So I haven't written fanfic in ages, but I just had to play around with the
concept a bit after hearing that Peter Wingfield got himself cast as a
presumed bad guy for the next X-Men movie. Have no idea who's archiving
anymore, but please ask beforehand. Feedback of all stripes and plaids always
cheerfully welcomed.
Castaways and Other Strangers
The world, vibrated, and Logan struggled awake to what felt like a moderately
strong earthquake. Instinct took over before he even opened his eyes. He tried
to struggle to his feet, only to bash his head on cold metal. Arms reached
out, only to encounter more of the same metal. He opened his eyes for an
instant and glanced through the bars confining him just long enough to see
the interior of a small cargo plane.
"I saw him twitch. We better sedate him again." At the sound of the voices,
he shifted back into what he thought was the position he had awoken in, the
better to assess his situation.
"You can if you want. If he's awake and playing possum, then whoever sticks
his hand in the cage is likely to come up missing at least a hand, if not an
entire arm."
"But just to be safe."
"If you want to go ahead. But our instructions only were to keep the girl from
regaining consciousness, and him in his cozy adamantium coffin until we get
home."
"Lousy academic punks with no guts. Don't know why they ever let you into the
Friends of Humanity anyways, Pierson."
"That's your problem. I just prefer to think of it as a finely tuned survival
instinct. I don't go jumping into the crocodile exhibit at the zoo either.
Some dangerous things, you just need to leave alone as little as possible."
Logan carefully cracked his eyes slightly open. His coffin, as the voice
called Pierson had described it, seemed to be a metal lattice, presumably of
adamantium. He lay in in in the middle of the cramped space, feet facing the
plane's tail. From the reflections off his coffin, he could see the two men,
one redheaded, the other pale with dark hair, in seated near the cockpit
door, their clothing obviously unifroms but lacking insignias, rifles put in
racks at the bulkhead.
"When we get back, I'm going to report you." Red snapped.
"Your choice." Dark hair shrugged. "In the meantime, I'm going to just sit
back and pretend I'm on the Concorde instead of stuck with you." Dark hair
crossed his arms over his chest, apparently considering the conversation
complete. The plane engines picked that moment to start sounding a little bit
off kilter.
Logan carefully looked to his right, and saw only airplane hull. Then he
peered left, and what he saw made him nearly try to rip himself out of his
coffin and at the two guards, whether escape was possible or not. His Jeanie,
laying unmoving in her own carefully padded coffin-like box. He caught himself
starting to growl, but quashed the impulse. He inhaled carefully, smelling the
mix of oil and unwashed guard and Jean's sweat. She was alive at least. There
was a difference between their captors suspecting he was awake, and knowing he
was, and he figured he would need every possible edge to get him and Jeanie
out of this mess. He began to slowly contract and relax his muscles, working
out any cramps.
Just as he got to his left hamstring, the plane shook harder, and the sound of
the engine changed from off kilter to decidedly wrong.
"Pierson, Hardy strap down back there. We've got problems." What Logan assumed
was the pilot's yelled back into the cabin. He heard his jailers scramble to
fasten seatbelts as the pilot slammed the plane into a steep dive. Logan
gripped at the adamantium lattice to stabilize himself. A worried quick glance
to the left showed him that unlike him, Jean had been strapped into place.
The angle of the dive began to level out.
"We're not going to make it to base. There's an island close in, I'm going to
try to land, engine or not." The engine still sputtered omniously, the pilot
trying to carefully nurse the plane back to earth. For a few minutes, the
pilot seemed to win the struggle then the engine sputtered again.
"Brace for impact!" Logan tightened his grip and watched the other men try to
do the same. Not that it was likely to do any of them any good. In a split
second, the plane hit the ground hard. Logan's head flew against the bars
from the momentum of it all, and he crashed back into unconsciuosness.
************************************
He came to again, this time to the smell of ocean water. He twisted his head
back to see two dead looking guards still strapped to their seats and a hole
in the side of the plane, sunlight streaming into the gap. Time to get out of
here. In a few seconds, he found the lock to his cage, and using one of his
claws as a pick, had himself free and standing in the remains of the plane. He
next went to Jean's coffin, expecting the worse.
