Unexpected Companions: Part Three

by Persephone

Limbo, Cable decided irrevocably, was weird. It was not going to matter what else he ever saw or heard or felt here. His observations so far were enough to establish the dimension as officially weird even if they were outweighed by thousands of instances of normalcy. Of course, Limbo was probably closer to its version of normalcy than most places now, and that should perhaps be taken into account. Nevertheless, it was weird.

Illyana had teleported them initially into what appeared to be a remarkably featureless plain except for a sort of spiderweb pattern of shallow cracks and thin little blades of sparse, grasslike brown vegetation. He wasn't sure what impulse prompted him to close a fist around one and yank, but when it came up easily, the only root a small, hard white blob, he gave it a much closer look and realized it was a hair.

"Illyana?"

"Hm?"

"Are we walking on skin?"

"No. Just a facsimile of it."

How reassuring.

Silence descended again, while Nathan debated with himself the question of whether he actually wanted to find out what she'd say if he asked why they were walking on a facsimile of skin.

They went down a hill, and walls suddenly loomed in front of them. One rather whimsical section several meters off to the right appeared to be, in fact, a loom. It was weaving. Considering the context, the fact that the walls looked precisely like congealed blood was even less encouraging than it might have been otherwise.

A gate opened for them just as he began to wonder whether Illyana planned to walk directly into the wall. From inside, the walls were still red, but a less scab-like shade of it; he blinked in some confusion as the ornate doors of the gateway swung ponderously shut behind them and a round silver-white light blossomed on the ceiling to reveal a surprisingly cozy living room that would have looked perfectly at home in any number of small, pleasant houses if not for the color scheme, which seemed to be the result of a territorial war amongst red, blue, silver, pink, and black. Red had won the walls, mostly, and silver the light fixtures, while blue and pink mottled the ceiling, black took the majority of the furniture (though the others served as accents), and all five still wrangled for control of slivers of the carpet. Nathan tried to dismiss the feeling that hostilities still continued as paranoia. He was allowed a little paranoia, right? Even if it led him to imagine interior decorating in Limbo as a sort of negotiation process.

The vibrant colors indoors contrasted sharply with the view through the windows on the opposite side of the room, all gray and brown and dull green -- it looked for all the world like a dead garden, with a withered oak tree standing its dismal vigil in the center.

Stryfe crossed almost immediately, though his steps were still slow, to one window and stared out, as if mesmerized; Illyana looked out another for a moment and then pulled a tie loose and let the curtain ripple down across the panes, turning back and gesturing to the low table where food suddenly appeared. Silver dishes, this time, like the armor she only now let vanish with the sheathing of the Soulsword. Water droplets condensed on them as if they were freezing cold, even the ones supporting food that should have been -- and was -- hot.

"You can tell me whether I conjure halfway decent coffee," she suggested with an almost impish smile. "Never tried it on your alternate."

"I'm not sure if that would be such a good idea." He'd become used to going without caffeine, since the beginning of the destruction, and he knew he'd only be annoyed when he couldn't have it any longer. On the other hand, it did smell good. He bit back the urge to make some kind of joke about temptation.

Stryfe, whom he was still shielding, stopped actively thinking about giving him a mental kick in the ankle. Other than that, the man seemed oddly subdued... maybe it was just because he was so drained. Only, there was more than that, tickling at the inside of the shield....

"I promise, you don't get stuck here forever by eating or drinking," Illyana told him, perfectly seriously. She actually sounded worried.

"I didn't think I would."

"Well... it wouldn't have been that unreasonable a suspicion." She turned back toward Stryfe. "Hey. Dinner's ready."

"I'm --" Cable was almost certain Stryfe was going to finish that with "not hungry," but after a short pause he said "coming" instead, voice curiously flat, and started to turn away from the window.

Illyana frowned at him. "Something the matter?"

"I'm fine." Stryfe stopped moving. Same tone, or lack thereof.

She folded her arms and scowled. "That's not very convincing; don't lie to me, please." Stryfe turned back to the window; a trace of astonishment crossed Illyana's face, followed by worry again. "Let me try rephrasing: what is the matter?"

Nathan couldn't see his clone's hands, but knew beyond any doubt that they had both just tightened on the windowsill to the point that wood should have started to splinter. "You don't really want to know."

Trying to get out of telling her about Legacy? Illyana didn't seem, from what Nathan had seen so far, to be the type to let Stryfe get away with that. She didn't disappoint him. "That doesn't usually stop me."

"No. It doesn't."

"So tell me?" She stepped away from the couch and toward the window -- and Stryfe; when she was just beyond arm's reach he capitulated and suddenly began speaking.

"There were several of your alternates in the wards. One...." The voice was still flat, but less dully so; now it sounded... cold. He stopped, and swallowed, then went on. "One was among the... last few I had to attend to personally." A breath. "The next to last, to be precise. She died under my hands."

Next to last. So that was where Stryfe had been just before he dragged in to take care of the little snake-charmer....

So this one did know, now, what it was like to have someone you cared about die in your arms. Except, of course, that for him it hadn't been someone as close as Aliya, hadn't even been the child-friend from his own timeline. Not comparable, Nathan told himself. Not like losing a soulmate.

Not that Stryfe had claimed it was. Stryfe was doing a moderately good job of drawing his mind in on itself to avoid "touching" the shields Cable still maintained and seemed most inclined not to discuss the matter at all with him.

"Of the disease your alternates released." Illyana's quiet voice did a fairly good job of sounding neutral.

Stryfe's... did not. "Yes."

The young sorceress sighed deeply and took the last step to him, laying one hand on his arm. He twitched away; the hand followed. "Christopher...."

"Don't."

"Don't what?"

He didn't answer.

Illyana folded her arms. "You aren't fooling anybody, you realize."

There was a pause. Stiffly, and with obvious reluctance, Stryfe finally replied, "Maybe not."

"Chris. You tried. You can't blame yourself for what your alternates did, you know...."

As if Stryfe didn't have enough things to blame himself for without looking to his alternates?

 "No?" Stryfe finally took his eyes away from the window again and looked at her; the glimpse Nathan caught was of the right one, surprisingly bleak. "No, I can't, but I came far too close to doing precisely the same thing myself, Illyana. I had every detail planned, everything in place to release an epidemic -- I didn't dismantle the preparations until after returning to Earth, and even then I think when I said I would go back with them, I was at least half expecting it... not to work, seeking occasion against them... looking for another reason to hate them." He looked away, back out the window at the dead tree. "Before I found out I had no good reason in the first place...."

Nathan realized with a start that Stryfe's control over his voice had slipped almost entirely by this point; he could hear in the tone a self-loathing that he'd never have expected, even after what he'd seen of this version's life and thoughts. It just didn't seem to fit.... He would have said the man deserved the feeling, of course, but this somehow wasn't especially satisfying.

Illyana could hear it too, it seemed. "Stop it." This time, instead of simply touching Stryfe's upper arm, she ducked under it and insinuated herself next to his side. He moved as if startled, but didn't exactly protest. "You didn't release it. You changed your mind."

"That -- what happened to your alternate, too many of your alternates, could all too easily have been your fate, Illyana. I almost killed you, don't you --"

"Don't I what?" she interrupted. "Understand? I get the idea, yes. Blame you? No. Almost doesn't count, not for this." She shook her head. "I've almost done too many things myself... and actually done too many, I guess, for revenge or otherwise...."

"I don't think you ever started an epidemic."

"Neither did you," she retorted. "I can plague-cast, you realize."

"Plague-cast?"

She reached through a stepping disc, appeared to be feeling around, and then plunged her other hand in as well and heaved out a massive grayish-green tome. The air promptly filled with a nauseating sour odor, and Illyana grimaced. "No wonder Belasco always kept incense burning in his library...." The title, in letters of a remarkably unpleasant shade of yellow that seemed inclined to blur in and out of focus, read _Pestis Pestis_.

There was a glint of light from Stryfe's eye, reflected in the windowpane, and the book suddenly appeared to be easier for the girl to hold. "And this is...."

"What it says." Illyana shrugged. "A book of disease-related spells, mostly curses. I know it. And I'd best put it back before someone wanted it or looked for it; it's burnt now...." She carefully balanced it back through the disc. "Not to mention while the air here is still semi-breathable. Ugh." A silver candle on the table flared to life and apparently started trying to deodorize the room. "Put it this way, I could make a distressingly good Pestilence."

Stryfe blinked at her several times. "No. No, you would not."

She shrugged. "Well, if not for the fact that if I went that far I'd be more likely to want to conquer in my own name."

This time, Nathan blinked at her too. She couldn't be serious. He thought about Limbo for a while. Maybe she could.

Illyana shifted her weight and sighed, looking up at his clone. "Christopher. Answer me one question? Truthfully?"

"What is it?"

"If Nathan weren't here, would you be trying to pretend you weren't upset?"

As the fact that Stryfe was upset was trying to rearrange Nathan's perceptions of him for the better again, with the expected high level of discomfort for such a procedure, Nathan thought that trying to hide the fact on his account would be rather stupid. It would also be fairly probable, on the other hand.... He wouldn't be inclined to hand Stryfe keys to his psyche either, given the option.

He entertained himself briefly by wondering if Stryfe was likely to come up with a response that would dodge the question successfully. There probably wasn't much point, considering Illyana obviously knew better....

"I don't know."

"Did I mention you aren't being very convincing?"

"I think so." Stryfe sighed and glanced unhappily toward Nathan, who looked back innocently for a moment, then gave up and considerately watched the colors in the carpet wrangle with each other. "I'd probably either not have told you at all or cry on your shoulder like a fool, how's that?"

Illyana squirmed closer to hug him again. Nathan looked up and shook his head slightly. "I won't watch, if you like."

Stryfe glared at him.

**********

They'd left Limbo and started walking again. There was no particular reason to be walking, except that going somewhere was better than not going anywhere, when there was no place you really wanted to be.

"There isn't even any real way to tell time anymore...." He was being morose again. He had the feeling this was starting to get on his current companions' nerves.

"Don't be silly. It's brillig," Illyana announced calmly.

"Brillig?"

"Brillig," she confirmed. "'Twas brillig, 'tis brillig now, and it can STAY brillig. Doesn't matter terribly. But if we meet a tove, I might get worried," she replied, swinging the Soulsword as she walked.

"Are you sure," Stryfe interjected dryly, "that it isn't always tea-time, and six o'clock instead of four?"

Nathan took a few moments to place that one, while Illyana laughed and some other part of his brain, not occupied with identifying what his clone was talking about, wondered if there might be something a little off about the atmosphere here.

Oh.

OH.

He remembered now -- "So we've quarreled with Time, and ever since he won't do a thing we ask?" he inquired acidly.

