Untravell'd Worlds

Note from Alicia: Disclaimer and notes: Most of the characters belong to Marvel, and are used without permission for entertainment purposes only. The movieverse adaptations of many of the characters within are inspired by the X-Project RPG.

____

Salem Center

One month later

As Xavier had promised, the sessions were getting easier to tolerate. Slightly easier, Nathan amended as he stepped out onto the mansion's back porch. He took a deep, slightly shaky breath of the badly needed fresh air, willing his stomach to settle. At least he didn't want to go back to Moira's suite and hide in the closet this time. That was definitely an improvement.

He sat down heavily on the steps, trying to reassemble the pieces of his composure. Trying to focus on his surroundings, his unquestionably physical, solid surroundings. The rain had stopped while he was in Xavier's office, and the clouds were breaking up, revealing patches of blue sky. The change in the weather must have been recent, because there were no kids in sight. The grounds were green and lush and very, very quiet.

Nathan sighed and let his head fall to the right, rubbing at the back of his neck. No headache today, but then, they hadn't done much. Xavier was patient, the polar opposite of Mistra's psis. There were some days he just scanned, not touching Nathan's conditioning at all. Nathan knew he ought to be reassured by the gradual approach, but there was still a part of him waiting for the other shoe to drop. For the knife in the back - no, the mind, as soon as he dropped his guard.

I hate this. Nathan closed his eyes, fierce disgust coming on the heels of that moment of self-pity. No more brooding. It wasn't as if he had a choice in this. He was doing what he had to do to survive.

An image took shape in his mind, behind his closed eyes. Her again... White robe, bare feet, and red-gold hair stirring in the wind as she turned towards him. Meeting her eyes was almost literally staggering. However young she looked, the mind behind those dark green eyes was not that of a teenager. There was frightening depth there.

She tilted her head, gave him a questioning look that resolved into a wry, knowing smile. Her lips moved, and she asked what he knew was a question, even if he didn't understand the words. He tried to concentrate on her voice, to see if he couldn't at least begin to identify the language, but the whole scene dissolved into light even as he tried to focus.

Gone. Nathan opened his eyes, shaking his head to banish the faint dizziness. Whoever she was, she was a recurring element in his visions. He saw her more and more often, now that Xavier was beginning to remove the post-hypnotic triggers he claimed were interfering with Nathan's precognition.

Nathan shifted uneasily, rubbing at the back of his neck again. He still wasn't sure he bought Xavier's explanation about the triggers. If they were interpreting his visions as intrusions into his mind, why only for the last several months? The conditioning had been there for almost twenty-five years.

Yet he couldn't deny his precognition was stronger than it had ever been. Still, Xavier had been awfully vague about this 'astral event' he claimed had altered psionic minds across the globe in unpredictable ways. There was more there than the man was letting on, but Nathan hadn't pressed - yet. It was enough to know that there might be a solution to his problem. Xavier had likened it to opening a locked door, so that the visions no longer had to batter it down.

"Hey," came a voice from behind him. Nathan stiffened, glancing back over his shoulder. If there was one thing he well and truly hated about the precognition, it was that it screwed with his concentration enough that people could actually sneak up on him. That was just not right, for a telepath. The gray-skinned young man who'd stepped out onto the porch was no threat, however, and he forced himself to relax.

"Hey yourself. How goes?"

Angelo Espinosa shrugged almost uneasily and retreated to his usual spot on the railing, pulling out a pack of cigarettes. The back porch, Nathan had discovered, was commonly known as the smoker's porch. A surprising number of Xavier's students were at the mercy of that particular bad habit. Nathan supposed that it came from the rough lives so many of them had led before winding up here at school. He'd gotten used to sharing the porch with haunted-eyed children in the last few weeks.

"How's that history paper going?" Nathan finally said, when the silence showed signs of dragging on. He could have let it continue, but that would mean ignoring that these 'accidental' meetings with the kid seemed to be happening on a more regular basis. Angelo was definitely starting to seek out his company, however hard he was trying not to show it.