Instead, he was treated to the wonderful sight of her chest still rising and
falling. He reached inside and gingerly slid a finger to her neck, and was
rewarded with a strong pulse. At that moment, he let go of the breath he
hadn't known he was holding, and on the next inhale, caught a hint of jet fuel
in the air.
"Okay, Jeanie. I don't know how badly you're hurt, but I'm going to have to
get you out of here." He reluctantly stepped away from her and looked around
the plane. Stepping out of the plane through the hole, he quickly scavenged a
long flat chunk of what had been wing. He brought it back inside, and
carefully slid it underneath Jean's still form.
"Can't have you turning into another Chuck now." Using the improvised
backboard, he carefully carried Jean out of the plane wreckage and out of what
he considered any sort of blast range. Seventy yards out, he set her down on
the rocky beach and examined the small island: beach quickly fading into
vegetation highlighted by a handful of coconut palms, and a few hills. No
signs of human civilization anywhere. As he bent over to check Jean's vitals
again, she started to wake up.
"Scott, what kind of dream was that?" She started to struggle up, but Logan
gently held her down.
"One Eye's not here right now, and it ain't a dream." He said. "Now how are
you feeling?"
"Like I got run over by a semi truck."
"Pretty close. It was a plane crash. Can you wiggle your toes for me?"
"Moving my feet now, and then arms, and then will you let me sit up?"
"Smart ass telepaths reading my mind on what's next."
"As they said in Fargo, you betcha." The humor was shaky, but the strength was
coming back into Jean's voice. "Doesn't feel like anything's broken."
"Just want to be sure. None of the people who grabbed us made it off the plane
alive." He helped her sit up. "You okay for a minute? I want to see what I can
scavenge from the crash."
He had made it back to the wreckage when the adrenaline wore off, and he
suddenly realized how much he really hurt. His healing factor may have kept
him from dying in the crash, but he still felt every bump, bruise and cracked,
but now healing broken bone. "Gotta keep going." He mumbled as he eased his
way back into the plane through the hole in the fusilage. There did not seem
to be as much spilled fuel as he had expected. Maybe the pilot had managed to
dump most of it before the crash. Still, there could be enough left to be
dangerous.
Quickly assessing the main cabin, Logan grabbed the guns of his former
jailers. After swinging a weapon over each shoulder, he looked into the
cockpit just long enough to see that anything resembling radio equipment had
taken the brunt of the impact, and was therefore as dead as the crumpled
pilot. Stepping his was through the debris, he extended a claw and finished
opening a cracked crate. Paydirt. Or more accurately, fifty cans of Dinty
Moore Beef Stew. The Friends of Humanity must have been combining the
prisoner transport with a supply run to wherever they had their hidden base or
lab. He worked his way through the rest of the cargo, selecting the stew and a
crate of boxed milk to take back to Jean first. Then he heard the other
person's gasp for breath.
"Jean?" He quickly set the crates down and turned. The gasps turned into a
bout of coughing. "What the hell?" The dead man called Pierson was doubled
over in his seat, fumbling for the seat belt release.
"You were dead, Bub." In two steps, Logan made it to the man's side, grabbed
the man by the throat, and lifted him skyward.
"I got better?" The voice was tentative. "It's a miracle then."
"No miracle. You're just another mutant scum like me."
"I can't be. The Friends test for the x-factor before they let you join, and
the test came back negative." Pierson gasped. Logan eased his hold on the man
ever so slightly so he could breathe better.
"How else can you explain it? You had no pulse."
"It has to be a miracle. Has to be." Pierson's reaction to the crash did not
seen quite right, but Logan realized that this was not the place to figure out
what was off.
"Whether it was a miracle or not, what you are now is my prisoner." Logan let
the claws extend on one hand as he shifted his shoulders to emphasize the
rifles slung arcoss muscles.
"Okay. What am I supposed to do about it?"
“ In front of me, and carry these." He handed Pierson the stew and milk. "Out
of the plane and along the beach." Pierson scrambled through the wreckage. As
he followed Pierson out, Logan checked for a pulse on the red haired guard,
but did not find one.
**************************************************
Jean Grey sat on the beach, carefully stretching forward to touch her toes.
She assumed she had been drugged with something nasty in the course of her
abduction. It was the best way she could explain the painful cramps she seemed
to have through most of her body. Elbows hit the beach, and she started to
flex her ankles for a ten count.