"I suppose you could put it that way," Stryfe replied mildly enough, after visibly biting back something with more venom. "With no one really at fault but the queen -- Nathan, did I just equate Apocalypse with the Queen of Hearts?"

He thought about it, then started laughing himself. Oath, this was the last thing he needed, Stryfe alluding to _Alice in Wonderland_ -- well, no, actually, it wasn't, he amended. The last thing he needed was Apocalypse talking about _Alice in Wonderland_. Apocalypse as... the Queen of Hearts.... "I think," he wheezed between laughter, "you did. What does -- that make you?" He thought some more. "Knave of Hearts?" he snickered.

Stryfe winced at that one. "I'd rather not, thank you," he managed, eyeing Cable rather uncertainly.

The statement struck Nathan as even funnier. "F-fine then -- how about -- the March Hare?" More chuckles. A look from Stryfe which said, more eloquently than any words, that the source of the look was developing serious doubts about its target's mental well-being. Maybe he was hysterical, the analytical aspect of his mind suggested dispassionately. "Or the -- Mad Hatter?"

Hardly able to walk now, Cable sat down on the ground, which turned out to be a vibrant shade of purple in this vicinity, and abandoned himself to laughter. The other two stopped to wait for him. It was almost definitely hysteria, he decided, by the time a niggling voice reminded him that HE must be the Mad Hatter, given who had "quarreled with Time."

Had that been why Stryfe mentioned the fault being elsewhere? That was unthinkable. That was... almost unthinkable. Only almost, after all he'd seen from the timeline this one belonged to. Only almost. Still helpless to halt his own laughter, Nathan looked up and saw Stryfe's lips twitching slightly.

"As I don't think I want to be a rabbit, and considering what seems to have been the general opinion of my helmet, I suppose I can't deny that last one."

"You make a nice rabbit," Illyana murmured. Nathan wondered if she was talking about the velveteen one again, and only snickered harder when Stryfe, apparently reaching precisely the same mental connection, actually blushed. Chaos-bringers didn't blush, huh? Maybe retired ones did. "But you've got Apocalypse misassigned," she continued in perfect solemnity. "He's the Dormouse! He hibernates, doesn't he?"

Her last sentence was half drowned out as Stryfe joined Cable on the ground in hilarity at the very idea. Illyana simply stood over them, with a smirk composed of equal parts humor and self-satisfaction.

As soon as he had breath enough, Stryfe looked up at her and sputtered, "That -- was priceless, Illyana. We'll be sure to -- stuff him in a -- a tea-pot -- just for you." That sent both him and Cable -- who nodded in vigorous agreement -- off on another wave, while Illyana cast a ward and thanked them as gravely as she could, but with dancing eyes.

"And who are YOU?" Cable asked challengingly as the girl watched them, still on her feet.

"Me? I'm Alice, of course; she was seven, too," she replied smoothly, grinning, and then blinked past him. "And on that note," she continued in some surprise, "we seem to have a flamingo."

Cable looked over his shoulder and gaped as, with a snap of Illyana's fingers, a small gateway formed in the ward and a brilliantly pink flamingo strolled through. Stryfe followed his gaze. The flamingo picked its way past both the men and snuggled contentedly against a rather astonished Illyana, then pressed its beak to her nose. After a moment of wide-eyed shock, she looped an arm around the bird's neck and sank to the ground beside it.

The flamingo seemed to be remarkably amenable to having a sorceress giggle helplessly into its feathers. Cable hadn't been under the impression they were that even tempered. Then again, Stryfe seemed fairly fond of the girl, so a flamingo wasn't necessarily that shocking.

"If we start getting hedgehogs," he suggested thoughtfully, "we might want to leave."

Illyana raised her head. "A pack of cards! You're all just a pack of cards!" she proclaimed, before burying her face in pink feathers again. The flamingo endured this behavior without complaint.

Nathan looked over at Stryfe as his clone frowned and picked a small item off the ground, extending it Cable's direction. Upon examination, the item proved to be... a hedgehog. In fluorescent orange. They both stared at it.

"Not only are we getting hedgehogs," Stryfe said as the creature nosed about on his hand, "we are getting punk hedgehogs." Cable snickered. Stryfe eyed the hedgehog again and added, "I think I agree with you, odd as this may seem. Perhaps we should move on."

"Are we bringing the flamingo?"

"Ask Illyana."

Nathan wondered if perhaps they wouldn't do better to ask the flamingo, which opted to strut daintily alongside Illyana with no apparent concern as to whether it was welcome or not. It periodically munched glowing red land-shrimp off the ground.

**********

They still had the flamingo three shifts later, although ever since they'd stepped through the line, the bird had been pressing closer and closer to Illyana. It was starting to interfere with her ability to walk.

There was something... eerie... about this shift. A little bleak. More... cohesive, somehow, than most of the worlds he'd walked through, Nathan thought, but he had no idea how he was getting that impression. It felt a little like Limbo, too, though he'd never have thought to call Limbo unusually cohesive before....

#Nathan?#

Mental contact with Stryfe was not the eerie part, even if it did come as something of a surprise. They'd both rather gladly relinquished it as soon as Stryfe's shields were back up, and had kept strictly to vocal conversation since that point.

Presumably, however, there was a reason for it. Stryfe had been as relieved not to have to be shielded by Nathan as Nathan had been not to be shielding him anymore. #What?#

#Have you noticed anything... odd... about this shift?#

#Have you noticed any shifts that DIDN'T have anything 'odd' about them?#

#Nathan....#

#All right, all right. I got the feeling when we first entered it that we'd walked back into Limbo instead, but Illyana didn't say anything -- I figured it might be just some kind of increased connection.#

Stryfe turned to stare at him. #Just? She's been peering around looking agitated ever since. Obviously I should have said something to someone by now....#

#Does it matter if we're in a shift closer to Limbo? We've been to Limbo.#

#Yes, and there's a different Illyana controlling the... parts... of it closest to this world.#

Nathan thought about this. Stryfe shook his head in annoyance and turned to Illyana to ask quietly, "What's the matter?"

"Limbo." What a surprise. "It's... not under quite the same management; I can feel it... and I can feel it... bound to this world. Especially where I think New York is." She sounded troubled. "It's been getting more intense as we move; I didn't put a name to it at first...."

"Different management." Stryfe hesitated. "Belasco?"

"No!" Illyana shuddered. "Not him. I can sort of... tell... my alternate's around, but there's someone else."

"That would," said a new but unnervingly familiar voice, grandly, "be me."

Nathan stared. He only just caught at the edge of his vision Stryfe turning, eyes wide, to do the same.

Bright eyes, one glowing bright gold, looked back at them from a very familiar face. Gold hair spilled down over midnight armor shot through with a network of electric-blue lighting.

"Tyler?" Nathan managed, after spending what seemed an unconscionably long moment frozen in shock. His voice, unfortunately, emerged as a rather faint croak.

Tyler lifted an eyebrow at him and produced a glass of water from, evidently, thin air. Cable took it automatically, noticed the odd look Illyana was giving all parties concerned, and just held onto it.

"I'd say 'the one and only,'" Tyler replied easily, "except that I'd run into quite enough alternates of quite enough people to realize how silly that phrase was even before the shifts."

He raised a hand to stroke his chin, the light from his eye dimming as he half-lowered the lids. "Now what shall I do with you? I think my lady would care to meet... you in particular, Illyana."

He stepped closer, suddenly, to catch up her silver-gloved hand and bow a kiss onto it. Stryfe twitched as if his impulse had been to block Tyler away. Something in Illyana's stance and statement suggested that she might have dodged if there hadn't been a flamingo behind her knees. It wasn't exactly hostility, but went a little beyond wariness.

She withdrew her hand a little more rapidly than was strictly decorous. Tyler narrowly but gracefully avoided being bonked on the nose in passing.

"And why would your lady be interested?" Illyana inquired.

"To meet her alternate, and in such company? Why wouldn't she?"

"Illyana is 'your lady' in what sense, exactly?" Cable cut in. Stryfe threw him a look he couldn't quite read, though it seemed to hold both anxiety and, strangely enough, gratitude.

"Both of them... father." Tyler took a half-step back from Illyana and pivoted to meet Nathan's eyes. "Lady of Limbo, my wife and liege."

"Bit young for you, isn't she?"

"Not necessarily," Illyana murmured.

"Isn't Domino a bit young for you, father?"

That cut; Nathan couldn't quite restrain a flinch.

He followed when Tyler started walking and beckoned them along, almost automatically, and tried to ignore the inky-black cape that rippled and snatched at the air in a fashion worryingly reminiscent of --

#Stryfe?#

#What?#

This sounded stupid. #Tyler is not wearing one of those octopus creatures. Is he?#

Stryfe gave him a startled look. #No.# A little too hasty, that. A pause. #It's the wrong shape.#

#Stryfe, it could turn into fog. Why not a cape?#

#I really don't think it is. If it were native to Limbo I think Illyana would have recognized it, anyway....# Stryfe shrugged, reached out, and tweaked a corner. #Feels like cloth.#

Tyler turned to frown at him. "Did you want something?"

"Just checking whether your cape is predatory," Stryfe replied swiftly, then managed a grin to counter Tyler's raised eyebrow. Nathan snorted to himself. It was always fun to tell the absolute truth when you didn't want people to know it and it was too absurd to be believed.... "No, seriously. How did you get involved with Illyana?"

"Still haven't developed a personal life of your own to be nosy about, I see."

Stryfe looked offended.

Illyana murmured something that sounded like, "You want details?"

Cable jumped in. "He wouldn't have to be nosy about his own. And you weren't with Illyana in my world either; I was wondering about that myself."

"Oh, you two aren't from the same timeline, are you?" Tyler looked thoughtfully at them. "Perhaps that's why you get along so well."

"Are you deliberately avoiding the question, or is your attention span really that bad?" Illyana broke in tartly.

Tyler laughed softly at her. "Ask your alternate." She scowled at him. "I could become fond of you all too easily. To put it briefly -- she asked. Less briefly -- hm. The story didn't begin with this, but the telling might as well. Once upon a time my grandmother listened to rebels from Illyana's realm in her dreams, and agreed to help them by sacrificing her baby boy."

So far, so... familiar.

"New York went mad along with her, as Limbo leaked through." Golden-auraed figures appeared alongside them, in miniature, and kept pace, flickering rapidly in a quick and slightly vague silent rendition right up until the point of crisis. Illyana was frowning at them; Nathan reached for her mind to ask why, and ran into Stryfe doing the same thing.