Angelo just grunted at first, being busy lighting his cigarette. Once he'd had a puff or two, Nathan got an actual response. "Still working on it. Keep finding things I need to read."

"That's usually the way of it." Angelo had been reading a book on the Third Reich the first time they'd met out here on the porch. Fresh from a session with Xavier, Nathan had struck up a conversation mostly to get his mind off things, but he'd been surprised by the intelligence behind the kid's wary reserve. Though getting him to say more than a few words at a time was like pulling teeth.

"Yeah, well. That deadline keeps right on coming," Angelo said glumly.

Moody was the word for him, Nathan had decided, around their third meeting or thereabouts. He didn't know much about Angelo's background. Just that he'd come from Los Angeles and that he'd had some problems with a gang. If there was one thing that Xavier's students liked to do, it was gossip.

"You need to just stop at some point, then," he said finally. "Work with what you have." It struck him as a strange sort of thing to say almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth. As if to confirm that, Angelo gave another grunt, this one skeptical, and Nathan couldn't help a sigh as he leaned against the post behind him and closed his eyes again.

"You all right?" Angelo said, surprisingly. Nathan opened his eyes again and looked up to meet the dark, not-quite-diffident eyes scrutinizing him intently. "You're kinda white, again."

"Long afternoon." He wasn't about to explain and fuel the gossip. Besides, there were things about him that these kids were just better off not knowing.

--

Bisti Badlands, New Mexico

Thirteen years ago

It wasn't a hospitable landscape. At first glance it was rock, rock and more rock, shaped by the years into a myriad of strange formations. The badlands weren't precisely lifeless, but they weren't a place the vast majority of people would choose to live.

Which made them the perfect setting for other things. Moving soundlessly through the dark, Nathan Dayspring dropped to a crouch to take stock of his surroundings. All he could hear was the night wind, and the occasional small noise that registered as 'animal', rather than pursuer. But he was listening with his mind as well, just as intently.

Most would have thought that gave him an edge. But the two operatives training him tonight had been trained in shielding techniques, and he was a poor excuse for a telepath at best. Still. They were prone to letting stray thoughts slip, and that was what he specialized in, picking up those momentary clues. His telepathy might not be much more than an early warning system, but it was usually an effective one.

But not tonight, apparently. Grimacing, Nathan forced himself to start moving again. Him staying put wasn't the point of the exercise, as much as he would have preferred to let them come to him. He hated being stalked.

Half a kilometer before the first, tell-tale blaze of light to his left. Nathan reacted instinctively, a push of telekinesis taking him airborne and to the top of one of the rock formations. The glowing psi-construct, twenty feet tall and roughly man-shaped, made a grab for him, but another power-assisted leap took him out of range.

The telekinetic exoskeleton lumbered after him determinedly, but he kept ahead of it with ease. The soaring leaps were actually far more energy-efficient than flying. Incalculably more energy-efficient than the telekinetic 'tank' chasing him. The exoskeleton was deadly in close quarters, but it took all of Morgan's telekinesis to maintain it.

And it took away his ability to strike at a distance. Nathan let his next leap carry him back out of range and to the ground. He whirled as soon as his feet were solidly planted, lashing out with his telekinesis. The rock pillar next to Morgan's exoskeleton exploded, knocking him down.

Dumb, Nathan thought - and then grimaced at the sudden twist of nausea in his stomach, accompanied by a stabbing pain in his head. Sonics. Where? He staggered, but 'listened' hard, and this time caught the telltale flash of triumph.

There. Airborne again, to the top of a rocky ridge, within striking distance of the other dark-clad figure who'd moved in from the side while Morgan had charged head-on. Foley let off a quick blast of sonics at him, but even as Nathan went down he sent a telekinetic shockwave through the rock. The explosion hurled Foley backwards and he crashed down into a crumpled heap, a little farther away than Nathan had intended.

His ears were ringing, and embarrassingly, he almost missed Morgan making another approach. A giant glowing fist came smashing downwards at him, and Nathan rolled out from under it before it could do anything but make brief contact with his hastily erected TK shield.