“Red, we’ve got company.” She looked to see the strange man carrying a set of
wooden boxes followed by the newly armed Logan. “Set ‘em down here. The
Friends were nice enough to have a couple of boxes of dinner on the plane.
“Okay. Mind if I sit? I’m feeling a bit wobbly now.” The man unloaded himself
and plunked down on the shell-covered beach before Logan could respond.
“Yeah, make yourself at home. Jean, this fellow’s named Pierson. He was one of
the people who kidnapped us, was dead, then he got better.” Logan took up a
guard’s position at the improvised campsite.
“Adam Pierson.” The pale man with dark hair sighed. “Don’t suppose you’ll buy
that it was only a flesh wound.” Playing with a sea shell in one hand, he
looked to Jean. There was something off about the man’s actions. Most rabid
anti-mutant activists would have been in screaming hysterics if they’d shown
signs of rapid healing. But Pierson acted like whatever had happened on the
plane was unfortunate but not uncommon.
“I say he’s a mutant, he says they tested for it, and he was normal.
“I’ve even got paperwork to prove I’m X-factor free.” With a quick flick of
his wrist, he sent the shell toward the water. Jean reached out to catch
Pierson’s hand. The ethics of reading minds without permission were trumped by
the necessities of a dangerous and hostile locale. Carefully, she sent out a
mental probe.
She caught a brief glimpse of a thousand colors of dancing light. Blue swirled
with purple, greens with reds all against a shining yellow canvas. An instant
later, a tendril of the light struck out at her, pushing her out of Pierson’s
mind back into her own gasping form.
“Who the hell are you? What are you? You definitely aren’t a normal human.”
Logan’s posture shifted, the rifle moved to cover Pierson more thoroughly.
“Just someone trying to survive through the years. I’m nobody important
anymore.
“Not good enough of an explanation, Bub. Keep talking.” Logan said.
“Since you’ve got the gun, I guess I have to. My oddity is that I’m nearly
immortal. And no I couldn’t tell you how old I am. No calendars back then, and
I was never one of the priestly types who could calculate anything based on
the placement of the stars.
“X-factor or not, I’d call you a mutant then.” Jean said.
“All of humanity has adapted in strange ways over the years. I’m just one of
the more interesting evolutionary dead ends. The first seer I met came years
ago in an era that’s now known mostly by legend and myth. Witches, water
dowsers, prophets, saints and minor gods through the centuries, there were
never many of them like there mutants now and most have not been nearly as
powerful, but they have always been there.
“With all you know and have seen, and you’d still join the Friends of
Humanity. Some strange self loathing you’ve got going on, Adam Pierson.
“Not self loathing, it’s self-preservation. All I want out of life these days
is a nice apartment by the river, and time to spend with good friends in
interesting surroundings. If I’m lucky, maybe another wife. Last thing I want
to do is get sucked into saving the world again. But sometimes, you just can’t
avoid it.
“Saving the world’s a pretty big claim, Bub.
“Last thing I want to do is get press about it, but been there, done that,
still have the comemerative beer mug somewhere back in my flat. And it wasn’t
my idea, but I got dragged into a situation where I didn’t have many choices.
“And now you’re choosing to save the world from the big bad muties?” The
sarcasm ran thick in Logan's voice.
“I don’t much care for the Friends. Lots of them are still kicking over every
rock along the seashore hoping to turn up Hitler living in retirement in
Argentina. But they’ve got their uses. Absolute power may not corrupt
absolutely, but it’s a damn tempting goal if you’ve got the might, and being
god and supreme ruler is a lot more fun than the alternatives.
Back in the day, a group could ride in, conquer and rule a village, maybe if
they were lucky or good enough, they got to be ruler of a city-state with a
couple of dependant villages. So the barbarians would come in for a couple of
years, then too many women started dying in childbirth, or the drought took
out a year’s crops, and the people would band together and drive the conqueror
back out because of all the bad signs from the gods. The witches and priests,
the ones that had the talents that would later be associated with x-factors,
they had maybe a tenth of the power that you have, Ms. Grey.
