

"All I want are some answers!"

The fire crackled in response, and some loaf of bread, somewhere, hissed a little escaped air as if commenting on the likelihood of his getting an answer.

Fine. He'd eat something. If that was what the guy wanted, that was what he'd get.

Something told him to stay away from the sweets. If he ate sugar, he'd get hyper and then tired. Better to stick with good, hearty bread of some kind. He eventually picked a soft, round loaf of wheat, and carried it into the back, to the ovens. There was a cooling unit there, a block of ice encased in sawdust behind it keeping it cold, and as he had hoped, there was some butter there. And a pitcher that looked to have whole milk in it.

The point was to eat. Somehow, he really doubted that, but he found an appropriate knife in a wooden block on one of the long, flour-coated counters and sliced the loaf. It was still warm, and smelled divine. The real butter, however, took a bit of encouragement before it agreed to melt against the slice, and he regarded it carefully before bringing it to his face, sniffing it.

It smelled like bread.

It looked like bread.

It even crumbled like bread.

Still he hesitated. It was all symbolism, had to be . . . was this to be his last meal? If so, wine would have been a better choice . . . unless one counted his own whine.

Oh, well. If it was his last meal, it wasn't like he had a lot of control over it. He sniffed the bread a final time, then gave up, and crammed it in his mouth.

The far wall exploded with enough force to knock him – and his meal – over the counter and into the wall. He choked on the bread, spitting it out as scalding bits of brick bit into his chest and arms, curled protectively over his head. The roar was deafening, and he held his breath as superheated air from the ovens shot over him before rising to the ceiling. The burn came after several seconds, and it was enough to make him gasp with the pain.

"Why do you run, coward!? There is no place to go!" It was a viciously gloating cry, challenging and scornful, and from a chest that was puffing with exertion. When he dared to open his eyes, he saw that half the wall had been knocked in, and lying in the rubble was . . .

Was what he became in his dreams.

Whoever _he _ was, he looked stunned, and regained his feet without grace. "I have no need to run from you, fool," the . . . mutant growled, growing even as he watched. "It is you who are the coward. You who are weak."

"Why come here?" the telepath taunted, just outside the building. "This is the time and place of Essex' first major victory over you. Seems a poor choice."

The mutant in question was rather grey in appearance, with strange blue marks over his face and a misshapen jaw, and his body was gaining mass even as he watched. The telepath seemed completely unafraid, baring his teeth in welcome for the attack.

"I'm going to enjoy this, so much more than you know . . ."

"Enjoy your death, son?"

All restraint left the telepath. "I'M NOT YOUR SON!" The grey mutant flew through the wide doorway, widening it a bit more, and he clearly heard the heavy oak door shatter, and the window as well.

The telepath stepped over the slight brick mound jutting from where the wall used to be, and he couldn't help himself. His could barely breathe for the fire that was his burned skin and bruised ribs, and he didn't want to go through the next wall. His instincts were screaming at him to at least look confident, to fight back, to make this man make things make sense, but . . . But he'd spent the past week being terrified of everything, and he wasn't going to stop with the prospect of his death. He began moving back, and away. If anything else, he would appear submissive enough to not be bothered with.

Even as he pressed himself back, the telepath's eyes swept to him with disgust. "You."

He felt something cold, tingling in his mind, and he fired out of sheer instinct – only to find he couldn't, the man in his head was preventing him. His snarl only increased. "Oath! And you ran as well, you piping coward! Couldn't take the truth, so you bury it somewhere it won't bother you!" He was hurled from the countertop into the pile of bricks, one cutting deeply into his back.

"Get out of my sight," the telepath spat, already stalking in the direction he had thrown the other mutant. "And stay out of the way." Then he was through the doorway, and gone.

But everything was gone. The bricks, the bakery, his hunger, everything but the pain he felt, though it lessened a little. He was lying in cold, frigid cold dust, staring at the night sky.

Only the moon was a blue and white swirled marble, with a splash of color thrown in, mostly greens and browns.

His cry of surprise and denial actually reached his ears, and his frantic gasps met with cold air. He was . . . he was on the surface of the moon, breathing.

There seemed to be a bubble of glass around him, though that couldn't be true, it would shatter in the temperature difference. If not glass, then some sort of dense plastic? But no, the more he looked at it, the more it shimmered, seemed almost liquid against the black satin of the night sky. It was an energy field.

He was on the moon, protected by an energy shield. Things had just gotten a lot weirder.

To make matters worse, the emptiness of the moon didn't seem that odd, or the silence, but the bodies of mutated people, everywhere . . . and they were all uniformed, all bearing an X somewhere on them.

That X was hauntingly familiar, but at the same time, it chilled him to the core. Like the X on the yellow belt around the waist of a giant, blue mound, no longer moving, speaking . . . no longer breathing. Dead bloodlessly, somehow, and with such calm, wide blue eyes . . .

Beside it, a girl, a human girl by the looks, twisted in a yellow rainjacket that bore scorch marks and the telltale teartrails of blood, the blood that had pooled and congealed and dried in little fjords all over the material.

