It's All In Your Head: Part Ten
by sevenall
"This is Charles Xavier".
"H'lo, Chuck. I thought I'd tell ya, yer telepath ain't coming home for dinner".
"What do you mean, Logan?"
"She fainted on the street. I got an ambulance. She's waiting fer X-ray".
"Logan, you must get her here at once. She could be dangerous".
"Sorry, can't hear ya. The traffic is really loud here".
"Where are you? I'll send Scott to come and get you both".
"Chuck, the traffic just got louder".
"I see. Let's calm down. Where can I reach you? I'd like to do at least some damage control".
"Sorry ta tell ya, but I won't be available fer a while".
"How long?"
"Until Bets asks me to call ya. I understand it might be a pretty long while".
"Will you give her...my regards?"
"Can't speak fer her, Chuck, but I'd say she's had 'bout enough of what ya give".
Click.
"Hematoma", a deep voice said, and Elizabeth was startled out of her pleasant unawareness, into a strong smell of disinfectant and blood.
"Miss Braddock, you have a hematoma in your head, in the intercranial space".
"The excess fluid has been drained away, to relieve the pressure on your brain. You will regain...any function lost to you".
That little pause informed Elizabeth of what she had lost. Her telepathy. X-Men vs. Reality 0-1. She thought she'd cry or throw up, but what came out was a giggle and she laughed madly until the sting of a needle made her stop.
"Either Logan has gotten remarkably worse at covering his tracks, or you had a subconscious wish to be found". A familiar voice. The Professor.
Elizabeth's eyes flew open. Bright sunlight shone through the windows, hurt her head. She closed her eyes again.
"Hello, Betsy".
Something soft brushed against Elizabeth's neck. The scent of Chanel no. 5 wafted by and she flinched back just in time to avoid the embrace. Jean had some nerve to walk in here and act like...
"We're all here".
That was meant to be a reassuring statement from Scott, but Elizabeth felt close to panic.
"We've arranged transport for you. You will be transferred to the facility at Muir. Hank and I will accompany you". The Professor again.
"Why?" The word all but stuck in her throat. Her mouth was very dry.
"Hank is extremely eager to examine you. He...why don't you tell her yourself, Hank?"
"Dear Elizabeth, you have what we in the medical profession generally call an infiltrating malignant glioblastoma multiforme. A biopsy will be needed to ascertain the exact nature and location. My inexact observations so far indicate that the original growth is placed somewhere in the occipital lobe. Have you had any trouble reading? No? PET, CAT and MRI will give us the answer".
"I thought you said she had cancer, Hank", Jean complained.
No. This couldn't be. They had run every check at the Mansion, hadn't they? Hadn't they? Cancer. People died of that.
"I was just coming to the part where I was supposed to apologise and tell her what was wrong", Hank said, annoyed.
"No, you weren't. I'll talk to her". Jean sounded impatient.
Movements as a large number of people re-grouped at the whim of Jean the Queen.
"You have a brain tumour", Jean said, matter-of-factly. "Don't worry, we'll fix it".
"We?" Hank grumbled and someone (Remy?) exploded into shrill laughter. Wouldn't it be like Remy to laugh at her? Cancer.
Jean ignored them. The smell of her scent grew stronger, as if she had leaned forward.
"Hank thinks that the swelling is blocking your telepathy, but that can be fixed.The other piece of bad news is that Warren's gone. We haven't heard from him since you two broke up. Do you know where he is? He might have hurt himself".
Warren and Jean. Oh God. She hadn't remembered before. She wished the cancer would kill her right there and then. Tears squeezed their way out from under her eye-lids.
"Y'know, I coulda sworn I told y'all to butt out". Logan.
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. The sound of his boots seemed very loud in the sudden silence.
"The situation has changed, Logan. Elizabeth has lost her telepathy, due to the tumour. She needs radiation therapy, chemotherapy...".
"Out. All of ya. No one's gonna mess with her".
His shadow fell over the bed, shielded her from the light.
Elizabeth didn't know if the lowering of his voice was intentional or if it meant, God, if it meant that he was losing control again. The tension in the room was almost tangible until Xavier chose to ignore the threat and slipped into his teacher mode again.
"You can say goodbye to her now, Logan", he said briskly, "unless you change your mind about going back to the Mansion with us".
Another man might have rebelled against the demanding tone, the way a child rebels against an overbearing parent. Logan only looked at Xavier, a look that promised "Later, Chuck".
** The entity crouched in the indentations of the soft matter, slowly tasting the words. It had a name now. Cancer for short, glioblastoma for formal wear. Parasite. That word didn't taste well. Was it such a crime to want to live? To want the children to grow up to independency? Malignant. What a terrible word. It had expanded, re-located and was now feeding off other areas in the habitat but the main host was still alive, wasn't it? And what with the Kwannon persona, it wasn't as if the main host had liked that part anyway. **
Logan sat down on her bed, when they were alone again.
"Ya don't have ta go back", he said quietly.
She turned to him then, desperately, because all her desires had turned into one; leaving the Mansion and never having to see any X-Men again.
"Can you get me out of here? Please?"
She begged and he must know what it meant, because she was too proud to beg.
She waited for an answer. Saw his hand caress her shoulder, the clawmarks he had inflicted on her. Saw the claws slide out from underneath the protective sheaths and touch the wounds with infinite gentleness.
