Amid the shadows, creeping... (open)

[Bobby Drake]

Hiking in the mountains around Warren’s base (he still can’t bring himself to call it the Brotherhood base) isn’t the most interesting thing Bobby has done with his time in the last month, but he’s coming to appreciate it… if only because it gets him out of the base itself and away from everybody.

It’s bad enough having Sean around, with his poisonous little comments that are just civil enough that Bobby can’t legitimately get pissed off at him. Bad enough having to be civil to the guy and his nutjob werewolf bodyguard, when what he wants to do is lock them both up. (Well, OK… if he’s going to be honest with himself, what he actually wants to do is get some of his own back by beating them both into a bloody pulp, and then lock them both up. But he’s an X-Man, and X-Men don’t do that sort of thing. He keeps reminding himself of that.)

But tack on to that the fact that all the “grown up” X-Men keep looking at him sideways, like they think he’s going to betray them at any moment, and the fact that there’s not enough room for them to avoid constantly bumping into each other, and… well, everything… and it finally sent him out into the hills. At least they trust me enough to let me out of the base… that’s something, anyway.

[N.P.C]

Jade

Jade takes a moment to make sure her camoflauge is solid before reporting back to the base through Eliot. It only takes a few seconds to receive a reply: OK, hon… Boss says you’re off monitor duty. Looks like the kid’s clean.

Yes, I knew that, she thinks in the privacy of her own mind. She’s been following Drake for about an hour, after all, and he hasn’t tried to contact anyone or do anything sneaky. Not to mention that she’d scanned his mind. As far as she’s concerned he’s exactly what he seems to be.

Not that Uncle Warren had precisely doubted it… if he had, he wouldn’t have let Drake leave the base in the first place. He’s just professionally paranoid. Jade can’t blame him, though: his paranoia has kept all of them alive more than once, and her telepathy isn’t completely reliable against SHIELD’s technology. He could be a plant; she’s just pretty sure he isn’t. And she’s glad to have provided evidence.

Also, she’s feeling pretty smug about having concealed her presence from him throughout this whole hike. Of course, this isn’t the same Robert Drake the Brotherhood has been hiding from for most of her life – twenty years of experience makes a difference, after all, and this Drake isn’t any older than she is – but it’s still cool to be successfully tricking the “bogeyman.”

[Bobby Drake]

One thing you can say for this spot, Bobby has to admit – it’s remote. In fact, he has no idea where they are, geographically, and would just as soon not know. The nice thing about having a teleporter on your team is you can put your base anywhere. ‘course, you’re hosed if he dies.

It had taken him a while to connect this “Vanisher” fellow to the Brotherhood member who’d extracted him from Baker Mansion… back then, John had only referred to him as “Plan B.” Bobby keeps thinking he ought to make friends with the guy, get information about what the Brotherhood is – was – will be? – whatever, information on the activities of Brotherhood in his own time. That might come in handy, if he ever gets back there. Then. Whatever.

Except he really has no desire to do so. He’s forgiven John for his role in that kidnapping – perversely, in large part thanks to Sean’s forcing him to really think about the event – but Bobby still doesn’t especially want to talk to anyone else who was involved in it, however much they might be the “good guys” in this insane future. I never did ask what ‘Plan A’ was, actually, he thinks… not for the first time… and concludes, as he always does, that he’d probably rather not know.

Besides which, he hadn’t come out here to think about Vanisher, he’d come out here to appreciate the scenery. No sign of human – or mutant – activity for as far as he can see, although he has spotted the very occasional sign of hikers and other infrequent travelers, and a whole lot of natural beauty. All of which has mostly led him to the inescapable conclusion that natural beauty is highly overrated... at least, that’s his position on the subject until he climbs over a rise and sees the mountain stream rushing in a small but lovely waterfall over a cascade of rocks into a small, rock-ridged pond.