But there was so much more.

Beyond the dead there was a sculpture, the same slate grey-white as the dust. It depicted a scene, a mother with hair that seemed really a fire, her hand on the shoulder of . . . of him, holding an screaming infant aloft, almost in a sacrificial position. It was haunting, it fascinated him; he stepped closer to it, unmindful of the blonde to his right that also bore a striking resemblance to him. He had eyes for nothing other than himself, holding that screaming child, a strange set of goggles over his face . . .

And an X on his shoulder.

He couldn't pull his eyes away, even to look for the source of the voice that was talking to him, and it seemed a million miles away.

"I have all the answers. All the answers and all the memories that you now miss. I am Nur. I can help you."

The woman, bearing an excruciating expression, hand on his shoulder tight and tense, veins prominent. Begging him soundlessly, motionlessly, not to do what he was doing.

"The telepath is strife. He is a lunatic, and he will destroy us, if he can."

His own cold face, so impassive to the woman, and to her child. She bore no X, nothing but a loose dress, a housewife's dress. A homemaker's dress.

"We must defeat him. We must help each other."

He reached a shaking hand to the stone, to touch it, half expecting her to be warm, and his own image to be cold, so cold, but it shattered beneath the feather-brush of his fingertips, and the shards dug into the bodies around him, making them bleed. They bled like so many overtextured paintings, the heaps of acrylic sliding from the oil base, into the dry, thirsty dusts of the moon.

Then they were gone, not so much as an imprint in the impassive surface of the satellite.

Everything was gone. The protective bubble, the bodies, the voice . . . all gone. To the cold void around him, and what looked like a space station, a little to his right.

He didn't move towards it, instead turning to the look at the sky, and the Earth. Tears that had no place in his eyes moved to his cheeks, freezing there in the cold, to be mounted upon by other tears, growing like a coral reef on his unfeeling face. He couldn't leave the moon's gravity and just drift to her, he knew that. He knew that he could not breathe, or sustain this cold, and that he should be dead.

If he had led that cult, that had died, that had killed, killed even innocent children . . . why were these the answers? Why couldn't the answers have been something simple, like he was an accountant that happened to look like the terrorist? Why wasn't he just dead?

Why did he still fight?

His knees found the dust, and there he bent, kneeling before where a statue of him once stood, kneeling before the voice, the telepath, the truth. Kneeling before Earth, and wanting nothing more than be buried in her depths.

The tears poured from him, but not one touched the thirsting surface of the moon. They froze as icicles on his face, as he grew colder, and colder still, numb and unfeeling. They hid the hot fear and anguish inside him, maybe would cool it, in time. He would like that, he would. To become like that statue, frozen, forever kneeling, forever asking forgiveness for what he was, for he was evil, and had been cast from Earth.

Evil.

He was evil . . .

He was _fighting _ that evil.

He was fighting that evil because . . because . . . dammit! Because why??

Because . . .

Because he was becoming it.

Because he wasn't it.

He wasn't evil.

Not yet, at any rate. Curling up and freezing to death was a good way to give in, though, he snarled to himself savagely, pushing himself to his numb feet, shattering the icicles on his face. His legs wouldn't hold him, they pitched him back to the ground, but he forced himself up again, if only to fall. If he had to do it all the way to the space station, he would.

He nearly did. More than two dozen times he found himself face-first in the thirsting dust, and with each defeat the desire to be buried in that dust increased. Every time, he had to summon the fire – his fear, he realized with a sickening lurch – and force himself up. There didn't appear to be a door on the metal of the station, but as he stumbled to lean on it, he fell right though.

The temperature change was immediate. The burns he'd received in the kitchen shrieked on his skin, and he moaned with the pain of it. The blood from the gash on his back began to flow once more, and his lungs burned with the intake of warm air. His limbs shook uncontrollably with the cold, and it was all he could do to keep his tongue out of the way of his chattering teeth. Small seizures wracked his frame, ebbing after a time, leaving him simply curled on the metal floor, shivering violently but at least able to control his movement.

As soon as he could, he gained his feet, a little more responsive this time, and less numb. Sharp, hot needles teased him from every angle, but the pain of his burned skin and back kept it from being overwhelming.

Overwhelming. Somehow, that struck him as important. There was something really important about overwhelming. The same kind of important as his not being evil.

And not as important as finding Nur, and the telepath. He had to get answers.

The hallways were empty, as echoing and expectantly waiting as the city before had been, and again, he found himself drawn to a specific place, as though he had been there before, as if he had wandered the halls and knew instinctively where they'd be. They'd be together, like they were before.

Nur was the telepath's target. That much was obvious. Or, at least, Nur was the more powerful of them. The bigger threat, perhaps, or the more valuable? Nur was the one from his dreams, he remembered that at least. The one he was terrified of. The one he hated.

Nur was the evil. Or perhaps they were only the evil when together, but separately weren't all that bad.

The telepath, the one Nur had referred to as Stryfe . . . no, no he hadn't. He'd referred to him as strife. Not Stryfe. Who was Stryfe? Where had the name come from?

