The Game of Empires - REVIEW THIS STORY

Written by Valerie Jones
Last updated: 02/13/2010 03:54:13 PM

Chapter 15

"Jean? You’ve got that look on your face again." Scott was seated in one of the hotel chairs, his feet propped up on the bed beside her. Although his expression was mildly concerned, there was also a hint of teasing in his voice.

She glanced up at him with as much innocence as she could muster. "What look is that?"

Scott gave her a lopsided smile. "The ‘There’s something very wrong in the world and I’m about to suggest we go do something about it’ look."

Jean was startled into a laugh. That was almost exactly what she had been thinking. "I think you know me too well."

"That’s my job." Scott glanced down at the sprawl of brochures. "So, do you see anything in these?"

Jean sobered as her thoughts returned to their earlier line. She reached out to finger one of the slick, brightly colored pages. "Maybe," she admitted. "It’s mostly intuition... a bunch of little things that might be unconnected, and yet they all seem to point in the same direction."

"And that direction is...?"

Jean picked up the brochure and handed it to her husband. "New Mexico."

He glanced at the brochure, and then returned his attention to Jean. "Why there?"

Jean sighed and began ticking things off on the fingers of one hand. "Well, number one, this is the center the receptionist recommended to me. I don’t know if Dr. Levy told her to do so, but she said it was the largest of their facilities and the place where they tried to direct the more powerful telepaths. Two, it’s an uninhabited desert for the most part. We already know there’s a lot of government activity out in that area because the population is so sparse." She indicated the brochures spread around her. "Most of these others are in fairly dense population areas. They wouldn’t be doing anything too big around that many potential witnesses." She paused. "And three, I sensed something in that region while we were flying to Alaska. Something on the astral plane that I can’t identify or even describe."

Scott frowned, considering. "I’m beginning to wonder if we shouldn’t call the X-Men in on this," he said after a moment. "We originally left to get some time to recuperate, but what we’re doing here is really the kind of thing the X-Men were created for."

"It could still be a wild goose chase," she reminded him.

He nodded. "True. But if we find something out there, I think we should give the mansion a call."

Jean nodded in cautious agreement. She wasn’t sure how they would tell the X-Men what they now believed to be true about Charles-- that he had lied to them, though she had no way of knowing if his deception had anything to do with them personally-- and that he had willingly given Onslaught at least one weapon to use against them in order to distract him from discovering whatever it was Charles was hiding. In her heart, she desperately wanted to trust that Charles had a good reason for what he had done, but she was frightened of what might happen if that wasn’t true. On the heels of what they’d learned about Gambit, she was terribly afraid of what another betrayal might do to the X-Men.

Remy leaned back in his chair with a sigh and rubbed the back of his neck. He was stiff from sitting so long, his vision blurry from staring at the continuously scrolling display on the console in front of him. Scanning for the Professor had turned into a much more difficult process than they’d expected. Lilandra’s crew had run every kind of advanced scanning algorithm the ship’s equipment was programmed for and turned up nothing. So now they were trying the brute force method. Remy had offered to take a shift monitoring the results along with the other members of Lilandra’s crew, and they had happily obliged him by configuring one of the bridge consoles with an English interface.

The process of scanning the population by individual was an incredibly tedious one, but since it was a direct comparison of bio-energy signatures it was close to infallible, unless the person happened to be shielded. Remy had argued the point that the Professor was likely to be in a shielded facility, but Lilandra wanted to run the scan anyway. He had the feeling she wouldn’t give up until she’d exhausted even the most remote possibilities. He’d also pondered the idea of offering to use some of his own resources to put out feelers for the Professor’s location, but was waiting to see if this last scan turned up anything before mentioning it.

Lilandra stepped down from the central dais on which her command chair rested and walked over to where Remy sat. She had come over to check on the scan several times in the past hours, so Remy ignored her as she leaned over his shoulder to examine the display.

"It would seem there must be an easier way to do this than to scan every human on the planet," she said quietly, and Remy could sense her carefully controlled frustration.

"Dere is," he answered dryly. Lilandra moved around to look at him, her expression both surprised and expectant as he added "It’s called Cerebro."

Lilandra narrowed her eyes slightly. "Cerebro is gone."

Remy grinned, uncertain why he was teasing the Shi’ar Empress. "Dat would be a problem den."

She gave him an annoyed look, but Remy caught a slight flicker at the corner of her mouth that might have meant she was hiding a smile. After a moment, she turned so that she could lean against the edge of the console and crossed her arms, her expression growing thoughtful.

"Now that you mention it, Gambit, perhaps it would be prudent of me to discover what has become of Cerebro. The Shi’ar technology incorporated into that device was intended as a gift to the X-Men. I did not mean to share it with the rest of your race."

Remy was momentarily taken aback by her statement, but then decided that she wasn’t being intentionally derogatory. By Shi’ar standards, Earth was pretty backwards, and there were a number of people he could think of that he wouldn’t want to get hold of Shi’ar technology.