But people change and the world's a different smaller place. Now instead of
just conquering a village, or a city-state or a nation or two, you’ve got
people who want to come along and bloody well conquer the world. And they’re
powerful enough to go it too. Magneto nearly pulled it off. The incident in
Paris last year with Mystique, Toad, and the nerve gas in the Metro killed
more than 8,000 people, and it was a miracle more didn’t die. The children out
there are playing with toys they don’t understand, and I believe the prognosis
looks grimmer than it did when Kennedy’s advisors were telling him to nuke
Cuba.
"So the answer is to just go out and round up everyone who might be different
and at the least make them register. At worst, they end up in camps like the
ones rumored in China." Jean said. "Pretty harsh policy."
"If it has to be that way for a generation or two until someone figures out a
truly effective way of controling the Magnetos of the world, then that's the
price that has to be paid. Sometimes, you've just got to look at the cold
equations and work with some people you truly despise to reach a long term
goal. I just happen to be rather fond of the current version of civilization
and have no desire to watch the mutants and the normals get into a conflict
that, as the saying goes, results in bombing the world back to the stone age.
It would probably take at least five hundred years for the survivors to get
the technology to redevelop the jacuzzi tub for one.
Not that I could go back to the Friends now. Too many questions about
surviving the plane crash, and enough time spent with the lovely Ms. Grey that
they'll assume she did nasty things to my mind. But it's probably time to move
on anyway. Adam Pierson's getting old." Adam sighed and slowly shifted in
place, drawing a look from Logan.
"Poor you."
"Unfinished projects are both irritating, and have the bad tendency to revive
themselves and come back to haunt you when you least want to deal with them.
And as long as I had a place with them, I had a chance of influencing their
policies, make sure some hidden things stay hidden."
"Like your existence." Logan said. "Other people like you out there?" he
guessed. A brief something flickered by Adam's eyes, but he was silent.
"There are others like you, how come we've never heard of you?"
"We're good at keeping that part of our lives out of the eyes of mortals, even
made it an art form. A couple hundred years of witch hunts will do that to
you, and being burned at the stake is a genuinely painful affair. We do our
own thing, play our own games, and occasionally try for power but for the most
part don't offer the threat to the mortals your kind does. "
"For the most part?" Jean said.
"I like to think the worst of them have either mellowed over time, or have
lost their heads when they've gone too far in one of their plans. We do police
our own, and plenty of overgrown Scottish Boy Scouts who will gladly try to
take down the worst of them."
"So what makes you think you're the only ones to police your own kind?" Jean
said. Her aches from the crash started to vanish in a cloud of anger. "To be
the only one who could have walked away and let them ravage society, but
instead chose to stand your ground and make it safe for the homo sapiens who
will never know the truth of what you have done. To face real death for the
sake of the people who would gladly spit on your face or worse if you walked
passed them on a sidewalk and they knew who you were?
You said the mutants weren't anything terribly special under the sun. Maybe
your kind and what you try to do aren't either. Maybe there are people like
Logan and I who have spent a good part of our lives and will likely die trying
to police our own. And just maybe you should let us do our damn jobs. You
aren't the only one who can claim to have saved the world a time or two and
kept it from hitting the front page of the New York Times."
"So when we get off the island, you can have my commerative beer mug. I have
nothing against you or Logan here, and I do appreciate what your group did to
stop the incident at the Statue of Liberty. But I made the decision I felt I
had to. There are things I could have done with the Friends to turn them into
something a little different, tone down the hysteria in some areas and target
the anger at the Magnetos of this world. It was a rather good plan." Adam
sighed.
"You thought you were going to change the Freinds into something benevolent?"
Logan had to surpress a laugh.
"Why not? It's not that hard to figure out how to herd the sheep into the
direction you want them to go. I've done it before in other sorts of groups
that were a hell of a lot more intelligent and sophisticated. No reason why it
wouldn't have worked again."
"Other groups? What other groups?" Logan said.
"Sorry. Too many stories tied up with those other groups that are not mine to
tell or even really talk about much. Besides, if we are stuck here for too
long, I don't want to have to set right all the campfire myths and legends
before we even finish off the first case of Spam."
"Speaking of stuck here, any ideas on how to get away from here gentlemen?"
"The idea of going back to civilization does have its merits. I'm a bit old to
be playing Robinson Crusoe." Adam seemed to seize on the idea.
"Okay, any ideas of where we are then? Adam or whatever your name really is."
Logan said. Getting off the island did sound like the best option.