His feet were getting more sure, though the rest of him was getting nauseous; blood loss, he knew somehow, though there was no way to tie off the injury. He stopped midstride, surprised he hadn't thought of it before. . . could he get a first aid kit and actually have it work? This was all a telepath's playground, but did the rules work like that? What kind of injury was it really?

There was a first aid kit, on the wall, beside a fire extinguisher. He was halfway through unrolling what seemed like perfectly normal gauze when it hit him.

He was still afraid, but he wasn't letting it direct his actions.

He was being analytical. Logical. Setting aside his confusion and frustration to follow a plan. Is that how he had become . . . the leader, of that cult? Is that what he wanted to be?

Despite the answers he would get, he wasn't that person right now, so who said he had to go back to being them? Who said he couldn't change that and be what he wanted to be?

And who said his memories wouldn't make him want to be that person again?

It was certainly something to think on as he pressed a square of absorbent cotton to the gash in his back and wound himself around a few times, very tightly, with the gauze roll. It was almost ace-bandagelike in its elastic quality, though it would cut into his ability to breathe. He'd also had to de-shirt himself to do this, and the large bruises on his ribcage worried him, and ached with the pressure.

He was a little tired of being scared. Maybe it was time to get some answers, damn the consequences. A little ruthless, and a reaction to his previous behavior, he knew, so he'd have to temper it, somehow, but . . .

But he had to know, before whatever was so important passed without input from him.

The rest of the halls were lined with computers and technology he hadn't seen anywhere else on Earth. The metal was almost blue-ish, like lapis, and the readouts varied in language, some more hieroglyphs and some in straight old English. He could read it, which was faintly amusing, but none of it seemed to make a lot of sense. Diagnostics, really, and machine options . .
.

And a flashing red light indicating massive damage to systems in the Computation Locker. That seemed like his wall-destroying friend's handiwork, and a good way to track him down. He memorized the general outlay of the surprisingly sanely-designed base and headed on his way. A few of the halls were curved, but the rest were straight-aways, and he stayed close to the right wall. His opponents both seemed like the distance-type fighters, and while he had at least one distance weapon he actually knew how to use, better safe than sorry.

Besides, Stryfe had already demonstrated he could null the optic blasts, somehow. Better to stay out of line of sight of the man if he could possibly arrange it.

He was able to make good time even traveling with a little side-shuffle, and found his caution had been unnecessary. Judging by the noise, they were quite intent on each other. The Computation Locker was actually a large, cylindrical room, with a huge molding laser in the middle, and counsels and displays littering the walls, ceilings, and now floors. There were also sparks flying from a monitor that had been destroyed, and by the terminal that was currently taking up the space the display had, hot wires crossing and leaping around on one another.

It was nothing compared to the spectacular display before him.

Nur had, apparently, decided to stop running, and had grown to a size probably exceeding twenty feet in height and over a ton in weight. The tel – Stryfe, was fighting with that invisible power; telekinesis, he realized now, and fending off attacks as well as making some of his own, that seemed to buffet the giant Nur like the wind might, but not hurl him about as cavalierly as earlier.

It was also painfully obvious that this was going to be their last battle. Whoever won, won, and whoever lost would be unavailable for discussion on who he was and why he was where he was. If they both knew, that was fine, but Stryfe looked upon him with such undisguised hatred, and had referred to Scott in a non-affectionate sort of way, and Nur was . . .Nur was what he was becoming, at least in his dreams.

Nur would certainly know, then, whereas Stryfe might not. But he was fighting Nur, he was fighting to not become him . . . if that was because he was weakened by his forgetting, then what reason would he have to trust what Nur told him to be the truth? How did he know what he saw out on the surface of the moon had been true?

And Stryfe might tell him the truth only to enrage himself with the memories and kill him. Which would be as counterproductive as losing himself to Nur, only at least he'd be dead, instead of dead and walking around as a vessel for evil.

Or would it end that way, no matter what he did?

They had stopped the taunting comments, concentrating on the battle – probably on a telepathic level. Neither seemed to notice him at all, and he remained in the shelter of the wall between the room and the hall, hoping the metal would lend him some protection if he decided to enter the fray and they retaliated.

The room was almost glowing with the power there, the sheer psionic release distorting the air like great heat might, making their locked image shimmer, rippling like one was watching it through the surface of a liquid. It didn't distort the rage in Stryfe's face, and the determination in Nur's. Both opponents were completely focused on one another, breaths hissing from them through gritted teeth. Sweat and blood dripped from them both, and the armor that protected both fighters had seen better days, dented and even torn in places.

It seemed to be going in the . . . Stryfe's favor. Not that that was shocking, considering they were fighting on a mind-to-mind level. However, Nur had an advantage, his wounds were closing, slowly but surely, and while it didn't seem to make him less tired, in the long run the blood loss would weaken Stryfe considerably enough that the battle might turn.

Wait. The healing was part of Nur? Or could he heal too, separate of Nur? Were the optic blasts his, or Nur's?