"Dat’s probably a good t’ing," he agreed.

Lilandra frowned slightly as she regarded him, and Remy found himself oddly uncomfortable under her scrutiny. The silence stretched until he began to feel like the aborted conversation was turning into a staring contest, except that Lilandra’s gaze was evaluating rather than challenging. But it made him wonder what she thought she saw in him.

"I never had a chance to thank you," she said suddenly, her gaze unwavering.

Remy blinked at her, mystified. "T’ank me f’ what?"

She glanced down at her booted feet, clad in quicksilver armor like the rest of her, and then returned her gaze to his face. "I have heard reports of what you did for my people."

Remy remained puzzled. Hank had been primarily responsible for their recent victory over the Phalanx on Chandilar.

Lilandra was not paying much attention to his reaction, however. She seemed intent on her own train of thought, though her eyes on him were both keen and calculating.

"I am curious, " she finally said. "What motivates a human to exert such effort to bury the dead of an alien race who died in a battle that took place before he even arrived?"

Remy felt a cold hand clench his stomach as he remembered the dead, scattered as far as he could see in any direction. The image of Chandilar was overlaid almost immediately by another image -- that of a huge cavern where the dead bodies of innocent mutants had covered the floor, and their blood had seeped into the stone until the entire floor of the cavern was black with death.

For one instant, he was tempted to tell her the truth. He was so tired of lying, of never being whom or what he pretended to be. But the pure loathing in Rogue’s eyes, just before she’d turned away from him, was a raw wound in his heart. And the fact that not a single X-Man ever came looking for him confirmed that they must all share the same feelings.

And so he throttled the desire to tell Lilandra the real reason and simply shrugged. "It ain’ important."

Lilandra cocked her head, as if debating whether to contradict him. But after a moment, she shrugged. "I suppose not. But I am grateful nonetheless for the honoring of my people."

Remy stared at her as a flush of shame crept up his cheeks. It seemed incomprehensible to him that she would be grateful for what he had done that night, but he didn’t know how to explain that to her. He didn’t know how to tell her that he couldn’t have left that place if he wanted to until he’d done everything he could to see that the dead there were properly laid to rest. Something about the broken and still bodies of the Shi’ar citizens had struck him so deeply that even now the memory filled him with a sense of horror and loss... and of responsibility. Throughout that entire night he’d kept telling himself that burying the Shi’ar would do nothing to atone for the deaths of the Morlocks, and yet he was still compelled to do it.

Remy shook his head slowly. "Don’ t’ank me, Empress. I don’ deserve it. It was jus’ somet’ing I had t’ do."

Lilandra considered him gravely. "Perhaps. But I will not forget."

Remy couldn’t think of a response, and after a moment of silence, Lilandra pushed herself away from the console. "Tell me if you find anything." She nodded toward the still-scrolling display, then turned and walked back to her command chair.

Remy watched her retreating form reflected in the dark glass of his displays, his thoughts churning. Part of him wanted to bolt-- to get off that ship and away from Lilandra as quickly as he possibly could. The note of warmth in her voice-- the mix of gratitude and respect-- was almost like a drug to him. It felt so good to have done something meaningful for her, and yet, it terrified him as well. The more he tried to do what was right, the more it mattered to him, and the more the people he did those things for mattered to him. But in the end, he knew he would lose everything and the warmth he felt from her would freeze, just as it had with the X-Men, leaving nothing but an empty hole behind it. Remy wasn’t certain how much more of that he could stand before there was nothing left of him but a collection of emptiness.

The interior of the Blackbird’s cabin was eerily silent as Rogue finished her description of the events that had occurred in Antarctica. Logan was dismayed by what he heard, but not particularly surprised. Gambit’s powers had always been something of an unknown, especially on the question of whether they ranged into the psi arena or not, and Logan found it easily believable that there might have been some kind of unexpected interaction when mixed with Rogue’s. That didn’t absolve her of responsibility for his death, in his opinion, but did make the events of that day all the more tragic.

Logan swept his gaze around the gathered X-Men. Rogue was seated mid-cabin, her head bowed and her hair falling forward to obscure her face. He could smell the salt of her tears, but she was utterly silent. Ororo stood with her head turned away and her eyes closed. Her posture reflected her feelings with perfect clarity, and Logan felt a stab of sympathy for her pain. Hank returned his gaze with uncommon solemnity, and Logan noted echoes of both anger and frustration in his scent. Bobby’s expression reflected anger as well, but Logan thought it was most likely for Gambit rather than Rogue. Psylocke stared at the floor, for which Logan couldn’t blame her. The wild mix of her emotions was strong enough to be overpowering in the tight confines of the aircraft. She might, conceivably, have reason to hate Gambit for the sake of her lover, but Elizabeth Braddock was not the kind of woman to easily condone murder, even if she thought it justified.