"South Pacific. I never got more than a glance at the charts, not cleared for
it and all, but I'd guess somewhere around the Solomon Islands or Vanatu.
Wherever it is, it didn't seem big enough from what I saw of it coming in to
support and human habitation. And it's a small enough island that if there
were people here, they would have seen the plane go down, and have sent a
group out that would have found us by now."
"So we're talking uninhabited. But uninhabited doesn't mean no one's ever
passed through. Most of these places have been tagged somehow by the outside
world." As he felt the muscles finish repairing themselves, he suddenly felt
the need to go Do Something. "Jeanie, you up to a bit of a hike? I want to see
what's here."
"A bit wobby, but I've been worse. Stretching the legs might be a good thing."
And it would give her a bit of time to think about the strange case of Adam
Pierson. She rose, and Logan waved the rifle at Adam.
"Then let's go for a walk. Head along the beach, dead boy."
"Might as well." Adam shrugged as stood. "You know you don't have to keep
waiving that thing at me. I'd give you my parole."
"Sorry Bub. I've been around long enough to learn to not trust anyone."
"I can understand that."
Barely a half hour into their hike, they found the mark of civilization. More
precisely, on a rise near the beach, they found an automated weather station
and reporting beacon, the logo for the Australian Bureau of Meteorology in
faded paint on one side.
"Now what?" Jean said.
"I assume that we break it and hope someone comes out to fix it." Adam said.
"Exactly." Logan said. "Move aside there, dead boy." Adam obliged, and Logan
neatly put half the rifle clip into the station.
"Wonder how long this is going to take." Adam said.
"Hopefully not long. In the mean time, you're going to help Jean and me drag
supplies and set up camp here."
"I guess I don't have anything better to do."
"Well you could always tell us more about your life. I'm sure you've got some
fascinating stories."
"Brief summary: some good times, some bad times, some thing I've done that I'm
proud of, some things I've done that I'm decidedly not proud of. Forty two
great loves in my life, including my most recent wife who died far too young
of cancer. Many more lesser loves. Lots of different hobbies over the years.
The long story, you're not going to get from me because I'm sick of telling
it."
It was the last that Adam said of his past, and no amount of prodding from
Jean or Logan could get him to speak more of it in the three days it took for
the Bureau of Meteorology float plane it took to show up to check on the
off-line weather station. They mumbled a few lies to the pilot and
meteorologist about the crash and soon found themselves on the small plane
headed back to civilivation, which in this case turned out to the immigration
office at Honiara Airport in the Solomon Islands. Officials of various sorts
scuttled around the room offering the former castaways food and drink, and
calls were made to the nearest US Embassy so the passportless travelers could
make their way home.
After what seemed like countless hours and countless bueraucrats, the three
people who were not quite ordinary humans found themselves alone in a small
airport lounge.
"I still think your kind are too dangerous." Adam said.
"There are many dangerous people out there in the world. Some mutants, some
not. But there mutants who violently disagree with what Magneto is trying to
do, and do their best to try to stop them. Unfortunately, sometimes like in
Paris, we fail." Jean said.
"You could hear the float plane coming in for a long time. If I was in your
place it would have been tempting to shoot me, and leave me stranded there
after I recovered."
"It was a thought." Logan said.
"Maybe I was wrong, and the mutants can police figure out how to police
themselves before they make everything go poof. I hope for all of our sake
that you can figure out some sort of balance between the mutants and everyone
else." Adam reached inside the pocket of his tattered pants and pulled out a
business card. "Giving this to you, the idiot Scot with his ideas of social
responsibility must be rubbing off on me." As Logan took the card, Adam
quickly darted out of the airport lounge. A moment later, Jean and Logan
followed him out the door, but saw only an empty corridor.
"He can't have gotten far. It won't be hard to follow him." Jean said.
"Don't think he wants to be followed right now, but I think he's saying he
doesn't mind being found later on." Logan turned over the business card and
read it.
Shakespeare and Company
Fine English Literature
27 Rue de Vinmount
Paris, France
"So I do get the impression that we will be seeing him again." Jean said.
"I don't know if that's a good or bad thing, Jeanie."
Jill
selkie@mailandnews.com
CAT: I hope that Schrodinger guy put litter in here...
**********************************************************
"Shared sorrow decreases. Shared joy increases. Thus do we refute Entropy." -Spider Robinson
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