And if they were Nur's, why did the image of him on the moon have a visor on, almost like goggles? Did it help to focus his powers, or maybe negate them?

Stryfe was in an almost bloodlust, pressing his advantages in the most cold-hearted, dishonorable ways he could. Nur wasn't holding back, but at the same time, at least at this point, he couldn't seem to get a physical blow in even considering his size, whereas the telepath had his powers to keep him from having to be close enough to get hit. Several times he struck Nur when he was down, and he was particularly fond of going after the same knee, over and over again.

"I . . . will NEVER kneel to you!" Nur finally grated, apparently onto the plan, and Stryfe crowed.

"Oh, but you have no choice, Father. You should be . . . proud! You . . . trained me to be strong!"

They were straining against each other, one with huge fists of grey, the other with fists of air, and both faces told of the toll of the battle. Veins bunched beneath tight, well-formed muscles, and dented but intact armor shone brightly with the light erupting from Stryfe's face, playing around the room like the sparkle of a fine stone. The battle was going on at an even psionic level, and soon actual physical contact eventually wasn't even attempted.

It wasn't until Scott leaned on the wall that he felt the sympathy vibrations in the structure itself. A little surprised, he knelt, putting the flat of his hand on the floor.

It was vibrating, as well.

The energy they were pouring into that . . . dangerous. A dangerous amount of energy in a mind . . . he didn't mind the room had been destroyed by their fight, but what if the base was destroyed? What mirror affect did that have in the mind?

It was curling his gut, threatening to send him into a panic, like he was asking a question he knew the answer to, and he was being an idiot for not acting. He dragged his gaze back to the fighters, to the onslaught the telepath was channeling, shaking not only with distorted air and the shiverings of the base but with something more, something that was deeply rooted in rage and emotion. Nur's misshapen jaw was clenched with determination, and a constant roar was in his throat, though it had nowhere to go but hiss between his teeth. His entire body was trembling with tension, and he was being lowered centimeter by centimeter towards the ground. Towards kneeling to Stryfe.

Stryfe began to glow ever so faintly, sweating profusely, his jaw locked and tense. This was all mental, for him, and he wondered at the power the mutant must have. Forcing a giant who had leverage on his side to his kneels in a painfully, sarcastically slow manner . . . and it was sarcastic. It was slow on purpose, he somehow knew Stryfe was holding back.

If he were a telepath, he could have had Nur at his mercy long ago, gotten into his mind . . . couldn't he?

The walls were shaking more alarmingly, now, and the floor was answering with a terrible, low scream that indicated the metal was beginning to shear somewhere. That was definitely not a good sign, and the accompanying headache warned him that this meant actual damage. Neither combatants noticed, and he had the feeling that unless someone drew it to their attention, they weren't going to.

He finally stepped into the doorway. "Stop it! Both of you! You're destroying the place!"

Neither so much as flinched in his direction, not even an eye-twitch, and a large panel of the ceiling collapsed inward, falling only a few yards from Nur. The smooth paneled floors were beginning to buckle, like a still pond disturbed by a rock, rippling in slow motion from the center of Nur and Stryfe, and the shearing sound increased, a great shudder moving through the base as a support, somewhere, collapsed under the strain of the energy coursing through the metal.

"Stop! Now!

He didn't want to fire. That would be combative, might distract the spending of power in a more destructive fashion than it was already being released. At the same time, he knew with a certainty that beneath the floor was that cold, frigid void, and they'd all fall forever. Monitors flickered and flared wildly in the room, flashing emergencies and red lights, and there was an acrid smell starting to pervade the place.

Somewhere, an audio alarm began to scream about structural integrity, and he gritted his teeth and fired.

It was a very carefully aimed blast, right between the two, sending them both flying away with the force of each other's energy. Stryfe slammed unceremoniously into a terminal, and Nur into the laser mounting, crushing it and ending up under a large piece of it. Even as he struggled to free himself, Stryfe was on his feet and stalking towards him, with a glare in the direction of the intruder.

"I thought I told you not to interfere!"

"You're going to destroy the place! Don't you –"

He found himself glad of the wall he was beside, as it probably buffered the not-quite coordinated attack Stryfe threw at him. "SILENCE!"

"Shut up and THINK, you madman -!"

With a roar of triumph, Nur hurled the laser assembly column at Stryfe, and struck.

The telekinetic, distracted and still stunned, went down hard beneath the hundreds of pounds of solid metal molding and equipment. He lost sight of the telepath completely, and dropped to a crouch when the other opponent was not easily spotted. Nur was suddenly smaller, almost human-sized, and only ten yards away. His look was calm.

"We can defeat him together, Cyclops. Come with me. I have the answers you seek."

For once, his gaze didn't waver. This was also his more threatening enemy at the moment, and he was having to curb rage he didn't understand to keep from sending Nur into deep space.

"I don't seek death, Nur. I want to know who I am."

"I know who you are," Nur replied flatly. "Those answers I can supply to you. But you must take my hand."