Back to his feet, and Morgan was grinning fiercely at him as he advanced up the side of the ridge, the arms of the exoskeleton stretching outwards to grab at him. Foley was getting up, too, and Nathan sighed inwardly. He let Morgan grab him, the fist of the exoskeleton closing around his shields and squeezing hard.

The brief contact was all he needed. His eyes unfocused just enough to let him see the lines of force that made up Morgan's exoskeleton, and he let the energy of his shields collapse and flow outwards, tearing the complicated structure asunder.

The explosion left a noticeable crater, and Morgan unconscious in the center of it. A bit shaken himself - when the exoskeleton had exploded, he'd fallen several feet back to the ground - Nathan started to get up. The sonic blast hit him, not head-on but close, and he hit the ground hard, tasting blood.

Foley made the mistake of closing in to finish him off hand-to-hand. Dumb, Mick, very dumb... He was dazed, yes, but he outweighed the other man by about fifty pounds, and the body armor had taken most of the damage from the sonic blast.

The fight was short and brutal. Nathan didn't pull his punches; neither did Foley, and they both got in some good hits before Nathan finally managed to bounce the smaller man's head off a handy rock.

Silence descended again on the badlands. Breathing hard, Nathan sank to the ground, a quick brush of Morgan and Foley's thoughts telling him that neither was badly hurt. He wiped blood from his face, his hands shaking. Base would be monitoring the exercise. He wondered how he'd done.

He'd made sure Morgan and Foley hadn't done badly, either. Let them get their hits in. That was what counted. Base didn't care if they beat each other bloody, so long as they displayed sufficient competence in doing so and were still mission-capable at the end of it.

Funny priorities. Nathan let his head rest in his hands and concentrated on breathing. He had regained most of his composure by the time Tim and Mick started to stir. All of it by the time the helicopter arrived.

Debriefing was harder, but he'd made it through worse. When they let him stay in the room while they discussed "the performance of our new potential command team", he knew they'd succeeded. Morgan and Foley were deemed suitable, and Slezak even joked with him about "putting the youngsters in their place, eh, Cable?"

He'd smiled. Responded with a vague comment about how he needed to stay at the top of the food chain, and gotten a long look from Ruiz for his pains. She didn't know, couldn't know, Nathan had told himself, meeting her eyes as levelly as he could. But it had been a long ten seconds or so before she looked away, dismissing him.

--

Washington, DC

Now

"Tea, Professor?"

"Thank you, Mr. President." It was a ritual of theirs, during these meetings in the Oval Office. Charles supposed it was Jonathan McKenna's way of trying to put him at ease. Of course, there was no attending staff member to make the offer on the President's behalf, either. This time, it was just himself and the President.

Occasionally there had been others. Twice, a Secret Service agent had sat in as a silent observer. Charles didn't know quite what to make of Valerie Cooper as of yet. Clearly McKenna had some role in mind for her in the developing relationship between the X-Men and the American government - a liaison, perhaps? Although that implied a greater degree of formality in the relationship, and Charles was wary of that. It could so easily be a slippery slope.

"Any headway since we last spoke?" McKenna asked, pouring himself a cup of tea as well. Charles had never seen the man touch a cup of coffee. It was a point of commonality between them.

"None as of yet," Charles said, unable to quite keep the edge of regret out of his voice. A cornerstone of his relationship with this man was his promise that the X-Men would seek out Magneto and return him to custody. He hadn't expected the better part of a year to go by with no progress. "He's gone quite effectively to ground."

"Plotting his next move, no doubt." McKenna's voice was sour, but after taking a sip of his tea, he grimaced in what might almost have been an apologetic fashion at Charles. "I know you do what you can, Professor. Our intelligence services haven't turned up anything either. We'll share information when we have it, of course."

"Of course. As will we. Still," Charles said, "the progress on other fronts has been encouraging. I trust you've received reports on the Chicago incident from Deputy Assistant Director Duncan?"

