A Soul Divided: Part Two

by Kerri

"Who is Charles Xavier?" Nightcrawler asked Magneto. The team assembled in the War Room to discuss Charlotte's condition.

Magneto shook his head. "That is a name I haven't heard in more than three decades. He was a friend of mine, my closest friend. He's dead."

"Are you sure about that?" Cyclops asked. "She talks like she believes he's still alive."

"I'm sure," he shot a hard look at the younger man.

The doors opened, Jean and Gambit joined the group.

"She knows us, yet she doesn't know us," Storm mused. "How puzzling."

"There's a reason for that," Jean said, taking her usual seat next to Magneto. "She's not Charlotte LeBeau."

"Explain," Magneto asked his right-hand and companion.

"She is Charlotte, but not our Charlotte," Jean warmed under his gaze. "I was able to push past her mental shields because she's sedated. She has memories that have no basis here, her mental control is much stronger and more developed than Blade's. If she hadn't been sedated I would have never been able to penetrate her mind. Physically, she's the same. Beast believes she is from a different reality, one where this Xavier person still lives and she is not married to Gambit."

Gambit's face twisted in fury. "It's your fault," he spat at Wolverine. A charged card appeared between his fingertips.

Adamantium claws snicked out. "Any time yer ready," Wolverine growled back.

"Stop this! This is getting us nowhere," Magneto closed his eyes in frustration. "We need to review the training tapes, see what happened. Find out if we can actually reverse this situation."

"What if it can' be changed," Gambit asked bitterly.

"We'll deal with that problem when we come to it."

The sedative wore off quickly, her metabolism working overtime in response to the stress she was under. She opened her eyes slowly, hoping things would have righted themselves without her participation.

Beast swung around at her soft gasp of breath. His face was still scarred.

"Tell me it's all a dream, please," she said. "Even a nightmare. I'll take what I can get."

"I am afraid not," he told her gently. "You're still in this reality. We know you are not the Blade that belongs with us."

"Blade? Is that what she calls herself?" Charlotte asked incredulously. She tried to sit up and found herself restrained to the bed. "Will you take these off, please? I'm not going anywhere, am I? I have nowhere to go."

He considered the request, then untied her. She sat up and rubbed her wrists. "Thank you." She walked over to where he'd been sitting at the computer. "So, how did she get the name Blade?" She casually looked over his shoulder. The equipment he used was not Shi'ar. Obviously they didn't exist in this world or Llandra had not made contact with them, assuming Llandra existed here as well. His computer seemed like an antique out of a bad sci-fi movie next to the technology his counterpart used.

"She is very good with knives." Hank returned to his entries into her computer files.

"I can't believe she married Remy." A horrible thought hit her. "If I'm here, than she's in my reality. Oh, Lord. Rogue will tear her apart."

"Who is Rogue," Magneto entered the lab, Jean by his side. "And how do you know Charles Xavier?"

She drew back warily. "You know Charles? I've got to see him."

He shook his head. "Xavier has been dead for more than 30 years."

It just kept getting better and better. "Rogue is a friend of mine. She is 'involved' with Remy. And now your 'Blade' is risking my body and life, convincing Remy they're married. I hope Xavier realizes she's not me before any real damage is done."

"If it's any consolation, the two of you do not appear to be that much alike in temperament." He moved toward her, intending to take her arm. She stepped back out of his reach, falling into Beast's lap. "You are afraid of me?" He asked. "Why?"

"I'm not afraid, just cautious." She scrambled out of Beast's hold and moved against the wall.

He retreated. "I am not going to hurt you. I do not do that here."

"Nothing here is the way it's supposed to be," she answered with painful intensity. "In my world the X-men don't look quite so..beaten, so hard. Scott and Jean are happily married, Ororo and Warren are more at peace with themselves, Remy doesn't have all those hard edges to his soul, and Logan-" she caught her breath, tears clouding her eyes.

"And Logan is not an animal. He is a wonderful mate." She wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands. Beast silently handed her a tissue.

In the control room, Wolverine watched the scene unfold on the monitor with suspicious eyes.

Charlotte took hard control of herself. She looked up at Magneto. "If this isn't one of your damn illusions, I have to get back. I don't belong here."

Charlotte wandered around her room, the room Jean told her she shared with Remy. The first thing she needed to do was get out of these..clothes.. and into something she could deal with.