The bloodied and torn grey palm was offered, healing even as he watched it, a bead of blood that had been about to ooze out retreating back into the skin of his knuckle.

Nur was the evil. If he took that hand, that was it. He might have his answers, but the face in the mirror would not be his shifting, but Nur's alone. Somehow, he was completely sure of it. His eyes met Nur's squarely.

"No."

Nur's entire demeanor changed, becoming colder, more . . . judging. "I will not offer this hand again. Choose carefully."

He watched Nur closely, and did not answer, and after a lip-curling Nur withdrew the hand with a sharp motion. "So be it, vessel. I shall not spare you again."

He fired.

Nur was hurled across the now-clear room, smashing into monitors and sending more glass flying. He didn't let up, either, bouncing a blast off a highly reflective metal array to send Nur skidding across the counsel into a support of the wall. It shuddered with the impact, and Nur held onto it, gripping hard enough with his bare fingers to leave indentions.

"Give me the answers, Nur. _I'm _ not going to ask again."

A hoarse laugh escaped the blue-armored mutant, laboring even for breath. "Your answers die with me, fool. You die with me."

"Wrong." He was advancing, carefully, still expecting an attack though he wasn't sure how the obviously beaten mutant was going to launch one . . . unless, of course, he wasn't so obviously beaten . . .

A roar escaped Nur, as the fingers that had been burrowing into the support beam now struggled to hold onto it as powerfully muscled arms ripped the steel beam out of the floor and hurled it right at him.

He merely dropped to a crouch and fired, using his power to send the beam off-course, passing harmlessly by a few feet to his right, but still had to dodge and roll out of the way of the peripheral objects that had been flung with it.

When he ended again with his feet to the floor, he found his opponent in a crouch also, digging his fingers into the actual metal of the floor. He watched in shock as with a screaming, tearing metal on metal sound, Nur managed to pull open the panel to reveal the cold, bottomless void. He blasted Nur away from it, but there was no place to push the mutant, he was firmly wedged beneath a counsel that was too big for him to move without a direct blast, and as Nur was losing size, so he seemed to be gaining density.

The void. If he went into that void, not only would he fall forever, but he wouldn't give any answers - Another blast, little effect. Those terrible, strong fingers were settled on the lip of the floor, and with a laugh and a heave against the optic blast straining to push him back, he leapt into the black coldness, even as a frantic "No!" echoed in the chamber.

It had come from Stryfe, still laboring with the assembly. It had moved mostly off him, but not quickly enough for him to stop Nur. He watched almost numbly as the telekinetipath finally freed himself and stalked towards the open floor, before spitting into it and cursing in a language he'd never heard before.

And then he turned, just like that. Like a sleeping kitten would suddenly attack the person on the couch beside it. He had done nothing. Not uttered a word, not moved an inch, not even looked directly at Stryfe. Now he was in a pile of smoking ex-technology, and his back was screaming at him that it was not happy.

More burns, then. He felt himself rolling over a keyboard back towards the floor, but even then he wasn't allowed his feet, flying across the room to land back-first against the fallen column assembly. He heard himself cry out, heard something in his back give, even as his head snapped back with enough force to almost knock him out. Breathing was suddenly very difficult, and his sight was swimming as Stryfe bore down on him.

"You flonqing IDIOT!" he raged, delivering a physical backhand that knocked a few teeth loose. "That was the end, you bumbling child! It would have been over! Stab your eyes!"

He coughed a tooth out, almost choking on the blood in his mouth, trying to work around it in the wheezing breaths of air. Got the wind knocked out of him in a bad way, and it hurt to move his head, something was the matter with his neck –

The fist closing around it, that wasn't helpful. A golden sun blazed into his eye, more brightly than the sun after those sewer tunnels, but it was cold, without compassion, without sanity.

"You want answers, Summers? You want answers?! I'll give you your piping answers!"

Searing pain in his skull. He screamed, he knew he did, screamed until he had no air left and then more, fighting, staring sightlessly at the torrent of golden yellow light pouring towards him, with the malevolent glow of lava. Very briefly, there seemed to be a rosy little finger in the way, but it was battered aside like so much chaff, and then the lava was there, searing him, falling into every crevice –

Overwhelming.

He was Scott Summers. He had stepped in the way, saved his son. Taken Apocalypse into his own body; or rather, been absorbed into Nur's. He'd felt himself growing smaller, less important, terrifyingly shoved into a corner, and no matter how it hurt, or how he couldn't bear the thought of being crushed any more, he was, bit by bit –

Defeated by his fear. Overwhelmed because he knew what he was fighting. In that brief second he'd had left, he'd instinctively chosen to know nothing, and fight blind, rather than defeat himself.

Rather than be overwhelmed with the knowledge that he'd be beaten.

But he hadn't been beaten. He'd been in control of the body for a week. He'd succumbed a bit to En Sabah Nur in his dreams, but his dreams alone. The powers, the healing, the strength . . . it was all because of Apocalypse's body. But he had been using it, he had been controlling it, to a great extent.

He'd fought, and he'd been winning.

