Work Text:
07/01/2018
All things considered, calling the Brotherhood of all people for support in the most recently emerged crisis, and not a day after the X-Men had faced their old archenemies at the gates of the besieged city no less, wasn’t the fucking weirdest thing that had happened in Westchester lately.
Ororo and Scott had decided for this early morning hour for their desperate attempt, in the weak hope that Mystique would be sleeping off the world's worst hangover right now, after hopefully drinking her defeat away yesterday. But still, they weren’t awfully surprised when the main com screen in the IT center flashed to life, showing a disgusted grimace on a certain red and blue scaled face instead of the pink-skinned person they'd actually sought out to talk to. That Mystique had filled the mayor chair for her domicile of triumph only with one of the X-Men's former students to deliver them painful twinges in their hearts every time this certain young man showed up in a press release or on one of these incredibly cynical, demonstratively cheerful invitation videos calling mutants around the globe to this so-called paradise of freedom, had never been much of a mystery.
Artie Maddicks had never been anything but yet another masterfully manipulated, well-oiled tool for Mystique to wield, while in truth, she was calling the shots behind every decision regarding the Brotherhood's new habitat. Anything they wanted to go to the boy to for, they'd have to run by his boss first one way or another.
Fortunately, Scott had twisted himself into worse verbal pretzels, running Mutant High after Charles' disappearance. Not to mention they were depressingly low on options.
"We're calling about yesterday's attack." He didn’t bother granting Mystique as much as a greeting. When you were trying to kill each other at every turn, pleasantries became extremely neglectable.
"Looking for an apology, One-Eye? After you infiltrated us, again? You might be shit out of luck there." Mystique hardly gave him more than a scathing glance with her snow-white teeth bared wide before turning away halfway from the camera, demonstratively typing away on some keyboard, obviously of the opinion, these few vicious sentences had already been far too much attention for people she despised.
Not least thanks to Ororo's brief touch to the back of his hand, invisible for the camera on their side of the conversation, Scott somehow swallowed his equally rude reply, reminding himself arduously that with yesterday's surprising developments at the end of the battle, they were all in similarly equally bad positions at the moment and would need each other for a change.
"I'm not talking about yours on our extraction crew but about Flashwind's."
This time, there was a clear hint of mischief sparkling in Mystique's yellow pupils. "Wait, so you're the one who wants to apologize? Let me put you on city speaker then. That said, looked more like to me like your little wifey was trying to file a visa request. If she's looking for an apartment downtown, you should probably be working on your charm, Summers, because I'm not gonna stop her. New York weather sucks anyway."
"If that would ever be her decision, we'll be sure to let you know, Darkholme," Ororo spoke up harshly before Scott get could get too tempted after all to call out his conversation partner on all her crap.
It was his turn to gratefully squeeze her leg under the control panel. His nerves already hadn’t been the thickest since he'd been attacked by his own partner courtesy of the influence of some insane psychic bitch yesterday afternoon.
"But it's not. Emma is in her mind, and we can't get her out alone."
For the first time since having been outsmarted by two teenagers yesterday, Mystique seemed caught off guard, another snort escaping her lips, but Scott also was pretty sure to see his enemy's back tighten just the tiniest bit. Emma had dealt the Brotherhood significant losses back when Magneto had still been actively around already, and Mystique wasn’t exactly someone to forgive easily. Or not to know who the few mutants in this good world were whom she needed to be truly cautious about.
"The White Queen, are you for real? See, Summers, and this is why you don't take crazy to bed."
"Unlike you, Darkholme, we keep our clothes on around most of our acquaintances." Scott found he didn’t even have a lot of energy for provocations in return right now. His fleeting gaze kept on finding the time display on the monitor's right lower half, the reminder of how much serious damage Katja's numbed mind could be taking with every damn passing minute, lowering his already not-great bullshit tolerance in record time.
Sadly, Mystique wasn’t done yet, rubbing it in his face for how long the X-Men had put their trust in the wrong telepath … again. "Too bad. How else are you planning to pay for whatever you need from us? I can always use someone in a half-thong serving drinks in my loft."