Cool! Of all the things Bobby’d missed about his powers during his months without them, his out-of-season swimming tradition… well, didn’t make the list, really. Still, he’d missed the swims, and has tried to make time for them every day since… which, of course, hadn’t been possible the last few days, what with the being shattered into pieces and everything. Which makes this a minor godsend, and Bobby is running towards the riverbank mere seconds later.

He’s gotten his boots and socks off and is yanking off his shirt when he hears a voice from behind him: "That’s probably not such a great idea."

[Bobby Drake]

> "That’s probably not such a great idea."

Bobby recognizes the girl’s voice as he turns around, trying not to look nearly as surprised as he actually is. He successfully rejects “where did you come from?” and “what are you doing here?” as opening gambits and settles for "Left my uniform behind with my first body, sorry… no swim trunks."

Jade snorts dismissively and rolls her eyes, though privately she awards Bobby a point for recovering quickly. If she weren’t scanning the surface of his mind as she approached, she might really believe he’d known she was there. "There’s nothing you got I haven’t already seen, and better besides. Anyway, I meant you don’t want to go swimming in that. Mountain-melt runoff; it’s just barely above freezing."

Bobby laughs at her comeback, then shrugs and lets his shirt drop to the ground. "And this affects me how? ‘Iceman’, remember? Cold doesn’t bother me."

"Yeah, except for your brain, looks like. Uncle Warren told you no powers, right?" Bobby blinks in surprise, as much at the “Uncle Warren” business as the comment itself. "Well, sure, but… I mean, I figured he meant no obvious power use, like icing up, or…?"

Jade shakes her head sternly and points to the sky. "Not so easy. They’ve got scanning satellites up there programmed to look for pretty much anything out of the ordinary, flag it for inspection. Sure, somebody flying or pulling icicles out of thin air or whatever sets off a huge red flag, but some crazy white boy swimming bare-ass in mountain runoff’ll probably get tagged. Below threshold, probably, but enough of those and they’ll start paying a lot more attention to this area, and then the gig is up."

"Oh." Bobby’s eyes drop to the ground as he realizes just how careless he’d been. "I’m sorry, Jade. I didn’t think it through, and I almost – I guess I’m not used to really being hunted like this. Back – back in my time, the Mansion was kind of an open secret, you know?"

[Bobby Drake]

> " back in my time, the Mansion was kind of an open secret, you know?"

"Yeah, so Mom tells me. Which is why it’s so much rubble, now… it was pretty much the first thing they took down when the shooting started." Jade crosses her arms in front of her and scowls without quite meaning to. "I always wondered about that, actually. The government had already attacked the Mansion twice by then, right? And you guys just… sat there and took it? Why not strike back?"

There’s so much wrong about that sentence that Bobby’s head starts hurting just thinking about it. He can’t decide whether he’s more disturbed by someone calling Storm “Mom,” or by the idea that the Mansion should have declared pre-emptive war against the U.S. government. "No… it wasn’t like that. They weren’t the enemy… not really, not… I mean, we weren’t outlaws then! Stryker was a lone agent, and Project: Strikeback hadn’t been officially… it wasn’t supposed to be used, Emma Frost set it off, and…"

He trails off, knowing how lame all of that sounds. If the government wasn’t planning to use these programs, why create them? The truth is, they’d all let themselves be distracted by their private dramas and they’d lost sight of the big picture. They’d grown up in a basically peaceful, if tense, environment… and they’d let themselves believe it was always going to be like that. And he knows of no way to explain that to this girl whose entire life has been a shooting war.

Jade shrugs dismissively, and a touch contemptuously. "Yeah, figures you would say that." She’s not sure why she even asked Drake… he’s one of them, after all. Or will be… no, is. "You chose to work for them."

[Bobby Drake]

> "figures you would say that. You chose to work for them."

Bobby has absolutely no idea how to respond to that.

