The Ties That Bind

The Ties That Bind
3/9

Scully wandered aimlessly down the halls of the mansion. She’d gone back to her room after seeing Bobby, but the confinement had soon seemed too much. She’d been prowling the rooms and corridors, and the hollowing echoing was really starting to make her long for any other sound.

She stopped outside the Professor’s study, trailing her fingers along the wood working. She could still remember the first time that she’d been in there, when he’d told her that she really couldn’t go home again. It was a solemn place to her, a heavy place.

And, at that moment, there were voices coming from inside. She was about to move on when her name caught her attention. Against her own best intentions, she leaned in closer, turning her ear towards the wood.

“..on, Chuck,” she heard Logan growl. “We talked to Bobby. She was backed into a corner, on the defensive, then grabbed. She just wanted to get away. There was no will involved in it. It was a reflexive use of her abilities, what we need to teach her to control. And afterwards, she tried to heal him, then she didn’t leave till she knew that he’d get on. Look, are you going to tell me that you’ve never lashed out with a mental bolt when you were surprised?”

“The simple fact is,” the Professor started, before being interrupted.

“It.....reflex....if we don’t......give her the chance to ...... learn,” Logan’s voice began to fade in and out, and she leaned forward the extra inch, placed her ear against the cool surface, feeling guilty.

“Ah trust her.” That had to be Sam, the easy drawl.

She thought that she could hear them moving around the room.

“Why don’t we ask her what she thinks?” Logan’s voice came again, closer this time. “She’s standin’ right outside the door.”

She hastily straightened, trying very hard to keep her expression level. She brushed her red and gold hair back as she straightened her shoulders, and walked into the room.

The Professor was behind his desk, Sam standing in front of him, almost as if he were interviewing for a job. Ororo stood with one hand on the bookcases off to the side, and Logan was guarding the door. Looking at all of them, she felt the sudden impulse to blush.

Xavier smiled at her. “I was actually just about to call you.” They seemed to be prepared to overlook her indiscretion, since no one commented. Feeling as if she should still apologize, she opened her mouth to speak, but the Professor was already continuing. “You already know that Paige, Sam’s sister, is suffering from the last stages of pancreatic cancer, and Sam is going home to be with her.”

She didn’t like how this conversation was going. The last time that someone had talked to her about this, it hadn’t ended well. Fidgeting a little, she waited for him to continue.

“Sam here has asked me something that he’d like to pass on to you.” He motioned to the young man, who looked fairly nervous.

“Well, Miss Scully, mah sister’s doctors have mentioned to me that they don’t like her being out from under proper medical supervision.” He paused, licking his lips. “You’re an MD, aren’t you?”

Scully nodded cautiously. They had to want a refferal. The couldn’t want... Not after this evening.

“Ah was wondering if ya’d come to Kentucky with me for a bit. We don’t have the money to hire a caretaker, an my ma would sure sleep a little easier if there was someone there who knew the procedures.”

“Aren’t you worried that I’d...”

“Ah promise not to shake ya and tell you to grow up,” he said, the traces of a smile touching his tired face. Scully looked at him closely, carefully. Since she’d been here, he appeared to have aged at least five years. She was sure that his eyes hadn’t been so faded, touched by the start of those small lines.

“Can I let you know in the morning?” she asked.

He nodded. “We leave for the airport at seven thirty if you decide to come.”

The five of them chatted for a bit, idle small talk dancing around everything of any importance. Sam left shortly, pleading his early morning. Scully went up to her room not much later.

She didn’t get much sleep.

*

To the residents of Redan, Arizona, the New Hope Refuge was simply the enclave of a well meaning but misguided crackpot religion. They saw the Fellowship of Enlightened Souls as quiet and well behaved, but a bit soft in the head. There were, however, those who said that the Fellowship was a front for something more sinister. They said that they were a militia, a gang, a group of gun runners, that inside the the high stone walls, under the main building, there was a drug lab which catered to the rich and curious. The people seemed nice enough, even if the tall one did scare small children for some reason no one could ever pin down, and their leader, a man with striking white hair, did seem a tad fanatical.