#It's what I remember -- to a point. I have no idea what my alternate's starting to do at that point, though....#

Well, if she didn't know, Nathan certainly wasn't likely to, but it seemed that Tyler was going to tell them. "But my lady thought of a way to repair the damage, restore her control of Limbo, and bind herself to Earth and home: if killing young Christopher was to seal her defeat and loose Limbo upon Earth, giving her foes the victory, what would be the most logical way to thwart them but --"

"To marry his son, firstborn or youngest ideally, who would have inherited the tinges of magic from Limbo and Loki both," Illyana interrupted flatly.

Tyler paused mid-gesture and turned to blink at her. "That was a rhetorical question. I thought you didn't know."

She shrugged irritably. "I wouldn't have known how and accordingly didn't think of trying it at the time. You just made it obvious."

"How did she know he had a son old enough?" Stryfe asked. "You can't assume time travel --" He broke off. "But she could, couldn't she."

"I should hope so," Illyana murmured, in a much more agreeable voice than she'd directed at Tyler. "She wouldn't have restricted herself to the same time if it had been inconvenient."

"Not at all," Tyler replied cheerfully. "I'm not wholly certain she did, though I suppose she couldn't have reached far. And she didn't pick you, by the way, because cloning apparently doesn't -- or at any rate didn't in this case -- pass along the magical exposure."

If Tyler had hoped to get a rise out of Stryfe with this comment, he was disappointed.

He shrugged and started walking again, with a casual wave at his memory-scene as he -- in his role as Tolliver, of course -- appeared in it via stepping disc and began what was presumably a heated argument with the Magik who had summoned him, who looked to be on the edge of being the Darkchilde.

Possibly over it.

"Of course, I wasn't much of an improvement, in terms of rationality," Tyler went on ruefully. "She tried to explain. I yelled at her. She mentioned my infant father; I ranted on about my grievances. Finally she stabbed me in the head with the revenge I kept going on about; oddly enough this actually worked."

The image of Illyana backed half a step and whipped the Soulsword free, lunging before Tolliver could do more than look shocked. He had barely begun to try to dodge when the tip pierced his head.

The tableau froze like that; Nathan couldn't tell at first whether everyone had really stilled or Tyler had paused the memory replay. Then he saw Illyana's extended arm start to tremble ever so slightly with the strain, and her tail lashed once, violently, and recoiled loosely around her own ankle.

Then they broke apart, the sword blade describing a careless arc as it dropped toward the ground, and stared at each other. Tyler touched a hand to his forehead and stared at his unbloodied fingertips for a moment, then back at Magik. His lips moved.

Cable looked away from the image as the exhausted sorceress started to answer. "What did you say to her?"

"You couldn't tell? -- No, I suppose not. I couldn't really see myself at the time. Something along the lines of 'Why don't you go over all that again?'"

"I'm sure she was thrilled to discover you hadn't been listening."

"I'm sure she already knew," Tyler retorted crisply.
"So... you two repeated the entire previous conversation."

"Of course not. Only the important parts, such as what was going on and why exactly my marrying her was supposed to remedy the situation. As you might imagine, I was somewhat disconcerted."

Nathan supposed that those had indeed been the crucial issues at the time. "Never figured your love life would involve a semi-demonic teenager kidnapping you to announce you had to marry her to save the world? Can't say I blame you for not thinking of that...." At least, that appeared likely to be the gist of what the Illyana-image was saying. It might have been nice if Tyler had opted to incorporate sound instead of narrating.

"The possibility had never crossed my mind. Although I will admit that a little investigation into family history might led me to the conclusion that perhaps I should not have been quite so surprised."

"So you married her."

Tyler gestured at the memory-play as the image of him stepped close, enfolded the Darkchilde in his arms, and kissed her on the mouth, heedless of hard reddish skin or forked tongue or the fangs that cut his lips until the blood ran. Out of the corner of his eye, Nathan saw the Illyana actually present wince. The image of her alternate, meanwhile, started to relax; horns and tail shrank away, skin softened to her natural color, though armor-clad, and the fangs retracted.

Tyler did open his eyes when the transformation of her face was complete, and looked a little startled at the extent of the change. She sheathed the Soulsword when he reclaimed her lips, though, and the silver melted away.

"What else could I do, really? I pulled out enough of her memories to be fairly certain she wasn't lying, and if the antics in New York were any indication I didn't want to see S'ym and Nastirh spread their influence any farther. Discovering that my lady was in fact good company and very pretty was nice, though."

The image vanished.

"Why does it feel like New York's still bound to Limbo?" Illyana's voice was very cool; Nathan started to wonder whether she had had further interactions with the Tyler of her own timeline that might shed some light on her apparent distaste for this one, or if this one just gave her the creeps on his own merits. The latter WAS entirely possible....

"It is." Tyler sounded genuinely surprised -- for the first time -- at the question. "It's not necessarily an ideal situation, but the closer binding of Limbo to Earth has let us keep track of... well... a lot of the people and most of the planet, we think. We can find most of the fragments of the timeline from Limbo, you see, because of their attachment. Mostly ones that originated after the binding, though. ...I gather they're not so bound in your world?"

"No. No more than before, at least. Not like that. I couldn't do that." She sounded troubled.

Tyler didn't comment.

Nathan finally asked the question that had been nagging at him. "What happened to our alternates? Stryfe and I were both in that part of the 20th century, at least in the timelines I know of where we came back at all. Where are they?"

"Well, little Christopher was sent home with his parents, once Madelyne was calmed down. If you mean your adult time-traveling alternates, which of course you do...." Tyler turned and gave them a dazzling smile. "Naturally, they still work for me."

**********

Dinner was strange.

This wasn't exactly a surprise, but frankly, dinner was strange even for Limbo. The food wasn't that bad, though Nathan noticed that the aftertaste started before he swallowed now. It nearly choked him the first time.

He was also of the unvoiced opinion that escargot should not be served in melon rinds. Or live. He had eaten stranger things, but a giant snail that first tried to crawl off his plate (after he initially mistook it for a canteloupe) and then waved pathetically at him when he picked it up by the rind -- er, shell -- and turned it over... just didn't inspire him to stick a fork in.

He swallowed hard and surreptitiously put the creature on the ground beside his chair while his hostess was busy being scrupulously polite to the Illyana they had brought with them. It was a very correct, superficially friendly, hospitable in every practical way sort of courtesy with an underlying strained chill.

He didn't think they liked each other much.

#Of course they don't. They're both looking at might-have-beens.#

#We look at each other and see might-have-beens, Stryfe.#

A pause. #That's only supporting my argument, you realize.#

Nathan thought about it. #I guess so. I'd been thinking it might be territorial.#

#Us or them?#

#Them. I suppose you could make the same argument, though.#

#It looks like they're both doing fairly well, though.#

Stryfe caught Tyler's eye briefly by accident and looked away. #Each is doing well in her own way, I suppose. I like mine better.#

Cable had to stifle a laugh with a bite of something spinach-colored that tasted like oranges. #Somehow I'm not surprised. Which surprises me, come to think of it.#

#Care to explain?#

#I'm not surprised you like the one you're friends with better than the one who's apparently more experienced, more powerful, and more influential on Earth as well as in Limbo. It's strange not to expect you to prefer the latter.#

There was a long pause. #Illyana is the only ruler I have actually liked since I was... twelve.#

#I imagine Apocalypse would put almost anyone off.#

#Probably.# Stryfe chewed somewhat morosely on a piece of green bread. It wasn't moldy, just green. After a moment, he added, #Thank you for the save. I somehow doubt my alternate ever told you.#

Cable stared at him for all of thirteen seconds before recovering from the shock enough to behave normally. #I just nearly fell out of my chair.#

#That wasn't my intention.#

#Sure it wasn't.#

#Believe what you like. Nathan, do you think the giant snails are intended as food, ornamentation, or pests? This one is stealing my soup.#

The snail was indeed, with utter disregard for the fact that it had arrived at the table on a plate of its own, burying its head in Stryfe's bowl with every evidence of enjoyment. Or perhaps Nathan was imagining this, as he was hard pressed to specify any particular evidences a snail could give of enjoyment or particular behaviors this one was exhibiting that would qualify.

Well, the perceptibly falling level of liquid in the bowl might be one....

#I gather they aren't a normal feature of 'your' Illyana's dinners in Limbo, then?#

Stryfe was frowning in the direction of this phenomenon, but seemed to find neither the soup nor the snail sufficiently appetizing to do anything about the situation. #No, but then, I don't recall her ever giving a formal one.#

#I'm guessing, since they were brought in on plates and don't look especially decorative to me, that they're supposed to be part of the meal,# Nathan suggested after a short pause.

#Nathan, you wouldn't believe what some people think is decorative,# Stryfe thought back absently, still watching the snail eat his dinner with apparent fascination. #I noticed you seem to have disposed of yours via another route.#

So he hadn't been quite surreptitious enough. At least their hosts hadn't commented. #I felt sorry for it,# Nathan replied a little defiantly. #And while I've eaten stranger and significantly more disgusting, that was usually when there were no better alternatives.#

The frown had been replaced by a faintly amused smile, and the snail, having apparently exhausted the supply of free liquid, lifted its head with a chunk of some unidentifiable solid and waved it in the air triumphantly before, presumably, swallowing.

Nathan somehow doubted that Stryfe was being that entertained by the snail.

#Don't get so defensive.# Yes, Stryfe was definitely laughing at him. #However coddled you might think I am, I have foraged on occasion, although this bears more resemblance to something served as a delicacy. Except someone would have painted the shell, maybe....#

Painted the shell? #Did Apocalypse make a habit of serving live food at his banquets, since you have such a good idea of how it should be presented?# Nathan inquired a bit sarcastically.

Stryfe actually looked up at him for a moment, at that. #He did occasionally, but this wouldn't have been his idea. He didn't see any point to serving a live course unless it was likely to fight back.#

Nathan got a sudden mental image of a bizarre hybrid between a bullfight and a formal dinner, complete with matador.... Wait.... That couldn't explain the cape, could it?

His own soup had been unmolested by his snail, which couldn't reach it from under the table without heroic effort and probably not even then, so Nathan had actually been eating it. Stryfe gave him a very strange look when he started laughing and nearly spit it across the table in an effort not to choke.

#What?#

#Never... mind.# Nothing in Stryfe's statement or tone had indicated whether the image had been his doing or merely a bizarre creation of Nathan's own mind, and Nathan was not about to ask.

Stryfe picked up the snail by the shell -- or rind -- and turned it over, inspecting its underside curiously and, perhaps, a bit dubiously. #If it's meant to be food, I wonder if you're supposed to put salt on it?#

**********

The meal ended eventually, and the guests were graciously invited to spend the night.

