Title: Control 4/?
Author: sharonmjl47
Rating: NC-17
Category: Movieverse.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and no one. Sad, isn’t it!
Feedback: Please, bad or good. If no one tells me it’s bad, I won’t know!
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They’d been sitting in Xavier’s office for the past two hours, trying to reach some kind of conclusion to the situation. It had been two days since she had told Logan her name was Carol. They had all done a mountain of research trying to find out who she was, where she was from, known allies, basically anything they could. Nothing had come up. Even their informants in the Mutant underground had gone quiet and cold.
A million theories and ideas had been thrashed out, and nothing had been resolved. Logan stood staring out of the main window overlooking the basketball courts. He watched silently as the kids played, happy in their innocent world and completely oblivious to the turmoil coursing through their teachers. Jubilee stood next to Logan, the Professor, behind his desk sitting in stony silence and the others Scott, ‘Ro, Bobby and Hank were scattered around the room also sat in silence
Each of them physically jumped when Kitty burst through the door holding a green folder. “I got her!” She laid the folder on Xavier’s desk and flipped it open. There was a picture of Carol and another of her family. “Carol Danvers, also lovingly known as Ms. Marvel. Superhuman strength, invulnerability as well as being able to fly, which I’m guessing could be handy! She doesn’t age either. There’s no mention of a healing ability; she simply just doesn’t age. She fits our woman.”
“Well done, Katherine. Did you find out anything else?” Xavier smiled at her warmly, genuinely pleased that they finally had some answers, and if those answers lead to a possible solution, he would be even happier.
“Yeah,” she read off of the sheet in front of her. “Carol Danvers. Height, 5ft 11in, weight, 124lbs, eyes blue, hair blonde. American, born Boston, Massachusetts. Her father is/was, not sure, Joseph Danvers, Sr. Mother Marie Danvers…” Logan nearly laughed at that. The mother of the woman who was in Marie was called Marie. “…two brothers, Joseph Jr. and Steven, he’s deceased. She graduated with a B.A., was Chief of Tactical Operations for the Department of Homeland Security, a former intelligence agent with the CIA, and a NASA security chief. By all accounts a competent, intelligent woman.”
Xavier nodded for her to carry on. “Apparently in the early 1980’s, she was used in what looks like a military programme, forcibly, and by the looks of it, the details are really, really sketchy. They tried to get her to be some kind of trained assassin…”
Logan snorted. “Fucking typical!”
Kitty coughed and read off her notes again. “But she refused to comply and escaped after a number of years in holding, heading straight for our old friend Magneto. The reason she’s been so hard to find is that when she was taken into this ‘military programme’, they wiped her record, everything. According to the world, this woman doesn’t and never has existed. I had to hack into a number of heavily protected government systems to get the information.” She sat down heavily in one of the plush chairs opposite the Professor. “That’s all I’ve got on her.”
“Magneto. Really how predictable. I should have known.” Xavier clasped his hands in front of him and rested his elbows on his desk. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t help Rogue at the present.”
Logan turned to face the group and leaned on the wall by the window, crossing his arms. “I think ‘Carol’ wants out.”
Scott picked up his coffee and took a sip before speaking. “What makes you say that?”
“She said something the other day about the voices in her head. Rogue’s voices. She didn’t know about them, and I think they’re doing her head in. They obviously don’t want her up there as much as we don’t, even Magneto which is kinda strange.”
“Who has she got up there anyway?”
“Last time we talked about it, which was a while now, six months maybe, um… just me and Bucket-head…” He noticed the confused look on ‘Ro’s face. “Magneto!” She gave a silent ‘O’ when she got the nickname Logan had used.
Xavier set his delicate teacup down on his desk. “I simply can’t access her mind unless she lets me. Rogue’s mind has always been a very difficult consciousness to penetrate because of the ‘passengers’ she has. But when I was working with her on the control of her mutation, if she completely relaxed, I was able get in. Only briefly, mind you, mere minutes or sometimes seconds at a time, but I could.”
“So, if this Carol chick lets you in, you can get Rogue-y back out?” Jubilee spoke as she crossed the room and sat on the couch next Scott.
The Professor addressed them all again. “In theory, but there are many factors to consider.”
“Indeed there are. I know not many or, in fact, none of you want to hear this, and I probably won’t be very popular, but we have to consider the human rights of this individual in...” Hank put his hands up at the shocked looks he got from Scott, Bobby, Jubilee and ‘Ro.
“No way! You can’t consider the feelings of someone that basically raped Rogue’s mind.”
Bobby spoke next. “I agree with ‘Ro. She forced her way in and she must have realised that this was a possible end result.”
“Bobby, Hank does have a point, even though I agree with you.” Scott unconsciously touched his side when he spoke.