Fred Duncan was the FBI's resident mutant 'specialist', the head of the Bureau's task force investigating mutant-related crimes. He was one of the few within the American government who 'had the mansion on speed-dial', as Scott had commented rather ironically last week. His requests for assistance were coming regularly now, and the last case, a hostage situation at a television station in Mississippi, had been a complex and unfortunately violent one.

"Indeed," McKenna said thoughtfully, his keen dark eyes meeting Charles' fully. "He credits your people with saving the lives of those hostages. Personally, I'm amazed that they managed to do it without showing up on the evening news."

"It took some careful planning, as I understand it." That Polaris had produced a miniature EMP to knock out the cameras inside and outside didn't need to be explained. The X-Men would be less effective if their existence and nature became widely known, and Scott and Ororo had incorporated that into their planning. "And possibly some luck as well."

"I don't doubt it." McKenna smiled finally, not the practiced politician's smile but something more genuinely human. "At some point I'd like to meet your team properly, Charles. The last time they were in my office, there wasn't much time for conversation."

Charles smiled slightly in return. "Perhaps at some point, Mr. President." He paused for a moment, considering his next words carefully. He'd hoped for a more graceful transition to the subject, but as one had not yet presented itself, perhaps it was time to get to the point. "There is something I need to speak to you about - it's the reason I asked for this meeting."

This was the delicate moment. Did McKenna know? Charles found it unlikely, all things considered. Programs such as Mistra were not things carried out under political oversight; the risks, should it ever be made public knowledge, were immense. It was the sort of scandal that could topple governments, even twenty years on.

The President was looking at him, one eyebrow raised. Waiting. Charles took a deep breath. "Have you ever heard," he asked, very calmly, "of a military program by the name of Mistra?"

A trace of puzzlement crossed McKenna's features, his expression turning inwards as he searched his memory. "It doesn't sound familiar. Whose military?"

"Ours."

The puzzled gaze sharpened immediately. This was a man who had unknowingly sanctioned William Stryker's attempt at genocide, Charles reminded himself. Secrets within his own government would not sit well with Jonathan Francis McKenna.

"What sort of military program, Professor?"

--

Ten minutes later, Charles emerged from the Oval Office, leaving behind a badly shaken President. At his appearance, his companion rose from her seat in the outer office and moved behind his wheelchair to push it. A Secret Service agent fell in behind them, if at a discreet distance, as they headed into the corridor.

Charles was silent for a long moment, letting the tension drain away. "Not an easy conversation," he finally said, almost under his breath. He looked up and over his shoulder, meeting Amelia Voght's cool blue gaze for an instant. Seeing the approval there. She had been surprisingly forceful in her support for this course of action. It had been reassuring, although Charles wasn't sure why she felt so strongly about Nathan's situation.

But then, Amelia was nearly impossible to read when she chose to be. Charles was honest enough to admit that it was probably part of the reason why their occasional relationship had gone on for as many years as it had.

"You expected it to be easy?" Amelia's voice was low, but grim. "Anyone with a shred of human decency would find that hard to hear." Without thinking, Charles reached out to touch her thoughts, intending to reassure. But the patterns of her mind were vibrating with anger, her nerves jangling. His government has been funding the murder and torture of children, for the sake of the few these butchers managed to successfully turn into brainwashed soldiers. Even if he didn't know-

#He didn't,# Charles replied immediately, firmly. That much had been perfectly clear. McKenna's shock and horror had been real, his promise to investigate unmistakably sincere.

Even if he didn't, it doesn't really matter. The dead and the damaged, they're his responsibility. Comes with the office. Images flashed through Amelia's mind, memories of child soldiers in half a dozen countries seen during her time as a doctor with Medecins Sans Frontieres. Wordlessly, Charles projected empathy, understanding. The tension in her thoughts eased, if only a little.

"So." Her voice was steady again. "Our guest?"

"Will remain our guest, while the President investigates the situation." After discussing the situation with Moira, Charles hadn't told Nathan that he was raising the issue of Mistra with McKenna. It would have been the fastest way to ensure the man slipped out of the mansion in the middle of the night and headed for the nearest international border.