This despite the fact that Stryfe eventually got bored with having his dinner stolen and -- wary of the consequences of eating something alive in Limbo, given the weirdness of the usual fare he'd tried there -- released his own snail under the table. This wouldn't have been a problem except that it and Cable's erstwhile serving proceeded beneath the furniture until they encountered one another and fought.

Melon-shelled snails could make a surprising amount of noise.

Tyler voiced everyone's thoughts and broke the slightly embarrassed silence resulting from the combat's discovery by commenting on how appropriate it was.

They were still asked to stay. In an actual building, in actual bedrooms. As actual as anything got in Limbo, anyhow. Nathan kept trying to shake the uncomfortable feeling that the entire palace was some sort of illusion and would dwindle away during the night to the blood-clot its building stones resembled.

They were kind of crystalline. Maybe it would help if he thought of them as ruby quartz, like Scott's visor.

No. No, that didn't help. Not at all.

Nathan shuddered and forced himself to concentrate on the immediate. Disrobe. Shower. The shower spouted hot water, not blood, even though the red tiles reflected in it. He preferred the wildly erratic color scheme the other Illyana had used to this monochrome dark red.

Something in the atmosphere of the place seemed to be getting to him. He kept almost thinking he saw Nastirh peeking around a corner at him. Nathan wondered whether this sort of paranoia and the feeling of having been blanketed in gloom was a normal product of Limbo or a function of his own state of mind. If the mood was intrinsic to Limbo rather than himself, he could see why Illyana and Stryfe chose to camp instead. At least Illyana. Seven years here was probably enough.

He found himself fighting a growing unease that had nothing to do with the decor. He finally pinpointed it -- he was expecting his belongings, or even more likely Stryfe and Illyana, to disappear on the other side of a shift-line, even though he hadn't felt one since they crossed over to this shift.

There shouldn't be any, should there? This was Limbo, after all.

Or was it?

If shifts didn't come to Limbo, then it stood to reason that they had at least entered this world on Earth. He didn't remember a distinct transition. This Earth was so strongly bound to Limbo, however, that he couldn't be sure.

Still, it seemed more likely that they were still on Earth -- which spoke volumes about this timeline's Magik and Tyler.

Illyana would know.

Nathan thought to himself that he was being quite silly as he methodically fit everything he had brought with him back into his pack. And that did mean everything, as their hostess had apparently conjured them all a change of clothes that they were apparently meant to keep.

As long as the garments didn't eventually reveal a predilection for spontaneously disintegrating, vanishing, changing form, sticking unnaturally, or causing a rash or worse problems, this was a good thing.

Then he picked up the bag and went down the hall and across a rather nonsensically placed indoor footbridge to knock on Illyana's door.

"Come in." It opened before he could touch it; in fact, it opened without anyone else in range to touch it.

Nathan blinked. Illyana was lying on her stomach on her bed, feet in the air, and Stryfe was sitting on the carpet as if he'd been talking to her until he turned to look at the door. Nathan rather thought Stryfe had been the one to open the door.

The bed was at the other end of an enormous expanse of floor.

"Nice room," Nathan managed after a moment. Could Stryfe have been thinking along the same lines he had, or had he just come in to talk to Illyana, and if the latter, was he intruding?

"It should be. She's royalty here, you know." Stryfe eyed him for a moment. "She did invite you in. Are you planning to stand in the doorway all night?"

"No." Nathan went in, closing the door behind him and feeling even sillier about his pack until he caught sight of Stryfe's. Maybe they had had the same feeling....

He carefully didn't step on the threshold. Remembered some old warning about that, and in Limbo, he had the feeling one never knew.

That reminded him. "Are we in Limbo?" he asked abruptly as he sat down on the floor. "Or is this Earth... like this?"

"We're on Earth." Illyana sighed and looked around the room. "A piece of it brought particularly close to Limbo, but definitely Earth. One reason I don't much like her solution, even if it has worked well... especially after the shifts started."

"I see." He looked at Stryfe. "Why are we collecting in here anyway?"

Stryfe shrugged. "Why do we ever put up with each other?"

"Good question."

"If you two start fighting...."

Stryfe looked up at Illyana. "We'll be good."

Illyana threw a pillow at him.

Nathan shook his head, blinking. Even with the rest of the world going mad, Stryfe being fondly teasing still tripped his weird-meter.

Stryfe fielded the pillow and kept it. Illyana grabbed another one -- half the bed appeared to be covered with them; Cable wondered how she was expected to sleep on it without knocking them off -- and flopped down on it. "You know, I could teleport both your beds in here. The building's pinned to Limbo in enough places that there probably won't be any shifts overnight, but.... Well, there's room."

This was certainly true. It was also true that from the shop talk on sorcery and Limbo over dinner Nathan had gathered that the "probably" meant that a shift through the palace was vanishingly unlikely (stepping discs, on the other hand, were a different matter). It was still furthermore true that he knew and Stryfe most likely knew that she was being nice and not pointing out that they both found the place creepy. Then again, she probably did too.

"That would be good."

"Thanks."

"Incoming," the girl announced calmly, and glowing white circles deposited the furniture in question neatly on the floor. Stryfe immediately took possession of the nearest one. Nathan eyed him. He looked smug.

After a moment's consideration, Nathan grabbed him and dumped him off the bed.

"Hey!" Stryfe yelped and climbed back on.

"I didn't promise to be good."

Illyana took one look at them as they paused, both sitting on the bed, to glower at each other, and burst into giggles. "WILL you two behave?"

"He started it," Stryfe pointed out. This failed to help her efforts to stop laughing and breathe normally.

"Oh, very mature," Nathan told him.

"And throwing me on the floor was?"

"It's you."

"Are you two making up for not having gotten to fight when you were, say, three or four?" Illyana inquired as soon as she could catch her breath. "Nathan. Over THERE." He looked at her for a moment without moving, then found himself swallowed by a stepping disc and deposited an instant later on the other bed. "I think that's the one from your room anyway."

A little more verbal sniping, a few trips to take advantage of the amenities of an actual building -- surprisingly modern in technology; it seemed incongruous given the general air of antiquated sorcery -- and they settled down in a sort of eerie half-light to rest.

**********

When Nathan opened his eyes, it was to a room bathed in an eerie low light. Not the blue-silver-gray that was normal for night vision, no, this was very distinctly tinted red. Like a darkroom... or maybe like what Scott would have seen through his glasses in dim light.

Scott's night vision had never been the best. Slym's had been better. Having to look through a layer of colored rock could do that. Neither one had ever seemed to have much trouble with even the brightest sun, though. Even in the desert....

He closed his eyes again and fought against tears.

"Nathan."

He tensed. "Stryfe." Just as well they were whispering; his voice couldn't give anything away.

Silence.

"Well? What?"

"Never mind."

He heard Stryfe move, and next time he looked over his clone -- clone's alternate -- had his back to him. Huh. "How trusting," Cable said under his breath, then pulled his pack closer to him on the bed and extracted the scryer from it. The film seemed to be remarkably durable, as Illyana had assured him the first time he tried to pack it, for all it looked like a milky soap-bubble; apparently the admonition not to touch it had been specifically for him.

The silver-white film almost managed to shake off the tinge of pink that the light tried to impart.

When he stared into it, he finally saw things in real color again.

It was a relief, at first.

**********

It hadn't been long since she first remembered being Magik that Stryfe found Illyana curled up in a chair with headphones on, staring at nothing. The book she'd been reading was being ignored, two pages waving almost straight up in the middle.

He crouched down beside her to listen. She had the volume turned too loud, he noted absently.

That might be why she hadn't yet noticed he was there.

~I am shielded in my armor
Hiding in my room
Safe within my womb
I touch no one and no one touches me.~

Simon and Garfunkel. "I Am a Rock." A bleak song, overall. Not what she needed to be hearing.

He knew the CD, and reached with his mind to the controls to push it ahead a few tracks. "Bridge over Troubled Water" should be a considerable improvement.

Illyana twisted around to look at him indignantly, but burst into tears within the first few lines. Stryfe stood up and took a step back, wondering a little uncomfortably if she'd taken the lyrics as... a message of some sort, as if he meant them....

Not that he wasn't on her side, and so forth, but he hadn't exactly intended....

"Stryfe." Ororo's voice fell on his ears like ice, and he turned to face her with a speed that probably made him look guilty. "What have you done to her?"

"Nothing. Just switched the song she was playing."

"Why?"

"I... thought it would be a better choice for her to hear." He didn't need to be on the defensive; he hadn't done anything objectionable....

"It's all right, Ororo." Illyana popped her head up from her arms, tears on her cheeks and bright hair tumbling around the headphones as she pushed them down to her neck. She sniffed. "He was right. I was brooding." A wry smile. "His family has a nasty streak that way; I suppose he's good at diagnosing it."

"Is weeping preferable, Illyana?"

Illyana's face grew wistful. "Oh, Ororo... you don't know how hard it's been for me to cry, lately. And these are good tears."

**********

Not long after that, Illyana went running in the morning, spent a short stretch of afternoon in contemplation, and quietly got up very early the next day. She munched an apple and some peanuts she wasn't supposed to have in her room, went to the drawer where she'd secreted her old New Mutants outfits after hunting them down the previous evening, held up the white costume, and then quietly crumpled it back into the drawer.

Then she pulled on the old "bumblebee" uniform from her New Mutant days -- one nice thing about the material was that it was elastic enough to fit despite her body being less mature than the last time she'd put it on. One size fits all, I guess. She thought about teleporting, then decided against it and went quietly down to the Danger Room, sat down against the wall beside the door, and waited for her old teammates.

Cable was supposed to be taking over the day's training session, for the first time since his return, and had deliberately set it for an hour and a half earlier than Cyclops normally did. He was standing inside waiting for them thirty minutes before that when Illyana took a surreptitious peek through the observation windows and then ducked quickly back out of sight, but he hadn't been looking up.

She got up from behind the door as X-Force yawned through the door, drawing a few startled looks and greetings before they all made it through and she presented herself with them. Cable looked them over and halted at Illyana.

"What do you think you're doing here?"

It was an understandable question. It was also a very annoyed one. Illyana and Cable had not gotten off to the greatest start. She was eleven years old and considerably smaller than any of X-Force. And she was certainly not invited to the training session. It promised to be brutal.

She was looking forward to it, in a weird way.

"I want to train." Don't sound arrogant, don't sound arrogant! You know you're going to screw up at first.

Cable folded his arms and gave her a withering look. "This room," he pointed out sardonically, "is reserved at the moment. Go train somewhere else and stay out of my way."

"I meant I want to train with you." She glanced to the side, picking out Sam and Roberto before she looked back up at Nathan. "I was on the New Mutants, when that was a team."