He'd also been drawn to Akkaba, and undoubtedly the tide would have turned there. But he wasn't there yet, and he was in control . . .

Stryfe.

Dimly he knew he'd been thrown down, on the floor, and he was breathing again, instead of wasting his breath screaming. Jean, he'd turned her away, but Stryfe had used his link with Jean to penetrate Nur's mind. He'd gotten inside, he'd found them, chased them down, and he'd had Nur at his mercy . .
.

"Stryfe . . ."

"It's a little late for begging, don't you think?" Acidically spat, and curiously tired-sounding. A cracked eye found that Stryfe had dropped him not to make a point, but because he looked like he was about to fall over. Scott wondered for an instant what restoring the amnesia trauma had given him had done to the telepath. He was no stronger than Cable in that department, and Cable wasn't at Jean's power-level as far as that went . . .

"I'm sorry." He couldn't seem to get a breath, and he wondered why he felt a pain and pressure on his right side, though he was laying on his left.

Stryfe looked down at him so disdainfully, so disgustedly, and Scott felt a deep sense of shame. "But it's over. He's dead, his mind is -"

"It's _his _ mind! He didn't die, he escaped to a place I can't reach him! I'll have start flonqing looking for him all over again, and _this _ time he's rid himself of the beacon of you!" There was a lot of frustration in that voice, and a lot of worry. Like someone who's plan had just fallen to pieces at his feet.

Scott tried to sit up, failed. He didn't feel quite . . . connected to it, for some reason, and wondered what paralysis in your mind meant. "I'm sorry, Stryfe. I'll help you look, I'll –"

"I don't need your help." Scornful, angry, with venom but little energy.

"Stryfe, you're bleeding. Don't turn it down because –"

"I said I don't need your help!" A more animated snarl, and Stryfe straightened, even angrier, as though he felt betrayed that Scott had verbally noted his display of weakness. "I need you to stay out of MY FLONQING WAY!"

Scott was tickled with the aftereffects of tingling in his eyes, like when he used his powers, but it was only an echo, only an impression –

The base shattered with a sharp, short cry, like that of a large cat or deer when shot, and Scott felt it more sharply as he was thrown back into reality. He distinctly felt cobbles beneath his right side, the pain of a healing rib, and Nur's presence in his mind, almost more powerful, and instead of trying to wrestle full control back, he merely fought to close his eyes.

That didn't pull the beam of sharply controlled, burning light off Stryfe, and Scott's mind raced as he found himself also unable to access his powers. While he'd been distracted, Nur had wrestled away the two controls that were most important, and his bark of triumph was loud in their throat as Scott realized the beam, as vicious as any he could fathom, finished cutting through panicked telekinetic shields and struck Stryfe, full in the chest, where it both superheated the armor he wore and cut through it.

This caused two things. The link they both had to Stryfe shattered as the optic blast connected, sending both their minds reeling, and the reflective quality of his armor shot part of the blast right back at the building they lay near, the buildings around them, and at their body itself.

Scott knew it couldn't hurt him, and at the same time Nur must have known, but Nur had never felt optic feedback before, and the way it made his spine want to shiver. Scott used that relative surprise to do something even more off-putting, encouraging that shiver into a full-grown twitch. Spasming muscles in his neck yanked his eyes away from Stryfe, and Nur stopped the flow of energy from their eyes, probably with the intent to not waste the power. Once off, Scott managed to get some rudimentary control of how the blasts would be formed, and though Nur forced their eyes back onto a fallen, unconscious Stryfe, the blast was too unfocused and spread to cause any damage at all, other than some negligible heat.

Nur snarled in their throat, and Scott snarled back in his mind. He might have been initially overwhelmed to know what had happened, but memories of his victories of the past week erased any thought of panic or certainty of failure from his mind.

He had fought Apocalypse handicapped, and he had won. Now he was once more aware, and had no other choice.

He also knew that he couldn't do that, not without help.

"The fight is over," he heard his mouth say, though he was still in control of the body and forced it to stay put, on the cobbles, too near the still-smoldering Anais, the smoke causing his eyes to water. "You are strong, Summers, but you are not strong enough."

He couldn't exactly wrestle control to answer, and he somehow knew that if he thought it, Nur wouldn't hear it. Instead of wasting breath and energy trying, he reached out along the link. If one telepath could do it, letting in both Cable and Jean should be doubly effective.

#Jean . . .# He reached out, as she had taught him, feeling the coldness of the structure of the link as he sought the warmth of her mind, and found . .. found . . .

Found cold. Found pain, a great deal of pain, and a searing cold.

There was no doubt in his mind, as Nur watched Stryfe weakly move his head, and Scott felt the coldness become frighteningly numb, that there was still another telepath between him and Jean. Still another telepath in that link, perhaps in between, perhaps only.

But somehow, Nur was unaware. "And you. You who would slay me, how you faltered. Like your brother. The clone of weakness, the shadow even of his paltry strength. You are pathetic. You do not deserve the name you bear."

Somewhere in the searing cold, a fire began to burn, and Scott leaned towards it, feeding it as best he could. It was the same fire that had thawed him on the moon, and maybe it would be enough.