"Good," was his lover's tart response. "I would have hated to have to fish you out of the lake when Moira tried to drown you." Amelia pushed Charles's wheelchair into the usual office, nodding briefly at the Secret Service agent before she reached out to close the door. "Ready?" she asked.

Charles nodded, and closed his eyes as Amelia laid a hand on his shoulder and their surroundings vanished in a haze of green. Her form of teleportation was efficient, but disorienting.

--

Salem Center

Three weeks later

Nathan looked less tired than he had, at least. Leaning against the doorframe and watching him as he sat cross-legged on the floor of the bedroom, Moira reflected that she'd rarely seen him looking this close to rested. His life didn't lend itself to it, and he tended to show up at Muir when he was at the end of his rope and needed a safe place to collapse. Over the years, there had been a few times on the island when he'd seemed almost relaxed, but those times had always been very brief. Reaching that point seemed to be a signal for him, telling him that it was time to go back to the life he so obviously hated.

He's harder on himself than the world has been on him. Which was, sadly, saying a lot. Moira cleared her throat, her lips tugging upwards in a smile as she got a raised eyebrow in reply, even before Nathan opened his eyes.

"Can't a man meditate in peace around here, MacTaggart?"

"When that man's been off in the Neverland for hours, no, he cannot," she said briskly, but came in the rest of the way, walking over to sit down beside him on the floor.

There had been enough time with him over the year to understand how much of a difference body language made. If I ever get my hands on the fool who thought that trying to impose feral thinking patterns on non-feral mutants was a good idea, I'll be using his stomach to make haggis. Said fool was on the list of people who made her rethink her Hippocratic oath.

"You do need to eat," she said, reaching up and tucking her hair behind one ear. "Keep up your strength."

"What is this obsession you have with feeding me?" But his lips were curling upwards in a smile, and Moira found herself returning it involuntarily. "You hooked this stray a long time ago, MacTaggart. No need to keep feeding him to make sure he keeps coming around the house."

It was the curse of a redhead's complexion that even at her age, she still blushed too easily. "Well," she said, as archly as she could, "you never know. As men go, you're more perverse than most."

"Usually you use the word 'daft'."

"That too." His grin didn't have the usual edge, and Moira cleared her throat again, looking away for a moment. "I mean to ask you how the session with Charles went," she said, striving for a more professional tone. He was still her patient, and he'd been damnably close-mouthed for the last week or so. "He looked like the cat that ate the canary when I saw him earlier. Told me I needed to check on you."

Nathan ducked his head, looking away. It was so clearly an avoidant gesture that Moira began to fear she'd ruined the moment, such as it was. "He removed more of the triggers," Nathan finally said, sounding reluctant. "Getting down to the core behavioral imperatives, now. I had another vision in his office, and it barely shook me. I don't even have a headache. I guess he really was right about what was causing the problem."

Moira let out her breath on a sigh of relief. Not that she'd expected bad news, with Charles so smug-looking, but this was better than she'd hoped. "Glad I brought you back here yet, love?" she asked, flushing again slightly as he looked back at her suddenly. "This sort of thing isn't something I could have helped you with, Nathan."

And addressing this particular problem solved others, as well. She was as glad for that as the apparent solution to his precognitive flares. There was no need for him to go the rest of his life with the broken remnants of Mistra's conditioning in his mind. No need at all, as far as she was concerned.

"I saw her again," Nathan went on after a moment, pensively. "That red-haired girl. She was trying to talk to me, but I just couldn't... quite understand it. I think I'm getting closer, though." He looked abruptly frustrated. "I'm good at languages, Moira, but I can't even identify what hers might be based on."