The others on the Blackbird were all too new to have much of a reaction. Joseph was staring at Rogue as if she’d suddenly become a monster, and Logan counseled himself to pay close attention to him in the future. Magneto had had a strong self-righteous streak which Joseph so far seemed to lack. But if it were going to emerge, this would be a likely time and he could do Rogue a great deal of damage emotionally. Cecilia Reyes was understandably appalled given her background as a doctor, and Maggot simply shrugged when Logan’s gaze touched on his. Sam was in the pilot’s seat, well out of earshot of Rogue’s strained whisper, and Logan had banished Marrow to the cockpit as well. Sam was the only one of the newer X-Men that Logan would trust to fly the Blackbird and he figured that he should be able to keep Marrow in line for a while at least.

Ororo opened her eyes and turned to look at the gathered X-Men. There was a kind of determination in her face that Logan had seen before.

"Remy is a... resourceful man. Despite the odds against him, it is possible that he survived." Her gaze dared them to contradict her.

To Logan’s surprise, Rogue looked up and slowly shook her head. Her face was blotchy and stained from her tears, but her expression was clear. "Ah don’t think so, Ororo." Her gaze fastened on something distant and her voice grew faint. "Ah did go back after him."

Expectant silence followed her words until Logan felt obliged to prompt her out of whatever memory she was watching. "What d’ ya mean, darlin’?"

Rogue blinked and shook herself out of the past. "Ah don’t know why--" She glanced at Logan briefly. "--but somethin’ about bootin’ Juggernaut out a the mansion brought me back ta mahself. An’ ah stood there, realizin’ what ah’d done and how long it’d been since ah’d left Antarctica..."

She bit her lip and shook her head impatiently, fighting off a new round of tears. "Ah went back. Ah didn’t pay much attention when ah was leavin’, so ah had ta search fo’ a bit ta find the Citadel... " Logan could hear the echoes of panic in her voice, and he could easily imagine her flying back and forth across the ice in frenzied terror. Her gaze grew distant as she spoke.

"Everythin’ was white. Ah kept tellin’ mahself ta look for color-- for red, because Remy’s hair--" She took a shaky breath and continued, "Ah found the Citadel, what was left of it, anyway, but there was a storm comin’. Ah didn’ even get a chance ta figure out where ah’d... left him... before it hit me." She looked up then, her green eyes filled with horror. "It like ta tear me apart. Ah couldn’ see mah hands in front of me, ah couldn’t hear anything over the howlin’ of the wind, and the air was full of ice crystals that felt like they were gonna scour mah skin off. If it weren’t for mah powers..."

Logan felt a twinge of her horror. He’d been trapped in an ice storm before and only his healing factor had saved him. Gambit wouldn’t have stood a chance.

Across from him, Ororo’s brows were drawn together in an expression of deep distress, as if she could hardly force herself to continue to stand there and listen.

Rogue looked down at her hands again. "Ah kept searchin’ anyways-- ah don’t know how long."

"But you didn’t find him?" Hank hazarded a guess. His expression remained taut with restrained anger.

Rogue shook her head. "No. The only thing ah found was... one of his cards. The queen of hearts that ah gave him... before." She looked up again, meeting Hank’s gaze with a openness that surprised Logan greatly. "It was just tumblin’ through the air -- smacked me right in the forehead." She pressed her lips together briefly. "Ah think God wanted ta make sure ah never forgot." Her voice broke on the last word and she fell silent.

There was no greater punishment than that, Logan mused silently. His heart ached for Rogue, for the pain that he knew from experience would never go away. A part of him also wanted to rail at her for allowing something like this to happen. He remembered so clearly standing on the mansion’s front porch with her, listening to her admit for the first time that she loved Remy. That evening, Logan had felt the first stirrings of hope that she had found someone who had what it took to love her in return, and he’d told her as plainly as he could to do whatever it took to stay with him and make it work. Now, he felt like demanding an explanation for why she hadn’t done it, though he was pretty sure he knew the reasons.

He was distracted as Ororo slowly turned away and walked to the back of the aircraft. She sat down in the last chair, her eyes fixed straight ahead, and then did not move again. Logan watched her in concern, his senses focused on the feel of the airplane around him. It Ororo were to lose control here and now, his first indication might very well be from the airplane as it responded to the changing atmosphere. After a moment, though, he turned toward the cockpit. As much as he wanted to go to Ororo, it made more sense for him to be in the cockpit if things got crazy. He didn’t think there was anything he could do to soften the emotional blow for Ororo, or to help her maintain control. She would have to work that out on her own, and all he could do was be ready for the worst.

Rogue looked up at him as he turned. "Wolverine?" There was a timid hope in her eyes.

He found himself shaking his head. "I don’t know what ta tell ya, Rogue." He felt cold inside. How was it that all of this had happened and they were only just learning of it some three months later? What did that say about the X-Men? As long as he’d been with the team, they had claimed to be family for everyone who wore the blue and gold. He’d said the same thing himself on countless occasions, but now he was forced to re-evaluate that statement.

He reached over and put a hand on Rogue’s shoulder, but couldn’t find any words to offer her.