He wants to deny it, to claim it wasn’t him, but he knows that’s not true. Sure, the Colonel Drake he’d met during his breakout wasn’t exactly him, any more than the indestructible mercenary he’d joined up with afterwards is precisely Warren, but the similarities were about as undeniable.

And sure, someone could have faked all the history in Warren’s archives, but for what purpose? If they’d wanted to mess with his head, there were easier ways… not even Sean would set up something this elaborate for so little return.

Still, it’s hard listening to this girl who wasn’t even there criticize the Institute’s policies, and Bobby is tired of feeling guilty. "So go ask your mom, then," he spits out. "She was working closer with Fury than any of us, after he took over SHIELD. Or go ask your boss… he was hobnobbing with the same government types you wanted us to attack – I mean, you want us to have attacked… or," he struggles with the tenses for a moment and gives it up, his voice getting louder without his intending it to. "Ask him how well that would’ve worked out. Dammit, you sound just like Magneto… he wanted to start a damned race war, too. Humans vs mutants, may the best species survive… he’d have loved all this!"

"Well at least he was fighting for the right side!" Jade spits back angrily, then stops. "I mean… that’s not what I meant, " she starts again, but Bobby’s pulling his boots back on and ignoring her apology.

[Bobby Drake]

> " Well at least he was fighting for the right side! "

The silence stays both literally and figuratively chilly as Bobby pulls his boots and his shirt back on. Neither of them fit him terribly well, but given that he arrived in this timeframe wearing nothing but his X-Man uniform and ended up leaving that behind in the camps, he supposes he should be grateful Warren’s base had anything for him to wear at all.

The boots in particular are interesting, completely independent of his desire to pay attention to anything at all except Jade: they look like black leather, but stretch and breathe like elastic, making them seriously one-size-fits-all, and instead of fastenings or zippers they simply tighten around his feet once he slides them on. Convenient.

> " I mean… that’s not what I meant, "

"No, I get it. You’ve been fighting a war all your life, so that’s how you see it. And yeah, in a war what matters is who wins. The thing you’re not getting is that back then it wasn’t a war. Back then we were looking for ways to get along. Hell, for all I know that’s what I’m still doing, unlike the rest of you. And yeah, sounds like we blew it big time, and if we can get back I’m gonna fix that or die trying, because this is not a future I want to live to see again… but get this straight, Jade: this endless race war you’ve got going on? I’m not in this to win that war, I’m in this to end it. And if that puts me on the wrong side, you’re gonna have to decide what you’re gonna do about that, because I don’t intend to switch sides any time soon."

[Bobby Drake]

Jade listens tolerantly to Bobby’s little impassioned speech, then sighs. "I swear, you have got to be the most melodramatic man I’ve ever met. Give it a rest, will you? Anyway, yeah, I get it: you didn’t realize how bad it really was back then. So OK, Mr. Drama… now you know. So, let’s say Dad turns out not to be crazy after all and we really can send you guys back… what changes?"

"Well for one thing we find out who destroys – destroyed – Washington and we stop ‘em before they light that fuse. After that, we…" he trails off then, not sure what to say next. Starting a war is easy, but how do you start a peace? "Hell, I don’t know, Jade. All I know is we can’t go at it the way the Brotherhood does – I mean, did. We can’t become terrorists..." he stops again, realizing that, at least technically speaking, that’s exactly what they’d ended up doing. Well, everyone but me, looks like. "Well, at least I can’t."

He sighs, rubbing his eyes tiredly. "And yeah, I know, I’m speechifying again. Sorry. And I’m not answering your question, because I don’t have an answer. How about we change the subject?"

[Bobby Drake]

> "Let’s change the subject, OK?"

"Suits me. Nice day, isn’t it?" Jade gestures to indicate the blue sky and crisp autumn air, and Bobby chuckles. "Yeah, I guess… your doing?"