"Kids. You were kids. They've grown up since then; you're -- actually younger than you were at the time. We aren't playing here, little girl."

Illyana bit down hard on her temper as it kindled; she hated being talked down to. "I know you aren't."

"If this is some kind of stupid joke --"

"Ah don't think she's joking, Cable," Sam spoke up quietly. "If she remembers being Magik, she remembers how to fight. Ah'd let her stay."

Cable gave Cannonball a long look. When his eyes snapped back to Illyana she thought of lightning. "You can stay -- just as long as you aren't a hindrance. You won't use the Soulsword. You won't get any special treatment for being small, young, weak, or inexperienced, and if you can't keep up, you're going to hurt by the end of the morning." He smiled coldly. "Actually, I expect you'll hurt even in the unlikely even that you can keep up. Still want to stick around?"

"Yes."

She stayed.

Illyana decided about twenty minutes later, about the time the seaweed peeled itself off the walls and tried to eat them, that Cable was afraid they might think he'd gone soft. Also that there might be something odd about the atmosphere on Graymalkin.

He changed environments on them until she lost count and made them run two missions of his own from the 38th century.

From both sides, "since you've all been spending so much time around Stryfe."

It was a very frustrating session for Illyana. She wasn't part of the this team -- she'd known that -- and while Sam did his best to incorporate her, no one quite knew what to do with her.

Except for Shatterstar, who saw the knife she'd brought in her hand and flipped his own swords into the air long enough to use her as a projectile before he caught them again.

It was cheating to use a spell to interfere with the electronics so that she sailed through the spot where she should have smashed against a force field protecting the image of a younger, armor-clad Stryfe opposing them.

She didn't care.

The flicker of statement on Nathan's face when she drove the knife between chin and metal collar was worth it. Seeing the flicker was worth the smashing blow she took for not paying attention.

She wasn't going to do it again, though. It missed the point.

Of course, the real Stryfe would never have let her get that close. Not in combat, anyway, she corrected herself. She'd spent a fair amount of time at closer range than that being read to. Of course, he might have been a little more reluctant about that if she'd been carrying a knife.

Teamwork in combat was a little tricky for her. Even the self-defense training she'd received in the last few years had focused primarily on how to protect herself when no one else was available to do so.

In Limbo... she'd fought alongside Cat. Hunted alongside Cat, too. Other than that, when she'd been able to do anything at all to protect herself and sometimes when she hadn't, she'd been on her own. When someone had fought for her there had rarely been anything she could do to help.

Maybe Cat was why she kept gravitating towards Feral. Style was different... but there was a certain disturbing similarity to Cat after Belasco tamed her mind.

The worst part, though, was exactly the problem she was doing this to remedy. She could see what she should be doing, but when it came to carrying it out... time and again, she failed. She was reasonably fit; she'd always been active -- but she didn't have the strength or speed or reach or endurance she remembered from the teenager she no longer was and wasn't yet. She was smaller and less hardened, and her muscles lacked the memories her mind had rediscovered and now expected of them.

So she fell too often, fell short much too often, and was knocked down when she shouldn't have been there to be hit. She picked herself up every time, half the time imagining she smelled the sulfur-ridden dirt of Limbo's wastelands across the burning in her throat and lungs. The sharp pain of bruises faded more readily under adrenaline than the deeper ache in muscles she continued to force through moves they protested, and sweat slicked her knife-grip and stung where she'd scraped her knee through the fabric.

Eventually, she started improving her estimates, recovering and clarifying what her abilities really were now and bringing her attempts within those boundaries. She learned. Painfully.

She still wasn't impressed. She rather suspected that Cable, who watched everything and everyone but still managed to make her feel his coolly assessing gaze on her every move and fault and fall, was even less so.

But she did better.

That, she reminded herself, gritting her teeth against pain and humiliation, was the point. Besides, this was mild. The monsters threatening to eat her if she failed weren't even real.

She'd gotten herself into it, too, so she didn't join in the semi-good-natured grumbling. The other reason for that was that she didn't think she had the spare energy to talk.

"End program."

The images winked out and Illyana stumbled as the solid-light rock she'd been standing on disappeared. It took her a moment to realize that Cable wasn't going to start up a new one, or maybe come in and play reverse-tag the way Magneto used to.

"That's enough for today -- or at least all we have time for at the moment, since the X-Men are taking over the room in a few minutes." He paced in front of them, offering up quick commentary, and stopped for a little longer in front of Illyana before addressing her.

She pushed damp hair that had escaped its ponytail off her face.

"I suppose you were useful after all -- there's always the chance of having to defend someone too stupid to remain on the sidelines where they belong. What do you have to say about your performance?"

Illyana took a deep breath. "I'm out of condition, out of practice, and haven't gotten used to the difference between what I remember being able to do and what I can really do now yet."

"I didn't ask for excuses."

"That was a list of things to remedy." She winced internally at how she'd snapped that, and tried to still the tiny muscle spasms making her tremble. "May I join you again tomorrow?"

Cable stared at her for a moment. "Same terms. If you can move." To all of them, "Out. Hit the showers."

**********

The hot water felt good, but Illyana was still dragging badly when she toweled off, realized she probably should have brought something to change into, and wrapped up in the towel to go back to her room. She should probably go walking after that. Something. Everything hurt; she didn't want to move, but she didn't dare succumb to the urge to lie still. Then she really wouldn't be able to move tomorrow morning.

Besides, napping in the middle of the hall was likely to give the wrong idea.

Head down, focused on the next step, she walked into someone large and solid. She looked up, blinking. "Oh. Stryfe."

"For some reason," he remarked with a faint smile, "I kept thinking you might stop." A pause. "Illyana, what happened to you?"

"I was training with X-Force." Almost to her own door. Move those feet. One at a time, not up to jumping. She managed a smile of her own. "Not... bad." Hand on the doorknob. "I'll get dressed again, see you later?"

It was so tempting just to throw herself down on the bed and not budge for the rest of, say, the month. No. She closed the door firmly behind her and put on the nice, comfortable, soft but sturdy clothes she usually wore, suitable for running around the grounds or even in public without attracting comment.

I didn't think I could cause that much of an abrasion on smooth floor through cloth. I'll have to remember that. The shorts displayed the red scrape on her knee quite nicely.

She straightened up from crouching to examine it and groaned quietly as her body complained about this proceeding. Walk. Maybe she could run around the grounds. Had she really felt this bad after Cat made her run all day? Running wouldn't help her arms that much, though....

Maybe she could climb a tree. An oak....

Tears stung her eyes.

**********

Illyana stopped in the hallway and frowned at the voices. Christopher and Nathan were yelling at each other. This usually wasn't a good thing.

They were between her and outdoors, too. She decided to treat that as convenient rather than ominous, and walked calmly toward the room.

"She's eleven years old, Nathan, and she is not and never has been part of your little fan club! You had no business --"

"X-Force is not a fan club and it was her idea."

"It -- what?"

"That's right." Both men swung around to look at her, and Illyana grinned despite the aches. They'd been too intent on their argument to hear her on her way. "He actually tried to talk me out of it, Chris, so knock it off. Besides, it was a good workout." She started moving again, through the room. She was not going to walk or move as if she was in pain. It took most of her pride to keep that resolution. "I'm going for a walk. Chris? Want to come with me?"

Christopher directed another decidedly unfriendly glare at Cable, and joined Illyana at the door.

"Where are we going?"

"For a walk."

"You said that," Christopher pointed out, reasonably enough.

"It's a walk. You go out and wander around and then come back, without necessarily having any particular path or destination other than to get back to where you started eventually."

Christopher halted and put a hand on her shoulder to force her to do the same. "Ah... are you upset about something?"

Illyana looked up at him for a moment and then smiled. "Not very. Tired enough to show it when I get sentimental over oak trees, but mostly just driven by the compelling feeling that if I lie down I'll never work the lactic acid out. At least not in time for tomorrow's session."

"Sentimental over oak trees?"

"I can't make an acorn that doesn't explode."

Christopher gave her a look which strongly suggested he suspected the conversation of no longer making sense.

Illyana smiled at him again and turned to start walking before it became excessively difficult. Keep moving. That was right. "I tried to, you know. In Limbo. It never worked. Ororo did it; she made it out of her power and her life, in defiance of Belasco's tainting her, and it grew into the one thing he couldn't destroy or turn of all she'd made."

"You said she trained you...."

"Exactly."

"Illyana."

"What? I became his apprentice. He couldn't destroy it. I... did."

"How?"

Not, Illyana reflected, the most comforting response. She would probably have been annoyed if he had tried to find one, though. "He cast me out for killing her when he wanted to steal her soul. He cursed me not to die and threw me into a blizzard on the wastes --"

"Cursed you... not to die?"

"Yes. Immortality with the ability to starve, freeze, fall ill, and take wounds left intact is a fairly potent curse, Chris."

"...I suppose so." He sounded bemused.

"I was thrown against the tree and used it for shelter and sustenance; I drew on it once too often, and the last acorn that blew up in my face drained it far enough that it fell and crumbled to dust." She closed her eyes. "After it withstood all else he ever tried."

"You don't think that was Belasco's purpose, surely...."

"Why not?" She closed her eyes as she walked, taking his hand after a moment so she didn't have to think about holding her course. She was so tired.... The memories were more wearying than the workout had been. "How should I know? But why not? I only know he didn't expect the sword."

"The Soulsword. That was when?"

"I realized that I didn't want what Ororo wanted. That was why it never worked. I didn't hold the beliefs she was affirming; I didn't want to make clean life to show he couldn't wholly take me. I wanted to cut the bonds he'd put on me. I wanted revenge. I wanted to kill him. So I made a sword." She opened her eyes again and let his hand fall. "He's still there. I won by not killing him, twice. Limbo won't let him die either, you see."

The released hand brushed over her hair, lightly. "Is there anything I'm really supposed to say here? Being comforting is not a skill I've much developed. I can sympathize, but my instinct would be to cheer you on, and that seems a bit inappropriate."

Illyana laughed suddenly. "This is fine, really. I appreciate you coming with me... instead of sticking to the argument with Cable."

Christopher allowed the subject change. "I am still quite sure he's to blame for something. Your claim to have instigated the whole thing does, however, complicate matters somewhat."

"I'd half expected you to stay just to avoid backing down."

"That's him, not me. He always used to take offense at my teleporting away from a conflict before he thought we were done." Illyana looked up in time to catch a smirk. "It was an excellent way to annoy him. Now where was it you planned to go?"

She shrugged, deliberately wriggling her shoulders against the soreness. "It was my idea. And I need to keep moving, after that." She smiled sweetly. "I thought I'd go climb a tree."