“Scott’s right. There is a point I’m trying to make here. Carol Danvers is/was an individual. Yes, she obviously forced her way into Rogue’s consciousness and took over with every intention of hurting or killing as many of us as possible, but… She has a right to be considered. She may not have, as Logan said, realised the full implications of her actions, or she may have been forced by Magneto somehow. My guess would be he didn’t tell her the full extent of how this would affect her. Either that or he simple lied to her. We have to make sure that the actions she took were her own, but the point remains that guilty or not, capable or not, she still needs to be afforded basic human rights.”
“And if they weren’t her own actions?”
“I… I don’t know. I suppose, if you looked at it from a medical point of view, Rogue has Multiple Personality Disorder and Carol is her ‘other’ personality. Court rulings in America and England that have dealt with MPD cases have gone the way of proving that the extra personality is in some cases a completely separate entity. In the majority of those cases, the extra personality is completely unknown to the original owner of the body, and Courts have ruled that this personality should be afforded the same basic human and legal rights as any other individual. There has also been one rather landmark case where the original person had committed a crime, and the Courts *almost* decided not to convict because the ‘extra’ personality was innocent of the crime, and imprisonment would have been an infringement of ‘their’ basic human rights. It’s a very difficult and complex area to deal with.”
Xavier sat back in his wheelchair again. “From what she has said to us, she knew what would happen to her own physical body. She even went so far as to tell us she was dead and that her intent was to eliminate the X-Men. But if what she said to Logan is true, she didn’t realise that there were others inside Rogue’s mind. Magneto didn’t give her all the facts.”
“Hang on. While we’re on the ‘save the evil lady’ bandwagon, have you thought that good old Mags doesn’t even know about Rogue’s playmates?”
“Yella’s right. Why or how would he know?” Jubilee frowned at the name Logan used for her, but then smiled when she realised he had agreed with her. She had been spending a little time with him, and they had chatted about Marie and the whole situation. He made her feel a little better, having someone close to her best friend to talk to.
“That’s very true. I think only the people in this room know the full extent of Rogue’s mutation. It certainly leaves us in the bargaining seat. We can effectively stop the voices and ‘help’ her by extracting her from Rogue.”
“We are not bargaining with her. No way!”
“Logan, she has to let me inside her mind for me to be able to help Rogue. We have proved that even with the help of medication, I can’t do it. She has to agree, if the voices are as you say effecting her. If she does, then I can take her out of Rogue’s mind completely and permanently.”
Hank sat forward again. “Logan, we also have to consider this woman’s family. Kitty, you said there were parents and a younger brother?”
“Uh…” she checked her scribbled notes. “Yeah, the eldest son died in a car accident about six months after his 17th birthday. I can’t find any record of the parents past their last known address, which was late 1981. Anything after that has been kept off record or wiped, but I have a loose lead on the brother. Well, it’s not a loose lead. I’ve figured out who he is, but I can’t prove it.”
“What do you mean, my dear?” Hank smiled at her warmly. Logan noticed and smiled; Bobby also noticed the fact that Hank smiled at his fiancée but didn’t pay any attention to it.
“His records disappear at around the same time as hers did. Then, almost the same time, in fact the same day, a new identity appears. Persons the same height, weight, hair, eyes etc, but different name and a new family. He was very, very young – seven or eight years old when this was all switched about – so he may not even know who he really is.”
“I get why: the family lose their eldest son, their daughter was kidnapped because of her mutation, they wanted the younger son safe so they gave him away and had his identity changed. It’s a little extreme, but I can understand why people would go to such lengths to make sure their child was safe.” The others nodded at ‘Ro’s conclusion.
“There’s more… he’s a mutant, in fact, and I really hope that you didn’t mind me checking Professor, but he’s an ex-student of the Institute.”
“Who?” The look on Xavier face was stern. Everyone in the room could tell he was very worried.
“Sean Cassidy, a.k.a Banshee.” She pushed a photo of him onto the desk.
Scott rose and walked to look at Kitty’s notes. “Hang on, Sean was in my year. He came from Ireland. There’s no way it could be the same guy! We played football together. He hung around with me and Alex.”
“It is. It has to be. The records were deleted and then created from the same point, the same computer terminal, the same time. The dates match, his age matches, even his appearance is similar to hers.”
“Kit-kat, what about his mutation?”
“Um, superhumanly powerful lungs. Throat and vocal cords can produce a sonic scream for various effects, such as to overwhelm listeners with deafening noise, stun them with tight-focus low-frequency sonic blasts. Effective even against shielded ears by penetrating the skull via bone conduction. Um, can plunge them into a hypnotic trance, disorient them, nauseate them, or simply render them unconscious. As well as confusing scanning equipment. Oh, and the clincher for me, as we all know siblings sometimes share similar mutations, as well as the *superhuman* strength of his lugs, he can *fly*!”
“No way! No way does Sean have anything to do with that piece of shit!”
“Scott, from what Kitty has uncovered, she wasn’t always like this. She was an intelligent woman, with a good life, a loving family. For all we know she could have been in a relationship with someone, maybe wanting to get married, have kids. I mean, come on, at one point in her life she was just like the rest of us.”