"No, I can’t take credit for this one. Actually, I don’t mess with the weather around the camps unless it’s an emergency… too much risk of anomalies getting noticed. Mom almost got caught that way, about five years ago... provided cloud cover to her team once too often. "

Bobby nods, trying not to look like his eyes are about to cross in bewilderment. He’d known who Jade’s parents were from reading through the archives, but he hadn’t really assimilated it. "You know, I still can’t get over that… Ororo and Jake, I mean. How’d they get together, anyway?"

Jade laughs out loud at that. It’s a nice laugh, Bobby thinks… sure beats her yelling at me. "Well, that depends on who you ask. According to Dad, he swept her off her feet with his debonair charm. According to Mom, she got tired of waiting for him to make a move and dragged him up to her attic after a faculty meeting. According to Uncle Warren, Dad almost botched their first real date… Uncle Josh had to telepathically coach him through it." She almost laughs again, then stops when she senses Bobby’s reaction, and takes the opportunity to pursue a question she’s always wondered about. "Sorry. You and Josh were pretty close, huh?"

Bobby nods, struggling with an incoherent but powerful grief. "Yeah, we were -- I mean, we are! My Josh isn’t, you know…" he forces himself to say it, aware that in some senseless way that makes it more real than it had been: "dead. Hell, I was best man at his wedding just a few weeks ago! He and Warren only just got back from their honey-- " he cuts off with a sudden realization, "Oh, God… Warren! He must have… I mean, when Josh, his Josh… oh, fuck. Is that why he’s so… I mean, I know he’s your boss and all, but he’s… "

"…changed. Not entirely for the better. Yes, I know. I was pretty young when it happened, but I remember Mom and Dad used to talk about it all the time. And, yes, that’s a lot of the reason. He’s a lot better now, really… he was just a zombie for a long time after Josh died and Nate took off. Mom wasn’t sure he was going to survive."

She pauses as Bobby digests that, unsure whether she wants to press her original question, then decides to go ahead. She’s always suspected there are things about Drake’s story she’s never been told, and she’s been ordered in no uncertain terms not to mindscan anyone about him, but nobody’s stopped her from talking to Drake the Younger here. It’s an opportunity she’s unwilling to give up.

"That’s when Warren quit the X-Men. A lot of folks did, or already had. And that’s when you… went official." She tries to keep her voice neutral, but it’s difficult… she remembers the arguments and the tears and the fights, even if she hadn’t been entirely clear what it was all about at the time. "Which… well, I’ve always wondered whether you and Josh were, you know, close."

"Well, we’ve been through a hell of a lot together… he --" Bobby cuts off in mid-answer, finally understanding the question. "Oh. You mean ‘close’? No, never. I mean, OK, yeah, I thought about it a couple of times after me and John broke up, but by then he and Warren had hooked up and…” he trails off at the incredulous expression on Jade’s face. "What?"

Jade continues to stare in incredulous silence before shaking her head. "No way. You and Pyro?!? Lord and Lady, that’s – that…" she trails off thoughtfully, then adds. "…that explains a lot, actually. His execution was around then, too. So that’s what set you off?"

Bobby shrugs noncommittally, more upset by her reaction than he’s willing to show. "I guess. Is it that surprising?" His voice cracks a little despite his efforts, and he realizes after some thought that what really hurts is that their whole relationship, which has been such an overwhelming part of his life for so long, had simply been forgotten… not important enough for anyone to mention or remember. Just another teenage fling. Well, duh, he scolds himself bitterly. It’s been a year and you haven’t figured that out yet? Man, you’re just dumb as dirt, aren’t you?

Jade actually takes a step back from the wave of emotion rolling off Drake. "Wow. You really have it bad for him, huh?" It feels weird playing counselor to a guy she’s been fighting pretty much all her life, but there’s no denying the genuineness or the intensity of his emotions. This is scary Colonel Drake? Of course, she understands that people change over twenty years. Still… she can’t see how this guy ends up overseeing concentration camps.

Something isn’t quite right here, and she intends to find out what it is.