"...And you want me along for this?"

"You're good company?"

"What do you want me to do?"

She couldn't help laughing at his tone. He was probably thinking about her fondness for branches that didn't look as if they ought to bear her weight. "Walk with me. I don't care if you climb or not; I'll pick a nice sturdy one in case you want to."

"I could simply hold myself up telekinetically instead of relying on the tree."

"Either way."

Illyana was clambering high in the branches of -- surprise -- an oak when Stryfe, settled fairly comfortably in the lower ones, asked as neutrally as he could, "How did it go?"

"The Danger Room session? I was horrible. The New Mu... er... X-Force looks pretty good, though. Nathan didn't want to admit it, but I think they surprised him a few times. In a good way."

"They should have improved since he's been here. He shouldn't think he's that indispensable, and if he didn't expect anyone else to train them, I have to wonder about his claims of wanting to promote their survival."

"Be nice."

"This is me."

"I doubt he thought that. He'd still remember where they were before, though."

Christopher shrugged as she dropped onto his branches, far enough out that they swayed under her weight. "As you like. Why do you say you were horrible?"

"Because I was, of course. I knew I would be -- I'm just a kid next to them now, and I'm not in condition. Not like I... remember being."

"Of course you aren't. You'd been undergoing combat training before."

"By the time Cat got through with me, I could run all day and come close to defeating her with blades in the evening."

"That was when Cat got through with you. You haven't been being trained for that lately. You're nowhere near being fit to send out on your own, even if you'd have been about to come of age in my time." He sighed. "You could have asked me, you know."

"Asked you what?"

"To help you train." Christopher frowned at her. "Instead of subjecting yourself to Nathan."

Illyana climbed sideways to an adjacent branch so that she could get close enough to the trunk to hug him. He didn't tense the way she'd ignored when he first arrived. "Nathan doesn't like me. You do. I was afraid you'd be too nice to me."

He nearly spluttered. "I don't go easy on anyone."

"Then why be so angry that Nathan didn't?"

"He's Nathan. I don't like him -- he hates me -- and I don't trust him with you."

"He won't harm me."

"He would if he thought it necessary."

"Can't you say that of yourself as well? I hope so." Illyana shrugged.

"I would still teach you, if you like. More than just fighting. Don't worry. I won't be too nice."

"I'd still want to train with X-Force. If it doesn't bother them too much. Group-work was always the hardest to get used to."

"I know the feeling," Christopher observed pensively. "You could still train with them, I suppose. Of course, I'm tempted to take them on again at some point. Perhaps I'll steal you to be on my side...."

"We'll see." She laughed, then sobered. "And... thank you. I would like your help."

"Good. Hop down and let's get started."

Illyana nearly fell out of the tree. "Now?"

Stryfe smirked, swung down, and easily pulled her out of the branches to set her own the ground. "I did promise."

**********

Strange snippets, slices of life. Family moments. Madelyne had arrived much later than Nate Grey, but to Cable's surprise, though hardly delighted with the situation since her death, she seemed to reconcile herself to it. Jean's dragging her off to visit the Grey household surprised their parents somewhat but seemed to help.

Nathan and Stryfe managed to cooperate to set up a new identity for her. This didn't bother her; her first had been made up too. She insisted on testing to recover her pilot's license for real, though.

Some very strange snippets.

**********

"I can cook," Stryfe -- Christopher -- announced in tones of protest.

Nathan looked at him. "The problem, Stryfe, is that no one in their right mind would dare eat anything you'd cooked."

"I'd say I eat my own cooking, but that would just be asking for it...."

**********

"Act your age, you two!" Jean reprimanded.

"Which age?" Nathan inquired brightly. "I'm chronologically seven."

"That," Illyana intervened helpfully, "is in some cultures the hypothetical Age of Reason." A pause. "I don't think either one of them is there yet."

"They could TRY." Madelyne, for once, was in entire agreement with Jean. This wasn't a unique event, but was relatively rare. This was probably fortunate, as it tended to scare Nathan and Christopher.

Cable shrugged and looked appealingly from one mother-figure to the other. "So can I have a cookie?" There was general snickering.

They didn't even look at each other. "Not until after dinner."

Even Stryfe broke up laughing.

**********

Madelyne also attended X-Force's karaoke party. It was corny, if strangely entertaining. "The Day the Music Died," however, was probably an unfortunate choice of music. Except for that, however, the evening was a success.

Strange to see everyone get along that well. Not that it was idyllic, but none of Nathan's relatives were trying to kill him (or vice versa) or each other, and for them, that was close.

**********

Stryfe tapped at the door to Xavier's study, was acknowledged, and went in. "Excuse me. I was looking for a book and was told it had last been seen in your company."

Charles laughed softly and lifted one from his desk. "This?"

"Are you still using it?"

"Not at the moment." Charles steepled his fingers, then gestured at another chair. "I had been hoping for a chance to speak with you, however."

Such a thing wasn't particularly hard to come by, or shouldn't have been. Stryfe understood that the unspoken portion of the sentence was without my students being alarmed or making things uncomfortable. Most of the X-Men were reasonably accustomed to Stryfe, but still got just a bit nervous when he talked to their mentor.

Xavier's control of what he communicated, by mind or word or motion, was good enough that Stryfe wasn't entirely sure whether his continued presence bothered the professor or not. He did assume that if he were considered seriously untrustworthy he would have been invited to leave by this point.

"About something in particular?"

"Yes." Charles looked first thoughtful, then wry. "Lila Cheney has scheduled another concert in Central Park."

"I gather you plan to speak at this one as well?"

Charles inclined his head. "Yes." A smile twitched at his lips. "I trust this one will be at least slightly less eventful?"

Stryfe had heard that coming since the name left the other man's lips. "For my part, you are correct." He paused and looked at the bookshelves over Xavier's shoulder. Slowly, and somewhat uncomfortably, he added, "Perhaps I should mention that in the course of assuring that I would have the opportunity to do so myself, I found it necessary to interfere with one or two other plots to kill you."

"Somehow I am not overly surprised at their existence." Charles paused. "I suppose I am pleased that --" He broke off, consideringly.

"Trying to find a tactful way to point out that I failed?" Stryfe smiled faintly, himself. "I had in fact noticed that you were carrying on a conversation with no indications of being dead. I can't say I regret that particular failure."

"I'm glad to hear that." More amusement colored the tone; Charles then stopped to wait for Stryfe to come to his point.

Stryfe, for his part, suspected that the other telepath had already divined it, but that didn't eliminate reason to speak it. "I have, as you surmised, no intention of carrying out the main thrust of my mission that day. I could however prevent other attempts again. I know where to look."

"I would appreciate that very much," Xavier returned gravely. Presumably what he had been leading up to all along. Stryfe was about to stand and reach for the book when Charles spoke again. "Please refrain from killing them."

Stryfe sighed. "You are so impractical."

"Christopher...."

"Very well. Barring necessity, I'll leave them alive and even relatively unmaimed."

**********

"Christopher! There you are." Illyana grinned and waved as Stryfe made his way to her through the crowd. "I saved you a spot," she announced as he reached her. Leaning against the wall she was perched atop, but definitely a spot.

"So you did." He took his place, arms folded as he leaned back against the bricks. "Having fun up there?"

"Well, if you take into account the fact that nothing's happened yet, yes, I'm having a ball." She patted Stryfe's shoulder with a foot.

"Nothing had better happen," Nathan growled, emerging from the crowd himself to lean on the wall beside Stryfe and favor his clone with a glare.

"Well, the speech and concert should happen," Stryfe murmured without looking at him. "I am covering security, after all."

"I'm sure Bishop is thrilled."

"He's being quite admirably paranoid. It's rather entertaining."

"And you?"

"What do you think?" Stryfe asked smoothly.

"Fox to guard the henhouse, wolf to guard the flock..." Nathan grumbled.

Stryfe turned to eye him inquisitively at that point. "That was curiously rhythmic. Have you taken up composing poetry when you're in a bad mood, or are you quoting something?"

"No." Cable folded his arms and leaned back on the wall, glowering straight ahead.

"Too bad. I was going to ask about the next line."

A huff. "Xavier put you up to this, didn't he?"

"Looking out for plots to kill him? Yes."

"Classic." Nathan snorted faintly, sounding more amused than genuinely annoyed now. "How many did you find?"

"Three, one of whom apparently arrived early and had the misfortune to encounter you. Either that or there's someone else with a decidedly familiar psi-imprint."

"It was me." A third would have been decidedly alarming. A fourth, really, but Nate Grey was reasonably distinctive. "What did you do to them?"

"Just put them to sleep."

Nathan looked skeptical. "That's not like you."

Stryfe rolled his eyes. "And wiped the relevant memories, and planted suggestions not to do anything inconvenient."

"That's... more like you, if perhaps a little hypocritical."

"Why? It would have been a perfectly reasonable reaction if anyone could have managed to do it to me." He looked faintly disgusted. "It was entirely too easy. The only set who bothered with shielding made an absolutely pathetic attempt -- Charles could have found and stopped them all himself this time if he'd bothered."

"If anyone did shield adequately, either of us would be more likely to pick up on the other signs. He's been a soldier, but some types of surreptitious just aren't his forte."

"Isn't that what Bishop is for?"

"You want to leave it all to him?"

"Of course not. If I haven't checked, it doesn't count. Besides, he wasn't a criminal -- and he's not a telepath."

"By that logic, shouldn't the rebel-since-age-two be the better choice?"

"You started that late? But, Nathan, I knew you'd run your own check. Don't tell me you didn't find my pair."

"Yes. Are you gloating?"

"Not particularly. There was plenty of time."

"How generous."

Illyana leaned down. "Just out of curiosity, which one of you is making everyone not notice this conversation?"

The two men glanced at each other, then up. "Both, apparently," Stryfe said wryly. "By the way, did you climb up there or teleport?"

"Started to climb and was then spontaneously assisted by a passing... cheerleader, guessing from the way he picked me up."

"Of course. Where'd he go?"

Illyana shrugged. "Away."

"How enlightening."

"That way." She gestured generally off to the side and ahead. "Too bad, too; he was cute."

"If you see him, watch for his reaction to Xavier," Stryfe suggested. "I'm sure there will be someone who starts yelling...."

Ahead of them, Xavier wheeled toward the microphone.

"There's always someone who starts yelling," Cable pointed out impatiently. "I used to challenge -- or outright heckle -- Askani religious services. After Slym and Redd... were gone." He snorted at the peculiar look he received from Stryfe. "I met Blaquesmith that way; maybe I should have kept my mouth shut. But if that's the worst we have to worry about today, we're doing fai-- What the flonq is that?"