"What gives you the idea we were calling your mayor's office for a request to you?" Ororo raised her voice again before the throbbing flashing behind Scott's VISOR could find the damn communication panel on pure accident – with how the conversation was going, he seriously doubted that would have made any difference.
"You should, seeing as I decide how to use my employers around here," Mystique reminded them flatly, from one second to another back to calculating business, even finally reluctantly waving for the person that this room was actually belonging to at last, to step into the camera's field of view, even if was surely mostly only to mock Ororo and Scott with the offer of what they so badly needed, only to snatch it away from them again right away or demand retribution from them that Scott wasn’t even willing to think about.
Luckily for them, in this case, this wasn’t her call.
"Curious. And here I thought mutants in New York are free to do whatever they please."
Mystique ground her teeth so hard, he thought he could actually hear it via the – thanks to the Field interferences slightly noisy – line. But then she actually scooted aside with her chair so that said follower of hers could pull up his own, albeit with a similarly dismissive look on his face.
Well, that probably meant, Scott didn’t need to try politeness in this even more difficult part of the call either. "Cat needs your help, Artie."
It hurt, the message that immediately plopped up in the screen's chat window, typed in by fingertips almost moving in lighting speed after so many years in which they'd been forced to take over for a voice no longer working after its owner's body had turned fully amphibian ... But it was sadly also exactly what they'd expected. Artie's mutation had developed into everything he'd had feared so long at the worst time back then, and he'd clearly never quite forgiven the X-Men for how alone he'd felt at that terrible moment.
'Did you two call the wrong number?'
This time, it was Ororo who needed to pause, to swallow thickly before she could answer, the pain of not having been able to help one of her favorite charges back then darkening her eyes, just like the heavy weight on her thin shoulders that this was something she'd probably never be able to never make up for. "Artie, please ... I know how bad these last few days of yours at Mutant High were. Believe me, I wouldn't call you if we had any other way. But this is about your city, too. Right now, Hank's got Cat's mind in deep sleep with the help of the right medication, but if she wakes up and makes it out of here, for what reason ever, then the Field is history. This is the only reason why Emma is keeping her mind captive. To fight Mystique for the power in New York and declare herself leader. Do you two really want to risk that? Even if you do - you said you'd pay your dues when Bastian helped Synch, Artie, didn't you?"
'In one way or another that doesn't have to do with people who stopped deserving my worry and interest 20 years ago, yes. Guess you guys better make sure she doesn't wake up.' There was not a single visible stir in Artie's eerie, huge white eyes when he sent those shocking next few words via the com line.
Scott could have sworn to hear Mystique chuckle in satisfaction in the background. Christ, next time he'd meet that cunt in battle, there would definitely not be half as much holding back as yesterday.
Ororo's dark skin had turned a significant shade greyer. "You can't mean that, Artie. You two were so close back then …"
In the mind monitor over Artie's head which happened to be the main reason Ororo and Scott had decided for this call although they'd already had a sad hunch that it would go exactly this way, there was the image of a dark storm cloud flashing, a symbol for the young man's growing aggression ironic enough considering whom they were talking about here.
'The way she left me when I most needed her, to wrestle with Magneto once more, I sincerely doubt that, Miss Munroe. Why should I care about the fate of someone who didn’t give a fuck about mine?'
"You really don't know, do you?" Scott leaned closer to the camera with his jaw grinding both in irritation and sadness about how deeply that hurt between his wife and her once favorite pupil really ran, a hint of guilt also stinging in his heart for a moment as he couldn’t help but wonder if they wouldn’t have had to have this discussion right now if he'd made better choices himself in this regard.
"That us others, we had to all but stop Cat with violence at least twice a year from looking for you ever since you left. And about two times a week from trying and talking to you, since we finally learned where you were."
Artie's spidery fingers paused on the keyboard for a moment, his mouth hanging open for long seconds while he seemed to try and process this information, but that deep crease of anger on his bulging forehead wasn’t going anywhere yet. 'Then why did she let you guys stop her if she allegedly cared so much?'