But as long as the Fellowship kept mainly to themselves, bought from the town’s grocery stores, didn’t solicit within the township, and didn’t try to convert any of the locals, they were tolerated, and the rumours remained just that.

Rumours.

Even if they had been believed, they were pretty far off anyway.

The Fellowship didn’t file their taxes as if they were a religious group. It attracted less attention to pay as if they were simply a group of co-op farmers trying to eke out a living. Claiming the refunds offered to a religious group involved proving that they were, indeed, a religious group, and the last thing that they wanted was the government breathing down their necks.

The name had been cleverly thought up by Mortimer, who had been responsible for preparing their arrival. Magneto’s intervention was the only thing that had prevented Creed from skinning the little man alive when he’d found out exactly what he’d be pretending to be until they had to move again.

It was actually quite a nice compound. There was room for obstacle courses outside on the red packed ground, training areas and all of their equipment, some of which was quite bulky, inside the neat stucco building. Blasting had located a series of caverns underneath, which would be useful for escape if they were to be attacked, and their distance from town combined with their walls let them work in privacy.

Yet the Master of Magnetism himself sat outside, cursing his home as he watched some of the new recruits train. You never would have known it to see him, unless by some chance you were to overhear him muttering “Charles must be laughing his head off.” It wasn’t the lack of rain that bothered him the most, although that certainly contributed to it. It wasn’t simply the fact that they were reduced to driving a minivan. It wasn’t just something to do with the fact that the omnipresent dust was rotten with iron particles, and he had to constantly concentrate on keeping it away so that he didn’t end up looking like a giant, red, teddy bear, and something else to do with Mystique’s current... state... of mind.

Mystique was watching him out the upper story window as she dialled a number by heart. She wasn’t unprofessional enough to leave incriminating clues like scraps of papers with the phone numbers of mercenary agencies lying around. This was a line that she’d had installed herself, so she knew that there wasn’t a tap on it. It wouldn’t do for Magnus to hear what she was planning. He didn’t still consider Xavier a friend, but she got the distinct feeling that he’d be against what she was planning. On principle, in theory, due to practicality, and out of some well meaning but antiquated sense of fairness.

She let the phone ring four time, then hung up and dialled again. On the seventh ring, the line clicked open and she said the password.

They’d gotten more off of the bank robbery than she’d let on. She’d kept about half of it, and it sat in a safe deposit box in the very bank that they’d ripped off. It had been easy to slip in in the confusion. Some poor man had run out of the vault as the commotion started, and all she’d had to do was put a foot in the gap to stop it from closing.

That wasn’t all the money that she’d siphoned from the Brotherhood, and stolen from other sources in various ways. All together, it was quite a neat sum. It had taken her almost three months to get enough for what she was planning.

Down in the courtyard, Erik pressed his hand to the side of his head, adjusting the microphone.

It wasn’t always necessary to tap a phone line.

It was often less conspicuous to bug a room. A good mike would pick up part of both sides of the conversation.

He listened as his second in command outlined her treachery.

*

Sam glanced at his watch. Seven forty. Sighing, he heaved a bag into the truck of the car. He’d said his goodbyes all ready, inside.

He’d really hoped...

He was just throwing the last of his things in when a few loud thuds sounded behind his feet. He turned around to see Dana dropping her bags on the curb.

“Got room for one more?” She asked.

He smiled the first real smile that she’d seen from him in awhile. “You betcha.”

Bishop and Storm watched from her loft as the two finished packing the car. “Do you think that this was the right choice?” She asked from her perch in the open skylight as they drove off.

Bishop turned from the lower window, carefully avoiding the dangling branches of some sort of exotic tree. He looked at her, a bit surprised. Storm rarely second guessed herself like that. “I believe that she just needs a break, some time to clear her head. This could be good for her.”

She smiled down at him gratefully, eyes creasing for the barest of seconds.

“Who knows. This could be good for all involved.”

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