#Stryfe . . . help me. Tell me what you need me to do.#

That was not a thought he'd anticipated thinking, ever, in his entire life. And the reply was the very, very last thing on earth he ever expected to hear.

#Give up. Let . . . let him win.#

It took more effort for just that thought than it should have, and Nur's gaze, not inhibited by the visor that had crippled Scott's vision for decades, was able to see that Stryfe had cracked his head open, blood was spilling into the valleys between the cobbles even as he took his third shallow, rattling breath. To Stryfe's credit, he was not even attempting to answer, and with a snort of disgust Nur went back to fighting Scott for control of their body.

Scott didn't really have time for a pleasant conversation at that point, and had to make a choice. Another very difficult choice, and one that he was sure would be as or more important than his decision to forget everything. He could go ahead and find out what Stryfe's plan was, and in doing so lose concentration and leverage over the body, or he could fight and hope that Jean and Cable arrived in time to continue what Stryfe had begun.

Stryfe wouldn't want him to lose. Stryfe was a vindictive lunatic, but he wouldn't go to all the trouble to facilitate Apocalypse winning. He was certain of that. And with Stryfe effectively blocking the link to Jean, though he knew she knew about it and would likely be hurrying even more, there was no way to know where she was, and how long it would take her to get there. And if Stryfe died, he might take the link with him, and not give Jean a pathway into their mind at all. At the same time, Stryfe had taken massive injuries, and was bleeding badly from the head. Was he capable of doing what he thought he could do?

Scott reached across the link to find out.

All in the space of a few seconds. Nur had time to wrestle control of the body from a distracted but still-struggling Cyclops, weakened by the knowledge that he was the stronger of them, that he was Apocalypse and there was no defeating him. He had time to stand, to crow triumphantly to the heavens. Nur had time to notice, finally, the human, the unconscious, wrinkled, aged human laying bound and gagged in an alley that a destroyed building had revealed to him.

And then it was over.

Scott had far more time. He had time enough to reach across to a mind that shunned his intrusion with both rage and terror. Stryfe could not control what he shared across the tenuous link he was holding together, and could spare neither the concentration nor the effort to hide anything. His mind was laid as bare to Scott as it might have been to any telepath that could breach his shields.

Scott read the letter, or at least every emotion and memory behind it. He followed the plan, so simple, yet so exceedingly difficult. Stryfe had separated Scott from Nur, and now that they were two different minds, completely aware, sharing the same brain, and all he had to do was use the link to channel Nur elsewhere.

The link was actually something that was attached not to his mind, per se, but the distinct brainwaves of the physical organ in his head. So even though Nur had changed those brainwaves, Jean had unconsciously or with effort made sure the link changed with it, and it was up in there air if Scott's death would have changed it enough to completely destroy the link, now that it was keyed to also seek out Nur's patterns as well.

Having at this point separated the minds, all Stryfe really had to do was use the psilink that was attached to Nur's mind whether he wanted it to be or not, and siphon the distinct Nur pattern elsewhere. He wasn't entirely sure what that would do to Jean, who was on the other end of a link keyed to both of them, and Scott felt a surge of anger that Stryfe didn't care in the slightest.

Stryfe really could only predict what would happen to Scott and Nur when he separated them, and he didn't care for either's life. There was a chance Nur's body would reject Scott. Or Scott would fragment when they were separated. Or Nur could not be removed. Or Nur would fragment when torn away from his brain. Stryfe only cared that Scott knew who had saved him, and that Cable knew who had saved him. And that only mattered because . . . because . . . Scott dug deeper, and was angrily shoved into another cluster of thoughts by the struggling telepath.

He watched Stryfe's memories of his . . . fight with Anais, if it could be called that, and that she had been the one to scratch the door of the home they'd recently demolished, that she'd been about to . . . to feed on an old man that lived within. The same old man that Nur had just spotted.

Scott made the connection too late.

#NO! Stryfe, enough have died -!#

#He was slated to die anyway.# It was a very distant thought, almost second nature, like a distracted general might answer the outraged question of a first lieutenant. He could feel the hurt in Stryfe's head, pain that terrified him, because he knew what it meant. Pain that made his mind sluggish to obey him, like muscles attached to a broken bone.

Scott felt something tear, deep within him, and was yanked – no, shoved – out of Stryfe's mind as his pain became enough of a distraction to the telepath that it was worth the effort to push him away. It was unbelievable, it reminded him too much of the pain of saving Nate Grey. He felt like his body was being torn in two, that his brain was between two young brothers, yanking and ripping and not caring so long as they each ended up with the bigger half.

He and Nur began to blend together. Memories he had had access to only in his dreams now leapt at him like attacking panthers. Falling from a great height, hitting the stones and dying before Isis had come to him. The pain of the armor he now cherished. A beautiful woman in a painting that was being crushed by a strong grey hand. Warren Worthington stretching his new wings for the first time. Fear that a warrior had killed him in the future, that the Celestials had not yet come, that he might have failed.