The urgency brought him and Stryfe both upright from leaning on the wall, and Illyana to a crouch on top of it.

Stryfe began, "I don't see anythi--"

Nathan had been just a little bit early. He was still far, far too late to do any good.

That was a flash of light, a silver-white iridescent ribbon, a curtain of whitewater, a million-faceted crystal wall, a gash in reality that ripped across the park.

A bright red spray decorated it in spots for a moment, and people fell away screaming, or pieces of them simply fell and the rest was gone.

Fully formed, the fault froze in place and for a moment was still visible yet absolutely clear.

The people on the other side were wrong. Some of them were bleeding too. The stage was in the wrong place; one corner was missing. Three young people were tuning up their various musical instruments and seemed alarmed at what had happened to their audience.

Xavier was nowhere in sight.

The streak that had spread through the air and ground became a blur, painful to look at, and began slowly to move.

Nathan stared at it in horror and whispered, "What have I done?"

**********

Cable jerked his head upright and squeezed his eyes shut, hands clenched on the scryer hard enough that by all rights they should have broken the thin metal, or failing that, been cut by it. Bright Lady... the nightmares had been better.

"Nathan."

It was bad enough to know what he'd done to his own world. It was the worst of a long string of failures to haunt him. He watched his alternate share in the guilt for something that happened without a cause native to that timeline, and wanted to die, but couldn't help blaming his alternate as well, against all logic.

"Nathan?"

He couldn't look into the scryer again. He would give it back to Illyana -- no, he would break it! His hands tightened for a moment. No. He had no right -- to more destruction. He would give it back. Why didn't they hate him for this?

"Nathan!"

The hiss of his name finally got his attention, and he dropped the scrying device as if it had suddenly burned him. "Stryfe." He shuddered. "Why don't you hate me?"

There was a short and rather puzzled silence ending in a cautiously flippant, "Who says I don't?"

That served as a sharp prod back into a comparatively normal state of mind, and Cable took a deep breath. "Not what I meant."

"What did you mean?" Stryfe gestured at the scryer. "What did you see just now, Nathan?"

Stop that. I don't need to be reminded of my own name. Unfortunately. "When the shifts came to your timeline." Why deny it?

"I should have guessed."

"Why?"

"I was with your alternate at the time. I assume you caught that part. I saw how he reacted."

"He didn't do anything."

"I'm aware of that. He seemed to be convinced that the whole thing was somehow his fault anyway. I found it quite curious."

"I'm sure you enjoyed it."

"That is not what I said, Nathan."

And Stryfe was not one to gloat subtly. He would usually come right out and be blatant about it. Overkill or nothing, that was the Chaos-Bringer....

"Besides," Stryfe added blandly, "it wasn't a particularly enjoyable situation."

Nathan thought about throwing the scryer at him. "No," he said instead, tightly, "I imagine not."

Stryfe leaned back against the headboard after casting a suspicious eye over it. "We were divided up in fairly short order. It would have been more effective to stay together as much as possible, of course, but as the X-Men were relatively spread out at the concert, and hence started off at something of a disadvantage. Also, of course, no one quite seemed to know what was going on -- your alternate seemed to have a remarkable feel for the general properties of each new world we were thrown into, but he wasn't especially forthcoming otherwise."

"Why are you telling me this?" Nathan glared across the gap between beds.

His clone shrugged languidly. "You're awake."

"You probably know as much about them as I do, now," Nathan growled, quietly as he reminded himself that there was presumably someone trying to sleep in the room. "I thought Illyana could find people."

"The one from the timeline we're in can locate individuals and fragments from her timeline or similar ones because they're marked by the mixing of Earth and Limbo, if I followed the dinner conversation correctly. By the time we realized the need and she found a way to mark those she wanted to find again, it was too late for most of those we would have been interested in retrieving."

"Like who?"

"Teammates and relatives. Who else?" Stryfe shook his head. "Who were the Twelve, Nathan?"

He jerked upright and stared across the dark again. "What?"

"Who were the Twelve? You mentioned then when we were talking to... ah... En Sabah Nur." Nathan thought he saw the other man shudder slightly, but it was difficult to tell in the shadows. "I can think of almost that many mythical or mystical significances to the number, and Sanctity mentioned something about it that seems, in retrospect, to have had to do with the Sentinels, but none seem patently relevant."

"Scott and Jean." Nathan smiled grimly to see Stryfe start. "Xavier, Magneto, Polaris, Bishop, the Living Monolith, Storm, Mikhail Rasputin, Iceman, Sunfire." The smile twisted. "And me."

"Aside from being involved in the battle -- and apparently infecting their alternates with some sort of guilt-complex about it -- what's their significance now? Do they even still have one? Is that why Nathan knew things he should have had no way of knowing about the timelines? I've seen you do the same thing." Stryfe obviously suspected his last two answers would be "yes," or he would never have asked....

Unfortunately, he was right. "I think... think the Twelve are all going mad at varying rates. And getting control of the shifts at corresponding ones." Cable shuddered involuntarily. "I've met -- met versions of some of them I had to kill."

Stryfe refrained from asking how Cable could tell this. "At least one of the list, in our timeline, wasn't the most sane person I've met in the first place." He glanced towards Illyana, and Nathan realized Stryfe must have meant Mikhail. He bit back a comment about Stryfe's sanity as the man continued thoughtfully. "That... what you describe might explain the version of you who twisted a shift-line into a spiral around me. Not that it would require any unusual circumstances for him to consider killing me, in whatever creative methods, but what he tried to do to Illyana -- I think I know how you fight, Nathan, and that was beneath you."

A flickered image told him what his alternate had tried. He shuddered again. "Did you kill him?" he asked bluntly.

"No."

"Bright Lady, why NOT?!"

Stryfe laughed, ever so softly. "Because this was very early after the shifts started, and initially Illyana and I had our version of you with us, and he beat me to it. Now we can't find him." He frowned and corrected himself. "Actually, between our respective abilities and... links to him, we've managed to locate him occasionally. Or so we think -- we just haven't been able to get to him."

"You're trying?"

"There is a goal to our search other than allowing Illyana to assist as many versions of you as possible. He was... the last one we lost. As I said, we should be able to find him." Stryfe slid down the headboard and back onto his pillow, comfortably. "I sometimes wonder if Illyana wouldn't do better on her own; it's entirely possible that I'm the one he's avoiding."

"I wouldn't be surprised. Or maybe he doesn't want anyone finding him." Nathan stared at the scryer in his lap and carefully picked it up to set aside, where the other pillow had been before he stacked them. "Maybe you don't want to find him."

"I beg your pardon?" Stryfe's voice was suddenly cold.

"Granted, if only because it was fun to hear you say that." Cable felt himself glared at. "I'm serious. There may be good reason not to want to find him."

"I thought at first you meant to suggest I was somehow sabotaging the attempts."

"That wasn't what I meant. Why? Are you?" It certainly wasn't implausible, especially if it had leapt to Stryfe's mind so readily.

"No. Why should we not want to find him?" Offended, but apparently sincere....

Nathan sighed and made the point more clearly. "If he's skilled enough with the shifts to keep a few steps ahead of you, how far gone is he?"

There was silence for a moment, then, far too calmly, "It depends on how he's doing it. If necessary, I'll kill him."

"Only if it's necessary?"

"Yes."

Nathan lay back. "You might not be able to win, you know."

**********

"Are you sure you don't mind?" Illyana was being painstakingly polite to her alternate, who had casually suggested that if they were determined to leave, they might as well teleport directly to somewhere else moderately hospitable instead of looking for a shiftline. Apparently this was very generous -- something about various timelines' Illyanas generally avoiding trespass on one anothers realms. It confused the demons.

"It won't be a problem. Go to Limbo. Find some locus that feels like yours. Pick your destination from there." A pause. "Good journey." Had she picked that up from Tyler? "Find what you seek."

"I'm not looking for anything," Nathan replied under his breath.

Tyler answered him anyway. "Are you certain?"

**********

It was foggy again. It was a light fog, though, barely a haze of mist except where it pooled silver-white in depressions in the ground. Apparently it stuck to the dirt; the ground was mostly covered with a thin layer of chocolate-brown lichen, or something like lichen, but where the coating was disturbed -- or gouged -- it rapidly frosted over.

Frosted wasn't quite right. The mist was curiously warm. The lichen was edible, but Nathan hadn't seen the need to mention it yet.

He stooped and scraped up a piece, brushing off black dirt that turned silver as it fell from the underside and leaving a fast-whitening patch on the ground. He wasn't hungry yet, if anything still a little queasy from the aftertaste of something off Illyana's table, but he was curious.

The lichen was mildly sweet, with a little of the flavor of honey.

Wasn't manna supposed to be white?

"I'd ask if you hadn't ever grown out of eating dirt as a child, but I assume you know what you're doing."

"I hope you didn't eat dirt as a child, Stryfe. Most of it was toxic. This seems to be the local base of the food chain -- no." He realized suddenly that that wasn't right. "It's eating the mist."

"That makes my day, I assure you. More predatory fog."

"You weren't listening. The fog is the prey. It drops to the ground to reproduce; they're both photosynthetic, but the mist climbs to get most of the light, so the lichen eats it. When other things eat the lichen there's space for the mist to get a spot on the ground for a while and spawn...."

"Fascinating as this is, there's something disturbing about your intuitive grasp of the population dynamics of a completely alien ecosystem."

"It can't be completely alien. We're still on Earth. This whole mess is still on Earth. I hope." Cable paused and tried for a lighter tone. "At least it isn't explosive sand."

"I don't want to know, Nathan." Stryfe frowned at a mist-filled gouge. "What eats the lichen?"

"Me, so far." He shrugged at the look Stryfe gave him. "I can't tell from this."

The plain of matte-brown seemed to go on endlessly. Nathan caught himself brooding again over the shifts and tried for distraction by thinking about the older scenes from his companions' timeline.

Before.

"Stryfe. Question."

"Hm?"

"Who got Sam to sing 'Princes of the Universe,' and HOW?"

Stryfe laughed. "I'm not entirely sure about the first and suspect whoever had the idea for incense." He grimaced. "Which one wouldn't think should mix well with karaoke."

Nathan snorted. "Not really. You sure it wasn't the punch?"

"I doubt it. For one thing, our Nathan was probably paying attention -- for another, neither of us drank much of it after odd things started finding their way in, but that song still set us off discussing a hypothetical world takeover by X-Force for about an hour afterwards."

Cable set down the scryer, carefully, and stared at Stryfe. "Are you joking?"

"Not now. I was at the time, although I admit there were one or two moments I started to wonder about your alternate."

"Sam wouldn't be that bad."