Her closet looked like Emma's, all tiny bits of leather in every color imaginable. Didn't Blade ever get cold? She went back out to find Jean and borrow something that wouldn't reel in the pimps and johns. She caught sight of herself in a mirror and cringed in disgust. Where did all that black hair come from? And she was wearing more make-up than Jubilee ever did.

She opened her psi sense and located Jean in the kitchen.

The mansion was essentially the same, darker, gloomier, the furniture all wrong, but otherwise the same. At least the kitchen was where it was supposed to be.

Jean was pouring coffee when she entered the room. "What can I do for you?" she asked pleasantly.

"I need something to wear. This Blade person dresses like the White Queen, or Psylocke."

At Jean's blank look Charlotte sighed. "They don't exist here, do they?"

Jean shook her head. "I'm afraid not. Why don't we look in my closet?"

"What happened to everyone?" Charlotte asked. The mansion was virtually empty, just the two of them there.

"Mission." She opened a door and went in. "The Mutant Support League is demonstrating in Washington." She snapped on the television and found the news channel.

While Jean looked through her closet, Charlotte's eyes were glued on the TV. She watched in horror as the the protesters were swarmed by the army. 'It happens here, too,' she thought. "Wait! There's Jubilee, and Sam and Paige!" she pointed at the screen.

Jean came over with a pair of shorts and a button down white lawn shirt. "They must be part of the Mutant Support League. It attracts the younger ones. I think these will do. You can shower through there."

The hot water helped her feel more like herself. "The shirt helps." It fell past her thighs to her knees, giving her the feeling of being covered. "I feel better." She looked at Jean. "Why exactly why did the team go and why aren't you with them?"

"Magnus felt you shouldn't be alone and they went to protect the president. It's what we do. The president, heads of state, foreign dignitaries and the like."

"You don't stop rogue mutants or protect the population?"

"The population is more than happy to see us dead. Why would we protect them?"

"There's the one big difference between our realities. We promote human-mutant relations. Xavier's dream is to have harmony between the two groups, and sometimes we succeed. You seem to be mercs for hire."

"Sounds like a nice dream, but not very realistic. We have to protect ourselves. If we can make our gifts work for us then we should."

"Do I have a son in this reality?" The one question she'd been afraid to ask.

"I don't believe so. As far as I know, Blade doesn't have any children. She's just not interested in them."

"I get the feeling she's a real bitch. Why does everyone hate her?"

Jean's eyes hardened. "She runs roughshod over the rest of us, stops at nothing to get her way."

"And Remy married her? He is such a gentle soul."

"She has him duped and our Gambit is not as gentle as you might think." She left the room.

That was most likely true, but Charlotte didn't want to hear it. She followed her back to the kitchen.

"May I help?" Charlotte offered. She got a strange look from the other woman. "Don't tell me, Blade doesn't do anything around the house."

"No, she doesn't."

"Magnus and Beast reviewed the Danger Room tapes," Jean told her, stirring a huge stock pot on the stove. "Beast thinks he knows what happened. At the moment Wolverine attacked you, there was a surge in the electrical systems. It hit you, you fell back and struck your head on the ground. He thinks that power surge, coupled with an energy burst in your world, caused the two realities to cross briefly, exchanging you for Blade. He'll start looking for a way to reverse the process as soon as he gets back. We don't know how long you'll be here."

'Long enough to do something about her wardrobe and maybe get back her original hair color,' she thought to herself. "I was in the Danger room trying out a new training program. When I sliced into the hologram, it exploded with power." Charlotte's eyes rolled. She was turning mounds of fresh produce into salad quickly and efficiently with an excellent set of knives.

"You do have a skill in common," Jean observed the knife play.

"I'm good with a sword, too. I'm kind to pets and small children generally like me."

"Blade doesn't use a sword." Jean gave her a curious look over her last remark. "I am curious about the psionic shield. She's never used one to my knowledge."

"That's something I learned a long time ago. You, or rather the other Jean, helped me refine my technique."

"Is she really married to Cyclops?"

"A match made in heaven. They are incomplete without each other. I don't know how they do it. He is the team leader, and sometimes I get the picture of her being a den mother for a group of unruly scouts, except when she's inciting the scouts to riot." Charlotte smiled at the memory.

"I get that feeling myself sometimes without the riot part."

"Ought to try it sometime, it's a lot of fun."

[next part]

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