He was being modest; being 'good' at languages was one thing, but in another life, Nathan could have been a linguist or translator. He spoke at least twelve languages that she knew of, and those fluently. "Have you spoken to young Mr. Ramsey?" she asked lightly, then sighed when he gave her an uncomprehending look. "Nathan, I realize the children make you nervous-"

"They do not-"

"But Douglas can very likely help you with this." As good with languages as Nathan was, Douglas Ramsey's mutant ability made him the best person to try and translate a language from the future. "I'll speak to him myself, if you want. You don't need to see him alone, either..."

He shot her an aggravated look. "I'm not a child myself, MacTaggart," he growled. "I don't need my hand held while I speak to the students." But he didn't sound entirely convinced about that, and Moira's gaze softened as she watched him. Despite his tentative attempts to get to know some of the students, he was still ill at ease. Still remembering the incident with Manuel, I'd think.

"Then act like it, you stubborn bastard," she replied, deliberately tart. "Stop digging in your heels just because it suits you."

There was a flash of anger in those stormcloud-gray eyes, followed by amused incredulity. "Did you just call me stubborn?" She opened her mouth to give that the response it deserved, but was forestalled as Nathan reached out and took her hand. She blinked down at their joined hands, then looked up at him, the question in her eyes. "I told you Charles removed some of the triggers," Nathan said more steadily. "He's still working on that nasty instinctive reaction to anyone violating my personal space, but, well... progress."

"So I see." Her heart was beating a little faster - a lot faster, as he lifted her hand and held it against his chest, over his heart. As gestures went, it was fairly profound. Nathan tended to be twitchy even at casual physical contact, and she'd learned long ago that he rarely let anyone inside his guard. His wife had been an exception, but then, Aliya had also been a telepath, intimately familiar with Mistra's conditioning. "Remind me to compliment Charles."

"He does good work." Nathan very slowly leaned towards her, his lips twitching in what might have been a nervous smile trying to get out. Before Moira could say anything else, he kissed her.

It was hesitant, at best - a fleeting brush of his lips against hers, and then he was leaning back, that familiar tension back in his posture as he retreated. Her hand free, Moira raised it to her lips, almost wonderingly. Her eyes were stinging just a little as she met Nathan's.

"What was that for?" she asked, her voice slightly husky.

"Just... wanting to see if I remembered how to do that."

A slight, shaky laugh escaped her. "You need some practice," she heard herself say, and turned scarlet.

Nathan's eyebrows went up, and he laughed, a startled-sounding but clear laugh with none of the usual cynicism in it. "Small steps, Moira," he said, and she knew that she wasn't imagining the tentative warmth in those gray eyes. "Bear with me."

--

The Iberian Penninsula,

Two thousand years from Now

Stopping at fires here and there, offering words or silent approval to the soldiers he passed, he strode through the camp. Limped, rather - the wound in his leg was poorly bandaged, and he knew that at some point soon he'd have to stop and get it seen to. But not now. Not while his troops still needed to see their general. Still needed to be shown that while the day was lost, the war continued.

No surrender. It was part of the Clan's philosophy, bred in the bone. Had they ever stepped back, even once, even for a day, the enemy would have rolled right over them. Wiped them from the face of the earth, just as they so yearned to do. And that ending could not be. Would not be, not while he still drew breath.

The murmur of the men and women he passed had a particular tone to it he recognized - awe and hope, and the sort of dazzled wonder that meant only one thing. Picking up the pace, ignoring the pain of his wounds, he strode determinedly in that direction. The command tent was ahead, soldiers crowding around it, and as he moved through the mass of his Clansmen, they started to fall to their knees.

He waited until he had reached the front, within steps of the slender, armor-clad woman whose red hair rippled like a battle flag in the night wind. "~Mother,~" he said, bowing his head to her.

Her fingers brushed his temple, burning like fire. He lifted his head and met green eyes that went on forever. Her smile was slight, almost secretive, as if the two of them shared a very private secret.

She let her hand fall in the next moment and looked out over the assembled troops. Her lips did not move, but her voice was in their minds suddenly, clear as the bells of their distant capital.

#~Hear me, Clansmen,~# she sent to them all. #~I bring news of victories on the eastern front to you, brothers and sisters of the Askani.~#