"Ya want it, Bets, ya got it", he said.
Later, Elizabeth would remember the escape as a dream where nothing could go wrong. Logan tied her hands together around his neck, told her to hold on and then he climbed out the window and scaled down the wall. After a few phonecalls, he had found her a hospice in Mount Kisco where one of the doctors owed him a favour. She would be admitted as Marie Tessier and on the way there he drilled her mercilessly in the facts of the imaginary person. He produced a creditcard and a bank account, though he warned her that excessive use might put the X-Men on her trail. He provided her with cash and several weapons she expected him to possess and some she didn't. At last, standing by the reception desk at the hospice, he jotted down a few lines on a napkin and handed it to her.
"Rosie in Madripoor. If ya really need me. Bye, Marie".
Elizabeth smiled.
"Thank you, Ashpool, and goodbye", she said, knowing how he hated long farewells.
He smiled back, but in an absent, disinterested way, as if he had already forgotten her. He bowed stiffly and turned to the door.
"Happy hunting", Elizabeth said softly. She had not commented the familiar face on the passport he had given her, nor the fact that a certain daimyo never had had the chance to use it.
She saw him tense for a moment, then acknowledge it and her with an almost imperceptible nod.
Her telepathy did not return. She was grateful. It spared her from sharing death with every resident at the hospice who passed away. It spared her from remembering too much.
The biopsy Hank had suggested was taken by a doctor at a nearby clinic. It confirmed the diagnosis, as she'd known it would. Hank was a first-rate medical doctor, whatever his ethics. She refused chemotherapy but allowed them to book her in for radiation some weeks later. They insisted and she was too tired to argue. The days went by and life slipped away from her as slow and final as a turning tide. Dying ought to be more of a drama, but she didn't really wish for anything more. It was all very peaceful.She walked in the park and in the corridors, when it rained and she could not think of one single thing that grieved or touched her.
One night she wandered into a wing she had never visited before.There was a light in one of the rooms and the door was ajar. Elizabeth heard someone sing. She loved music, was a fair pianist and singer herself, but this was wonderful. Maybe it was the atmosphere, the night, the light in an otherwise dark corridor, but most likely it was the voice itself, golden with a husky timbre, rising and falling in exquisite harmony. The song was an old, familiar lullaby, but yet it wasn't. The voice flowed through intricate variations of the original melody, effortlessly as running water. Elizabeth edged closer to the door, trying to get a glimpse of the singer. She must have made some small sound, because the singing stopped in the middle of a phrase.
"Who's there?" The golden voice was frightened now.
"Hello", Elizabeth said and stepped into the room, because she figured that disappearing would only make things worse.
The lights that had seemed brighter in the hallway. Elizabeth could barely make out the small bed at the wall, but she saw the respirator and heard the gurgling sounds. The blonde woman at the bedside turned to her, scared and angered by the intrusion.
"I must apologise for disturbing you", Elizabeth said,"I was just drawn by your beautiful voice. My name is Marie. I hope you will forgive me".
She smiled her sweetest smile, the one she had flashed to the cameras thousand years ago.
The blonde woman looked relieved, perhaps a little self-conscious. Elizabeth noted that she was in her early thirties, short and squat.
"Goodness, you're English, too, aren't you? But your eyes..."
"My mother came from Hong Kong". And wouldn't Warren have been pleased with the casual way she said it?
"That's alright then. My name is Victoria and this is my daughter Lisa".
There was an awkward pause in which the respirator wheezed and sighed. Elizabeth tried to find something to say.
"I could never sing like that".
Lame, but she hadn't been trained for these kinds of social events.
"No, you couldn't".
Elizabeth looked up, surprised. She had not expected such an ungracious answer. Victoria's mouth softened into a smile.
"I mean, you're a soprano and I'm a counter alto".
Elizabeth nodded.
"I was going to be a music major", Victoria went on. "Then I got Lisa. The first years were wonderful. She was a gift from God. When she got sick I knew He was taking her back".
Elizabeth forced herself to look at the bed. The child's face was grotesquely bloated and puffy. Her cheeks were mottled with dark bruises.Tufts of yellowish hair grew on her head. What a terrible way to die, hooked up to a machine.
"What's wrong with her?" she asked.
It was a dumb question. It was obvious that the cause of Lisa's condition no longer mattered. Whatever it was, was going to kill her.
"A mutant touched her and she got sick", Victoria answered simply.
It was outrageous that people still believed that. Before the Legacy Virus, it had been fear of contagious mutations. Thanks to an enourmous information campaign, the Professor had managed to convince most people that mutations couldn't be transferred by mere touch. Then the Legacy Virus had hit the newsservices and hysteria had broken out, especially since Moira's statement. As far as regular tests could show, Moira was no mutant. And the fear of mutants, repressed for a few years had found another channel.
"Information is the only way", the Professor had said many times, both publicly and at the Mansion. "If you can convince just one person to change his opinion of mutants, by showing them compassion and honesty, you have changed the world".
Elizabeth had thought he was a great man. Part of her still did. But so much had happened since then and she had changed so much, shed so many loyalties. The November night was dark and the other woman was crying. There was no need to change the world, not while rain was still falling outside and inside her own her heart. In the room of a dying child, in the darkness preceding death, the final betrayal seemed almost unimportant. She said nothing, just took Victoria's hands between her own.
<And now a mutant touched you too.>