“I know, ‘Ro, but, I’m just finding it so hard to believe.”
“Things happen to people, bad things. It makes them change. You don’t know what’s happened to her to make her so damn nasty.”
“So you’re condoning it?”
Logan gave a sharp bitter chuckle. “I think you know me better than that!” He moved and sat on the edge of Xavier desk. “Is there anyway we can prove this Banshee is her brother?”
“A DNA test would be the only true way.” Hank cleaned his glasses as he spoke.
“Hank, Kitty, check the school medical records. When Sean and Scott were students, the physician, Elliot Roberts, was extremely thorough. He would have a DNA sample for every student. I think its important that we find out for sure, and then we may be able to use that to our advantage. Logan, talk to her about him; see if it hits a nerve.” He nodded at them all, and they filtered out of his office in silence. Once alone, he leaned his elbows forward on his desk and rubbed his temples.
Logan followed Hank and Kitty down the corridor to the lower level elevator. Kitty pushed the button, and Hank gestured to Logan. “Coming down now?”
Logan’s only response was to raise a cigar and walk out the front door into the grounds. “He’s not taking this very well, is he?”
Hank smiled at her as they entered the lift. “No, he cares for Rogue as we all do, but their friendship is a very special one.”
She looked at him and rolled her eyes. “Please! Special friendship, any fool can tell they’ve been in love with each other for years. They are both just too stubborn and stupid to do anything about it. If this whole situation proves anything, then it’s that people wait too long to say how they really feel. Take your opportunities, say what you need to say, and do what you need to do before it’s too late and you never have the chance.” He was staring at her and she shook her head. “What?”
He took a step towards her, faltered slightly, touched her chin lightly, and then kissed her, chaste but meaningfully on her lips. Her eyes flew wide and she stiffened in surprise, then she softened into him slightly, placing her hands on his shoulders. He pulled away, and if it weren’t for his fur, she would have been able to see he was blushing.
“You’re quite right, my dear. People wait far too long to tell others how they feel. For example, I have waited three years to tell you that I find you rather alluring. You are a light-hearted, pleasant, and radiant young woman who is not only incredibly intelligent, but most beautiful also.” The elevator came to a stop, and the doors opened. He shifted and looked at his feet before looking at her and continuing. She was too stunned to speak. “And now I fear I may have embarrassed you…”
“Hank, no. You haven’t. I had no idea you felt this way.”
“I must say, it feels rather good to have it out in the open. And now I think we should get along. We have much to do, and if I don’t get out of this elevator immediately, I fear I may kiss you again, and considering your happy relationship with Robert that would be inappropriate.”
He turned to leave, but she caught his arm. “I don’t mind.” She leaned up, and he kissed her again. This time her arms wound round his neck, and she pressed herself against him. She didn’t realise that they had moved until her back hit the wall of the elevator.
He broke the kiss and smiled at her so widely his fangs showed. “I… I don’t understand?”
“My relationship with Bobby isn’t happy.” She walked out of the elevator, and he followed her into the lab. “In fact, it hasn’t been good for a while, and I’ve just been avoiding it, or looking for an excuse to end it. But I don’t want to use you as an excuse and I don’t want you to think that you’re an excuse, your not. Look Hank, I’m not saying I want to jump into anything, because I don’t. I need to get things sorted out with Bobby and my head sorted out a little bit too. I’m attracted to you Hank, I won’t lie about it, but I not ready to jump from one person to another just because they’re there.” She sighed heavily. “God, that sounded so harsh, I don’t mean it like that! I’m sorry.”
He took her hand and kissed it gently. “I understand completely. You have my support if you need it.” She blushed and they got on with trying to find Sean Cassidy’s records and DNA samples.
Logan blew smoke out with a heavy sigh. He had walked round the back of the house to the small memorial garden that had been erected for Jean after she saved them all at Alkali Lake. He sat down on the bench and continued to smoke as he stared at the tall elegant stone that bore her name.
He put the cigar out, putting the stub in his pocket so it didn’t make the little garden look untidy. He knew Jean would have hated that. He walked over to the stone. “I could use some help here, Jeannie. This woman isn’t Marie, but she looks and smells like Marie, and my dumb metal-encased brain keeps thinking it’s Marie. But it ain’t. You’re not going to help though, are ya? You’ve done all the helping you’re gonna do. You knew, didn’t you, knew how she felt about me. Tried to tell me too, didn’t ya, darlin’, but I brushed it off. I think you knew I loved her too. Stupid, stubborn old me, huh.” He gave a small chuckle. “Night, Jeannie. Sleep easy, darlin’.”
He walked slowly back into the mansion, straight to the elevator and down to see Carol.
***********END OF CHAPTER FOUR
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Summary: “Things happen to people, bad things. It makes them change. You don’t know what’s happened to her to make her so damn nasty.”
Beta by Gamma, again Luv her!
Beta by Gamma, again Luv her!