It's All In Your Head: Part Eleven
by sevenall
Victoria's friendship proved to be quite hard to win. Elizabeth couldn't explain why she went to all this trouble for a stranger, and a stranger that was so unwilling to accept her. The invitations to lunch, the suggestions that Victoria join her for a short walk, even the small gifts that she wrapped with outmost care went unnoticed. Victoria sat by the bed in the sickroom, never taking her eyes off her child's face, as if nothing else in the world existed. She talked to Lisa softly, sang to her, cried sometimes. There was just the two of them, in a little bubble of glass, isolated from the rest of humanity. Elizabeth tried to tell herself that the small resentment she felt at the continued rebuffals came from wounded pride, but deep down she knew that the real reason for her hurt and anger came from jealousy. No one had ever stayed by her side for so long, with so little reward. No one had loved her the way Victoria loved Lisa and now was not the time for getting into a new ! rela tionship.
In spite of increasing pressure from the doctors, Elizabeth still refused treatments. Most of the chemotherapy available would probably be outright toxic to her and with Hank's implant still in her arm, she needed no additional pain control. The doctors told her that her tumour would respond to treatment, but after doing some research of her own she realised that they were either not fully informed or lying in her face. The discussions continued until Elizabeth decided to reveal that she was a member of a religious cult that forbid the intake of any chemical substances and the exposure to any radiation. She was relieved to see them backing off and she spent the rest of the day idly expanding her story in case someone would ask her for details. When she heard the timid knock on the door she had just finished it.
"Hello", Victoria said.
Elizabeth almost fell out of the bed. During all her time in the hospice she had never seen Victoria leave Lisa's room, much less venture through an indeterminate number of corridors.
"I didn't mean to startle you".
Elizabeth regained most of her abilities, including the one that enabled her close her mouth and smile like the fool she was. She swung her feet down to the floor and got up.
"Don't apologize. I'm glad you're here", she said. "Come in".
She beckoned into the room, towards a chair.
Victoria shuffled her feet and looked around her.
"Your room is really nice", she said in a neutral voice.
Elizabeth hadn't exactly thought about it. She had decorated it bit by bit, put up some prints, bought some furniture and textiles and giving in to extravagance and a genuine love for flowers, she had a standing order for fresh flowers every other day. Compared to the bare walls in Lisa's room, it did look nice, though. It also looked as if some rich bitch wanted to flaunt her money before she died.
"Oh, I don't know..."
The situation grew more and more embarrassing. Why was Victoria here? What did she want and could she please get it over with? Elizabeth wanted to lie down again. She was cold and the nausea that always came over her when she rose too quickly, was catching up with her.
"I couldn't help overhearing..." Victoria said nervously. "You and the doctor, I mean. This afternoon, I...." Then it came pouring out all at once. "And I'm so glad you understand what it means. I'm really happy that someone at this rotten place understands that treatments isn't the same as healing. What the mutant freak did to Lisa...They've been nagging at me all the time, about her, but I haven't given in, and I never will. You see, Lisa didn't want the treatments either, she always said it wasn't the right thing to do and that I couldn't force her. But I did force her, a couple of times and asked the Lord to forgive me".
Elizabeth checked the outburst of accusing words that rose inside her. The deed was done and there was no use in thinking that things might have been very different if someone had talked some sense into this woman's thick head in time. Lisa could have only a few weeks left to live. Elizabeth herself had another three or four months in tolerable health. Perhaps she could help Victoria in some way that mattered.
"I see", she managed to choke out. "What matters is what Lisa wants, isn't it?"
She stared hard at Victoria, willing her show to some kind of remorse. Oh, to have the gift of telepathy, to positively impale this woman on her psychic knife, to absorb every memory and thought and rectify all these silly notions about who was a freak and who wasn't.
"She never wanted hospitals. Never wanted needles or treatments".
Of course she didn't, especially if her mother was less than encouraging. What child likes to have needles stuck into her arms, tubes stuck up her nose? Victoria went on talking, but Elizabeth hardly listened.
"Of course, with the disease she had, the hospitals didn't want her either".
The sentence jerked Elizabeth back to reality.
"What disease?" she asked, a little too sharply.
"You know", Victoria answered with the word "you" underlined several times.
Elizabeth couldn't help reflecting on how lovely Victoria's voice was, how it conveyed nuances and meaning even in the most casual of conversation. Although this conversation was anything but casual. What was she talking about? AIDS? But there were hospices exclusively devoted to AIDS-patients. Her mind wandered to tropical diseases, discarded Ebola for obvious reasons and pondered Japanese encephalitis. She arrived at the conclusion simultaneously as Victoria hissed a single word:
"Legacy".
"What!?"
Elizabeth was torn between outrage for the child and fear of her own safety. The Legacy Virus might be contagious or not, but Hank tended to treat it as contagious, since no one knew. He had refused to meet with Moira for a long time now. It was unbelievable that Victoria had not sought help for her child.
"I've tried anything to help her, from electrical shocks to partial lobotomies", Victoria babbled on. "The Friends have been helpful but they couldn't do much".
Some help. A call to the Professor had been quicker, no doubt cheaper and the child wouldn't have had any lobotomy. Victoria didn't seem misguided and harmless anymore, but dangerous and unpredictable.
"Is she a mutant?" Elizabeth demanded to know.
Victoria's smile was too quick, too reconciling. It was, all things considered, a frightening smile.