"Because in the end, she decided every time over that she didn't want to take the freedom of choice from you," Ororo answered very firmly, never letting go of that increasingly distraught gaze via the cameras, her hand clenching down on her thigh high uniform boot in growing agitation – in a faint breeze of hope. "That freedom has always been very important for her, too, and Cat has never been a hypocrite. Unlike some people."
Ororo raised a meaningful brow in the direction of the screen where Mystique's face had soured more and more with every word.
'And yet you want to destroy what we built here,' Artie objected, vaguely gesturing around the room he'd so lovingly seemed to have furnished himself there, with all these huge cabinets with neatly filled files about his work, lots of paintings from sights all around the world and hundreds of photos, particularly of physically extremely disfigured mutants on the wall.
Scott would have loved to tell him that no one would come and take away from him what he was so enthusiastically helping to build there. But that would just have been another lie on top of the mountain of the ones that this so-called refuge was already built on.
"Normal people, too, deserve the freedom of choice, Artie. I think we all know, things in New York will sooner or later come to a blow, one way or another, and I can't promise we won't be there then. You know very well we can't endorse what your boss is doing. And yet we haven’t stopped a single of our pupils who went there to live with you, have we?"
"How do I know you won't send your wifey yourself as soon as she's clear in the head again?" Mystique unexpectedly spoke up again, apparently sensing that she was quickly losing her superior position in this debate.
"One single mutant against a whole city? You think she'd be that stupid without Emma's influence, Darkholme?"
It was a rhetorical question on Scott's part because he knew the mouth Mystique had on her well enough by now, which was also why he was almost relieved when Artie started to type again, though the answer from that side wasn’t particularly benign either.
'It wouldn't be the first suicide mission she embarks on.'
"We will not start a war, Artie," Ororo stated with all the arduous conviction about that subject that Scott and she had come up with in the last few weeks, in so many arguments, fighting mostly the uncertainty in their own souls about how to approach this catastrophe. They still weren't any closer to a solution in that regard but the one thing everyone in this house knew was that they wouldn’t be responsible for mutant blood being spilled in the streets if they could avoid it somehow.
"Cat knows that, too. If she should still decide at some point to do something very dumb, maybe because Mystique keeps her daughter hostage again under the false pretense of medical support, then she will have to live with the consequences, one way or another. But then that will be her decision, at least. What is happening right now? It's not. What would you have said if Emma had forced you with her powers to stay at Mutant High back then?"
'Cat wouldn’t have exactly minded that,' was the next still unbelievably bitter reply, but the way Artie's tall body had hunched in his elegantly carved chair more and more, his lidless eyes narrowing, twitching, again and again, revealed he was rapidly losing at least part of his aggression.
"I can guarantee you with 100 % certainty that this opinion has changed."
To that next solemn answer from Ororo, there weren’t any words for a short while, neither spoken nor written or mentally depicted ones.
"People can change, Artie," Scott finally spoke up again when he could be sufficiently sure, he wouldn’t make things worse instead of better. "That's what makes us human. Everything you had to endure, how difficult things always were for you … None of us can make that right. We made mistakes, all of us, including you. And maybe we'll always stand on different sides. But we never deny any mutant our help if they really need it. Will you allow me to ask you for the same?"
Artie abruptly got up from his chair, and for a moment, Scott was convinced he'd fucked up after all, blowing the last chance out of the window to free Katja from this dangerous condition any time soon …
Then he saw, with relief, the image of a cab on Artie's mind monitor, and a clock the hands of which went one full-time round. An hour.
"You know I could just raze Frost Ltd. to the ground, Summers, don't you?" Mystique was audibly disgruntled that she'd been robbed of the chance of yet another blackmailing attempt of any kind their way.
"I wasn’t talking to you, Darkholme," Scott gave back coldly. "You might have nothing to fear by telepaths but if you're so happy to sacrifice mutants that Emma can kill or mentally damage for a lifetime with a single thought, knock yourself out. Otherwise, sit your ass down and pray, Artie will succeed."
The abrupt but at least silent disconnection of the com-line from his enemy's side said all he needed to know for the moment.