House of Wind
All I know is that it's just me, and him, and then it's done.
Driven by a series of precognitive visions, Nathan sets himself up to be kidnapped by his uncle Gideon in an attempt to end the threat his family poses to everyone and everything he cares about. But his self-fulfilling prophecy turns out to be far more complicated than he ever imagined.
Contents
Cast
Nathan Dayspring, Moira MacTaggart, David Haller, Angelo Espinosa, Alison Blaire, Lorna Dane, Cain Marko, Haroun al-Rashid
NPCs: Gideon Faraday, Saul Morrow, Mother Askani
Timing
March 30, 2006 – April 4, 2006
Plot Summary
After weeks of disturbing precognitive flashes and further threats from his family following the events in Vladivostok, Nathan came to believe that he saw a way to stop Gideon forever. Despite the fact that his visions did not show him whether he survived the events he foresaw, he left the mansion in the middle of the night (leaving behind time-delayed emails) for a ‘summit’ set up by Saul, who wanted to make peace between his brother and his son. The meeting went precisely as Nathan foresaw; Gideon attacked him, also incapacitating Saul in order to cover his retreat – with a captive Nathan.
Back at the mansion, Moira’s promise to cover for her husband for twenty-four hours was quickly undone when a cranky Rachel gave away the fact that something was badly wrong to Haller. Meanwhile, Angelo, unable to find Nathan, went directly to Alison with his suspicions – and the notebook of observations he’d made about Nathan’s visions. Planning for a search and rescue mission began, and later that day, Saul arrived at the mansion offering information about what had happened and his help in searching for his son. Alison organized a team and took the Blackbird to Rio de Janeiro, in accordance with Nathan’s reoccuring visions of the Corcovado statue and his emails. Angelo and Haller both accompanied the team to help in the search.
In Rio, Nathan awoke, having spent the intervening time drugged into unconsciousness. Gideon informed him that he had implanted post-hypnotic triggers in Nathan’s mind to keep him from attempting an escape, and that what he wanted was to synch to Nathan’s precognition and see the Askani’s distant future. Hiding his true motivations from Gideon, Nathan played along.
Elsewhere in Rio, the X-Men searched for their mission teammate. Lorna and Cain roamed the city, Lorna searching for Nathan’s unique EM signature, and Haroun got back in touch with Inspector Cardoso, to enlist the help of the police.
Shaken and in pain after Gideon’s repeated (and mysteriously unsuccessful) attempts to synch to his precognition, Nathan realized that he was running out of time, and that if the X-Men found them too soon, there was no telling what might happen and who might be hurt. Despite the post-hypnotic triggers, he managed to stage an escape attempt and was injured in the process. Gideon, in response, loaded him aboard a helicopter and left Rio, heading to Ushuaia, a city on the tip of Tierra de Fuego – ‘the end of the world’, another repeating motif in Nathan’s visions.
The X-Men found the house in Rio where Gideon had been keeping Nathan, less than a day too late. Alison discovered a hidden, years-old letter from Nathan’s mother, in which Esther made reference to having seen that Gideon took Nathan to ‘the end of the world’. That same day, Angelo and Haller located one of Gideon’s employees, and after successfully reasoning with him, discovered that he arranged Gideon’s flight to Ushuaia.
The team regrouped and flew to Ushuaia, only to discover that Gideon had arranged for a significant security detail to keep them away from the house. They set about fighting their way through, as Gideon tried once more to synch to Nathan’s precognition. Finally, he was successful – in reforging the precognitive link to Askani. He found himself at the mercy of a temporal paradox; Askani’s astral self had died in the present, at the Hellfire Club, but she had also not yet died and not yet come back to the past. Linked to Gideon, Askani saw everything that her other self had seen in him, and reached down the link, fatally injuring him. The resulting psionic explosion leveled the house.
Nathan, unconscious in the rubble, had one last conversation with Askani, in which she confessed that she had indeed been connected in some way to his mother, and implied that she and Esther had somehow manipulated Nathan’s precognition to bring him to this precise moment, to stop Gideon. She told him that her future had been undone, Gideon’s death undermining the beginning of the chain of events that had led to the clan Askani’s destruction, and then said a last goodbye.
Elsewhere in the rubble, a devastated Saul, thinking that his son was dead, came across his dying brother. Telling Gideon that he would help him, he allowed his brother to synch to his cell-manipulating power – but altered his cells into cancer cells as he did so, tricking Gideon into doing the same. Both of them died.
Nathan regained consciousness in time to be found by Cain, and helped back to the Blackbird. The post-hypnotic triggers kicked in, and Haller put him under so that he could work on removing them on the flight back to Westchester. In doing so, Haller had a brief encounter with certain portions of Nathan’s subconscious on his mindscape, and discovered that despite the pain and stress of the last several months, Nathan was rallying, already looking ahead with hope for the future.
Related Links
X-Men Mission: A Mirror Darkly
X-Men Mission: Trans-Siberian Hustle
External Links
Trivia and Meta
Trivia
After Saul’s death in Ushuaia, Nathan discovered that he was sole heir to his father’s considerable fortune. He used the bulk of it to found Elpis in an attempt to work in opposition to everything he believed his father believed.
Meta
Plotrunner: Alicia