Memories that weren't his flooded him, and began the process of crushing him back once more, into a smaller, and smaller, and smaller part of a whole, and he cried out aloud, writhing on the cobbles in a mirror to the old man, tied and gagged in a ruined alley, to the tune a comatose telepath conducted.

<hr>

Ice cubes tinkled softly in the golden liquid as she carried the tray down the two stairs that led from the door to the floor of the porch. The day was beautiful, the first great summer day they'd had in Massachusetts since the spring rains had come, and it had seemed the perfect day to spend outside.

He was sitting where she'd left him, staring at nothing, at the grass across the lawn and the birds hopping around the birdbath they'd put in the landscaping around the driveway. Sightless eyes, turned inward, not blinking, not at all aware of the staring telepath to his immediate right. Cable at least looked away from him to acknowledge Jean, and went back to staring.

She flashed him a little smile and set the tray on the table in the center of the three chairs, and reached for a glass herself, hoping it would attract his notice. It didn't, and when she looked towards Nathan he just shook his head. Jean dropped her eyes to the glass of lemonade.

"Scott?"

The eyes focused, bringing him back to the present, and he shook it slightly, like a sleepy basset hound waking because someone blew in its ear. "Sorry. A little caught up." A perfectly flesh-colored hand reached for the glass of lemonade, picked it up with no problems at all, and raised it to his lips. She watched him drink for a few moments, and when he put the glass down, he frowned at her.

"Would you two stop staring at me? It's getting unnerving. I'm not going to break the glass."

"Good. You're running out," Nathan spoke, finally, leaning back in his own chair to stare contemplatively at the ceiling. "I really do know how that feels, getting used to the T-O arm being stronger took some work."

"I know. We were there."

Cable mock glared. "I don't understand, if you have his memories of his powers, why you're having such a hard time adjusting."

Scott shrugged, carefully. "I want to learn myself how to use them, I guess." It was playing havoc on the house, his marriage, and his leadership abilities, but he was not going to remember how Nur had used them to harm if he could possibly help it.

He growled to himself in frustration as that thought made hundreds of memories tug to the surface. It was unbelievable how much sheer _stuff _ was packed in the brain cells in his brain, now, that he couldn't get rid of. He had sworn at the pan this morning in ancient Egyptian. He'd also known exactly how to heal the cut he'd gotten when he'd accidentally crushed the stack of eight plates in his hand, and it had reminded him of Nur getting used to his own strength.

And he didn't want that. It was getting to the point he was going to ask one of them to get rid of about half those memories, he could barely remember his _own _ over centuries worth of someone else's.

Jean patted his hand. That was the first thing he'd mastered, always looking like himself. No grey skin, no one big eye. Just Scott. And not as young, either, though they both knew it was just to make him feel better. With this body had come DNA that wasn't his, mutant abilities that weren't his, changes that weren't meant to happen to him.

He would live a very, very long time in this body without the aid of Apocalypse's technology, and Hank had confirmed that he more than likely had also inherited the ability to . . . move. Take hosts. And that reminded him of the raving old man they now had locked in the mansion, and the entire affair was making this summer day a lot less enjoyable.

"Hank has further word on Stryfe." It was very carefully spoken, and Scott couldn't help but notice Nathan tense. He had been dishearteningly quiet for the past week, and Jean had spent equal time with the both of them. Nate Grey had stopped by a few days ago, and the three had scanned Scott up and down to make sure he was really him before anyone had been satisfied, and the kid had even muttered a quick "Thanks," before he'd flown off to wherever it was he'd so suddenly dropped in from, and since that day Scott could count on one hand what Cable had said.

"Let's hear it."

She nodded, and played with her glass before setting it down. "The swelling is down, and it's expected that he'll come out of the coma eventually, if not soon. There doesn't appear to be too much damage to his brain itself despite the skull fracture, but there's no trace of telepathic activity in his mind. No attempt to shield, not a trace in his waves. He's probably burnt out, and if not, we might be looking at a trauma-induced block."

Scott expected something bitter to come out of Nathan, but he didn't say a word, and Jean paused before continuing.

"His lungs will work, but a transplant in a few years will probably be necessary, and until then, he'll need to be on oxygen at all times. The burns are doing well, and unless he develops pneumonia, he should be up and about as soon as he decides to wake up." She paused, and made sure to include Cable in the look she sent both of them.

"So what do you want to do?"

Scott thought back to waking up, on those cobbled streets, the scent of the dead Anais still in his nostrils, the sound of rattling breathing and quiet screams in his ears. Even the rib had been healed by then, and he'd risen, gone over to the dying telepath. Stryfe had been in a coma, and the link with him told of terror, pain, and exhaustion. A glance at Nur had told him the same thing, and it was between those two he had sat, and waited, waited until night fell, waited and watched the stars swirling overhead until they got there.

"I propose we wait for him to wake up, and ask him."

"And what if he doesn't?" It was remarkably mild, though Nathan's eyes were anything but.

"He will." Scott wasn't quite sure how he knew, but he knew. "He will."

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