"Oh, no. How could you think such a thing? My baby".
"Well, I'm a mutant. How do you feel about that?" Elizabeth rose from the bed and placed herself between Victoria and the door.
Victoria looked down at her hands resting in her lap.
"I've had time to get used to the thought", she said. "I guess not all of you are freaks, thought the one that hurt my baby was. She came out of a wall like a ghost, patted Lisa's cheek, winked and phased through another wall. The same day Lisa fell sick and I knew".
Kitty. Elizabeth still cherished the memories of touching Kitty's soul, the delicateness and the lightness. It was like touching glittering drops of running water. Kitty had been so brave, fought so hard for her life although not only her body but also her mind was disintegrating. If Kitty knew about Elizabeth's illness and disappearance, she would be mad.
"I want to make a few phonecalls", Elizabeth said carefully. "There is a man who might be able to help you and Lisa. His name is Charles Xavier".
She felt a fleeting regret. So much work had gone into avoiding the X-Men and she had felt so much bitterness on their account, but she knew that this was the only thing she could do. Victoria didn't protest, just nodded. Then there was a loud bang, and another. It sounded like gunshots.
"What was that?"
Victoria's head snapped up. Elizabeth rushed to the window to get an overview. The west wing of the hospice was on fire. The one where Lisa's room was. Smoke billowed up through the roof and flames licked the walls. The smoke alarms in the corridor outside began to wail and there were splashing sounds as the sprinklers cut in. There was something wrong with the air above the roof, it shimmered. Victoria screamed thinly and Elizabeth knew where she had seen that kind of shimmer before: Alex Summers firing his plasma blasts. People were running over the lawn carrying stretchers. A fire-brigade was trying to work their way in, but were forced back on account of the heat. Victoria's scream became words:
"Lisa! She's in there! Oh God, I left her alone!"
"We'd better get out", Elizabeth told her as calmly as she could. "If there's smoke..."
"You don't give me orders, filthy mutie!" Victoria yelled at her, real hatred in her eyes.
Elizabeth decided to answer that later. She took a firm hold of Victoria's blonde hair, wrapped it around her hands and dragged her out of the room. Victoria tried to break loose, but even though Elizabeth was out of training and not especially steady on her feet, Victoria was no match. So Victoria had to contend herself with screaming and kicking This was really a nuisance. Once out of the room Elizabeth scanned the corridor quickly. No smoke, no fire in this part of the hospice, but heading towards the elevators would be too risky. They would have to take the stairs down. She pulled Victoria by the hair, not an easy task to start with and it didn't help thatthe stairs were quite crowded. The general fire alarm had caused many patients to panic. An old woman in a wheelchair screamed, a younger man tried to lift her down the stairs, chair and all. Victoria had given up screaming for Lisa and was now directing a stream of obscenities and curses at Elizabeth.
"Shut up", Elizabeth panted. "I'm trying to get to Lisa, see if she's alright, get her help if she isn't, where are your priorities in this, woman?"
That earned her a kick to the shin. It was probably because she had called her "woman". Together with twenty-something other patients they stumbled out on the lawn. A rattled nurse took their names, wrote them off a list and told them to join other patients in the park. They wobbled off. Elizabeth kept hold of Victoria's hair so the woman wouldn't do anything crazy, like running into the burning building on her own.
"It's your fault. You lied to me! You lied to me!" Victoria sobbed under the trees. "My baby is dead and it's your fault. You lied to me!"
"Oh, shut up". Elizabeth glared at her, too winded to talk.
The exertion made her knees feel like water. She had not walked this far in a long timeShe gulped air and wondered if she was going to pass out or throw up or both. Maybe she should have let Victoria find her way out on her own. Right now she could not see any reason for letting the woman stay alive.When she looked in the direction of the fire again, she saw the firemen backing away from it. Fast.The air shimmered all around the hospice now and she could feel the heat on her hands and face. Oh no. Victoria was still swearing at her, but had stopped struggling. Elizabeth could see blood running from nail-shaped indentations in her hands. She had not even felt it. It all made sense now.
"Listen, Victoria. I understand". Elizabeth's voice was no more than a hoarse whisper. "Lisa was an Alpha-class mutant, wasn't she? Generating heat and plasma. What you did, keeping that secret, was to kill all those people in that building".
She had to stop. She couldn't wheeze out another word. Her lungs felt as if they were on fire. She doubled over, coughing and retching and she released Victoria because it didn't matter, it really didn't matter to her anymore what the other woman did.
A heavy hand on her arm made her look up from the green grass spinning under her. It was a policeman. Or at least he looked like one.
"Sorry to bother you ma'am, but I have a few questions".
Slow, she was slow and she couldn't stop coughing. The insignia on the collar. He had dressed for his job in a hurry, only pulling the second jacket over his first. He evaded her kick easily, his eyes narrowing.
"Ah. Very perceptive of you, Psylocke", he said.
She didn't even feel the blow, maybe there wasn't one. She just tumbled to her hands and knees, not trying to resist him anymore, merely trying to breathe. He picked her up easily, she pulled ineffectively at his jacket, all she could do. The insignia of the FoH.
"Oh, yes", he said to another man she couldn't see. "See to the flatscan".
An agonized scream, and she knew the voice. It had called her "filthy mutie" not many minutes ago. Elizabeth closed her eyes. Cerebro must have picked up on a manifestation of mutant power on this scale. She just wished the X-Men would hurry.