Stryfe gave him a look. "You would say that. I still get a bit nervous about Externals."

Nervous? "Any other one and I'd probably agree with you," Nathan conceded. "I still can't believe you spent an hour in friendly conversation with my alternate."

"We had mostly gotten used to each other." Stryfe sounded slightly annoyed. "And I did say I had suspicions about the incense."

Nathan slowed, sensing a shift about to open. "Bear left...." He was still walking and half-stumbled ungracefully when a scaly creature the same brown as the lichen made a sudden trundling dash on stubby legs practically beneath his feet.

While he recovered his balance, it turned back towards the silver swath that formed its trail to watch the shift rip open, gave an offended honk, and then went on its way. A broad, flattened lower lip scraped up its meal and explained the white band left in the creature's wake.

Now how had IT known?

Cable stared through the clear boundary to see heavier fog and bare ground. The hair on his arms was still standing up. Not for a shift -- he felt more of the Twelve.

And an odd residence that meant one of them was him.

Stryfe and Illyana exchanged a look. Stryfe said thoughtfully, "I think this one is ours."

Nathan dragged his gaze away from the shiftline. "How do you figure?"

"I contacted him telepathically and his initial impulse wasn't to try to kill me. That's unusual in anyone I can immediately recognize as one of you," Stryfe replied drily.

Nathan snorted. "You two have come a long way. There must have been timelines close to yours, though."

"I... can tell. I told you we'd been looking for him." Stryfe shrugged. "This one remembers when we were separated." Stryfe actually sounded as if he were pleased to have located his own timeline's Cable.

"Fair enough. But you also said he'd been trying to avoid you."

"Maybe he'll stay put this time," Illyana interrupted with a tone of finality. "We might want to gather some of the... lichen, if you two don't want to depend on Limbo fare. It doesn't grow through there, that I can see."

"He's not in the shift you can see," Nathan murmured, staring through the transparent boundary at all the worlds in between. "You can't step through into it, either." A sudden laugh bubbled up and escaped his throat. "It's lying, you see." In a more normal tone, he added practically, "Food doesn't always go through shifts well."

"Nothing always goes through shifts well," Stryfe said impatiently. "Illyana will teleport."

**********

They landed soon, well laden, several feet in front of... another Cable. Not that this was a surprise, as it was after all what they had aimed for. The unexpected part was that Illyana apparently hadn't noticed and Stryfe apparently hadn't mentioned that "their" Cable had company.

Piotr Rasputin was trying to persuade Nathan to quit staring out toward the shiftlines intersecting in the distance and come back to sit by the campfire. He had just cast an anxious glance back over his shoulder to where own brother Mikhail sat brooding when they appeared.

Illyana shrieked and dropped her bundle of lichen to leap at him.

Piotr turned to catch her just in time, flickering to metal in startlement and back to flesh as his sister catapulted into his arms.

Nathan glanced at his alternate, who worryingly enough was still staring past them -- not waiting for them, then, he supposed -- and thought to Stryfe, #You knew.#

#Yes. I thought she might like the surprise.#

**********

Nathan decided to join Illyana and Mikhail at the fire well before Stryfe and Piotr gave up for a time on coaxing his alternate to do so. His decision was somewhat spurred by the cool air, somewhat more by the vaguely uneasy looks he was starting to get, as if the other two were wondering if he'd turn out to be as much trouble.

He got the distinct impression that Mikhail and the other Cable -- actually, he supposed that to everyone else in the camp he was "the other Cable," but he wasn't about to start thinking of himself that way -- had in fact been a great deal of trouble. Very difficult. Practically impossible. And that was with Piotr never uttering a word of more complaint than "I am very relieved to see you again. It has not been entirely easy to care for them."

"Care for them." Stryfe blinked and shook his head. "Have they forgotten how?"

"They are... both in a very strange frame of mind."

"They haven't threatened you, have they?"

"I fear sometimes they will kill each other." Nathan noticed that Piotr hadn't precisely denied any threats to himself.

Stryfe frowned, but didn't challenge. "How did you find them? We had something of a clue regarding Nathan's whereabouts, since we actually were with him when the shifts began, but it still took us until now...."

"I simply ran across them. It hadn't been very long for me -- I think it may have been more time for them, somehow."

"Possible, I think."

"At first I didn't even think to question if they were from my own timeline."

"They seem to be. At least, Nathan remembers the same things I do, as far as we've been able to determine. You and Mikhail... at least accept enough to go on with."

"Accept...?"

"You recognized me, yet weren't alarmed to see me with your sister."

"Should I have been?"

"No -- but we have alternates where it would be...." Stryfe glanced at Nathan, then shook his head sharply. "Never mind." He frowned across the meters separating his own timeline's Cable from the fire. "We're going to lose him again at this rate.... Nathan! Since when do you admit to trusting me at your back?"

The other Cable turned and glared at his clone, then stalked deliberately and grudgingly back towards the fire and around between Stryfe and Nathan, where he could keep an eye on both Stryfe and the shifts. "Not as if you can do worse than I did now," he muttered bleakly.

"Isn't blaming you illogically for things my job? You didn't do it."

"I did." He raised his eyes to his alternate, who met them and felt a sudden icy chill. "You did. You know."

"He knows how they started, or thinks he does," Stryfe began.

"Tell me." Without looking away.

Nathan started the same explanation he'd given before, to Stryfe and Illyana and of all people Nur, with a feeling of cold leaden satisfaction in his throat and heart and stomach. His alternate might not understand yet, but he knew; finally someone gave him the blame he deserved. Beneath the frozen shame, though, lay a slow growing furious burn. It was the other's fault too, beyond all logic; they were one even though they weren't, and how dare he think he had the right to lay blame.

The conversation seemed perfectly reasonable until Stryfe leapt up and moved between them, tense and wary. His voice was light, though, that infuriating mocking tone he cultivated, but with an edge of self-deprecation Nathan had never heard before in place of the arrogance. Or perhaps he hadn't noticed. "Nathan, Nathan! Oath, I'm right here and the two of you look ready to try to kill each other?" More teasing still. "I feel so left out."

He almost seemed to mean it.

Nathan realized he and his alternate were on their feet and had been shouting at each other, voices and throats raw with anger and eyes blinded with rage. Reasonable. It had all seemed perfectly reasonable, but why didn't he remember standing up?

He broke eye contact and turned away, glancing briefly at Stryfe and then across the Rasputin group. Illyana was watching him steadily out of dark blue eyes from where she lay half-curled on her side between her brothers, her head on Mikhail's knee. Mikhail wasn't looking up.

Piotr was watching him and his alternate with a somehow resigned statement that flickered rather thankfully in Stryfe's direction. He had an air of having just relaxed.

Nathan turned to stare at the fire in disgust with himself as he sat back down. He was suddenly certain that this was just the sort of thing Piotr had been putting up with all along when he could have simply walked away from the two madmen he'd been shepherding. As if he'd needed another one.

Up until thirty seconds ago he would have said he wasn't as far gone as his alternate.

"You should get some sleep," Illyana told him softly. He thought she'd spoken aloud, but no one else appeared to have heard her.

"We need to get out of here," his alternate said suddenly. He sounded perfectly clear-headed for the moment, but anxious. Cable turned, still on the ground, to see the shifts in the distance sweeping towards them. Illyana hissed, and they were in Limbo, and then they were... somewhere else.

Their campfire was completely undisturbed. That was fairly impressive. It was, along with the rest of them, sitting on a broad flat stone in the middle of a rocky stretch of desert. There was a patch of palm trees in the distance, but not an oasis, nor yet a mirage; it was a little round cylindrical piece of another shift, what looked like a tiny tropical island.

There was ocean all around it, cut off sharply where it met the desert. That had to be the shiftline, even though he couldn't see it.

Useless to them for water. It was broad daylight here, brilliant heat pouring down to batter them against the sand-sprinkled stone. Immediately to their west, though, a high cluster of rocky hills rose against the stark blue sky, and he knew there was a spring somewhere in their depths.

Not a bad site, all in all, even if Illyana apparently expected him to go to sleep with the sun in his eyes. He lay down on his left side on the rock and felt the heat seep through the metal, the light pounding through closed eyelids to turn his vision mottled black and red. For some reason it was soothing.

He found himself drifting, not exactly half-asleep but in that strange lethargic space just next to it where the information poured in by the senses pooled in his mind without seeming to require any sort of action. Everyone there was tired. He thought Stryfe's voice sounded a little more shaken than he probably meant for it to.

He knew when the rest of them lay down as well, seeking rest as the sun slipped across the top of the stone. Piotr had gone to get water for them earlier, passing without comment from his sister who could have conjured a lake if they'd wanted, but with some sour bit of nothingness dissolved in it to linger at the back of the throat.

His alternate stayed up; so did Stryfe. They'd been talking ever since, half aloud and half telepathically, but they seemed to forget or not bother or be unable to shield him out of the conversation most of the time. He wasn't even making any effort to eavesdrop. They'd been quarreling half-heartedly about the time of day for a while; it was clear enough here, but in the dim light of the earlier shift there had been fewer indications. His alternate maintained it had been late evening; Stryfe said they had started out in midmorning and couldn't possibly have been walking that long.

It was an utterly pointless argument. Nathan suspected, despite the incongruity of it, that Stryfe was trying to calm his alternate down. Or perhaps they were both taking refuge in some half-semblance of normality by arguing with each other... not that they'd ever admit it if he suggested it. Which he wouldn't, because he'd certainly never admit to such a thing either if it were him. Or, for that matter, if it wasn't.

The conversation finally turned to the shifts themselves, Stryfe caught in the odd position of trying to defend his longtime enemy against self-accusations, occasionally grumbling about why he bothered and about being too much in the habit of contradicting. Nathan wasn't sure if it was exasperation or encouragement that finally brought out the silken comment, "But you were always a revolutionary, Nathan, not an anarchist. If you have torn down one system -- what are you going to put in its place?"

It should have sounded cruel. It did leave his alternate silent. Perhaps it was only his own wearied, strange state of mind that made him hear it as a challenge.

Or perhaps his alternate did too.

"Find what you seek," the other Illyana had said.

He wasn't looking for anything.

But was he sure?

Was that it, some way to repair this shattering? He couldn't even think of a way to start.

That didn't necessarily have to stop him.

Or was it something else, something more selfish, a fragment of companionship or belonging in the chaos....

And had he already found it?

He didn't belong with these people. He wasn't even from their timeline; one of them was Stryfe -- but they didn't offer the faintest suggestion he should go, in word or thought. He shouldn't try to kill his alternate, though. He'd caused them enough trouble.

But maybe he'd walk with them a while longer.

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