Part Seven
She dreamt she was floating in a seagreen mist, surrounded by soft white cotton. She could smell roses and lilacs. She had never admitted it to anyone, but lilacs were her favorite flower. Lilacs and lavendar. Flowers too delicate to live in the sewers that were her childhood home.
The Tunnels. She mused inwardly as she floated on her mist, 'How could I love the Tunnels so much, and yet want to rule the Upworld?' She had no answer for herself. She did not try to answer her internal questions anymore. This old question did not stir her anger anymore, however. It just led to more questions. She sighed happily as a lilac appeared in her hand.
~Sarah?~ a copper-toned voice cautiously sought her out. It cut through the field of white peace, and Sarah instinctively recoiled. She instantly buried herself deeper in the cottony billows of her mind and wrapped the mist tighter around her like a coccoon. She did not welcome the intrusion, but felt too battered to fight it. She just wanted to be left alone.
'Just wait,' she thought viciously, 'until I can greet you properly.'
It was so peaceful here, so clean and devoid of all the hatred and pain she battled daily. Didn't she deserve this bit of peace? After raging against the world for so long, hating everybody without exception, she had found a peaceful place in her existence.
No...she wasn't about to wake up anytime soon. And the mists clenched around her, sealing her away from everything.
----
"I'm sorry, Hank," Jean said. "Marrow doesn't want to wake up, and she's so far down in her own mind that if I probe any deeper--"
"De petite would fight it, eh?" Gambit finished for her, running one long-fingered hand through his ruddy hair. Nervous habit, noted Hank.
Jean narrowed her eyes a bit, but only sighed a bit in frustration.
"Remy," she began, ignoring his wince at her best 'Scotty lecture' voice, "I warned you she wasn't stable enough for you to tell her about the Massacre, much less take her directly back into it!" Jean's voice was hard and uncompromising. She studied the man before her clinically, noting his bruised bottom lip and disheveled presence. The bottom tatters of his trademark trenchcoat were covered in bits of vomit, and he smelled, well...like puke.
"You need to shower up and get ready," she said quietly.
"Ready for what?" he replied, monotone, eyes suspicious.
"The Professor knows, and so does Cyclops. They're waiting for you in the Professor's office, when you're ready." She looked rather apologetic, but Remy still felt a sting of betrayal.
He wondered when he would not feel betrayal every time he was summoned into Xavier's presence.
Remy looked into Jean's eyes, his friend and sometime confidante. Jean, who could understand everything with just a brief glance into a person's mind, and consequently their soul. He radiated anxiety and sadness towards her, willing her through his non-psionic mind to understand why he had to do this. She pursed her lips, and ran a worried hand through her fiery hair.
"I know, Remy," she murmured quietly, glancing at Marrow, speaking so soft that Dr. Henry 'Hank' McCoy, aka Beast, could barely hear. "And I understand," she finished as she met his eyes again.
He realized that was all that she really needed to say, and with that she turned around to help Hank arrange Marrow on the statis bed a little more comfortably and ready herself for another probe.
He turned without a word, thinking of the showers in the men's dorm. Hank looked up for a moment in his ministrations towards his patient, and watched Remy's backside as the lanky Cajun made his way to the elevator.
"Remy, if you need to talk later--" his baritone was cut off abruptly.
"Gambit know where to find you, Henri," he called over his shoulder far too flippantly. Every conscious person in the room knew Remy would never take up the offer.
~If it makes you feel any better, Hank,~ Jean sent quietly, ~he will have to explain himself to the Professor and Scott. Perhaps the Professor will be able to find out why Remy chose now to reveal this to Marrow.~
Hank turned and looked at one of his oldest friends, his face a visage of concern. "I fear that our resident Cajun may have wrought most carelessly a great deal of pychological distress towards our current young ward," he intoned. "Can you try another mental probe, my friend?"
"Yeah," said another voice, from the edge of the elevator. "Wouldn't want Mindless Psychopath Number Two to stay incapacitated much longer. She's got to kill Mindless Psychopath Number One before tomorrow evening, else Dr. McCoy here just might be put out."
Jean smiled a bit despite the sarcasm of the woman who entered. She felt a sudden dash of fresh air accompanying the second resident doctor and newer member of the X-Men, Dr. Cecelia Reyes. Beast's worried visage turned into a happy grin, one Jean noted with a bit of intrigue and filed away for later purposes.
'Ah, Jeanie,' she thought to herself mischieviously, 'you are a hopeless romantic.'
But the thought held so much warmth, and at the sight of the two doctors, her trusted team mates, she felt the angst from earlier that day melt away almost completely. She easily backed away and let the much more capable Dr. Reyes begin a physical exam, all the while carefully watching the way the two brilliant mutants before her fall into an easy routine of professional friendliness and something very close to contented happiness.
Jean clutched the lightness in the room to her heart. It had been far too gloomy in the mansion for months now. Bastion had ripped her home apart, and while Marrow seemed content to continue to rend it asunder, Jean still wanted to help her. Many of her team mates seemed to have already given up, and all were exasperated at the very least. Only Sam and Ororo continued daily in their efforts to bring the humanity out of the former terrorist, but it seemed only to bait her into uncontrolled rages instead. And Sarah was especially good at goading even the most disciplined of the X-Men into her melees.
No one in the mansion had a clue as of yet how to help the ex-Morlock, and Sarah was not exactly willing to give out pamphlets instructing how to heal a maimed spirit.
'Great, Jean,' she thought to herself sarcastically, 'blame the X-Men for Marrow's state of mind.'
But as she looked at the prone female on the statis bed, she felt herself almost defending the claim. Perhaps if they had tried a little harder to help the Morlocks, maybe if they had done a little more to change the opinion of the outside world....
Musing this way was useless, she knew. Regardless, she stayed by the ex-Morlock's side, waiting for her mental strength to replenish itself, and a chink in Marrow's already marred psyche to try another probe. Hank and Cece didn't say a word, only smiled tentatively and left her with Sarah.
----
She was flying in her dreams. Her blastfield (blastfield???) painted the piercing blue sky a bright happy yellow.
She shrieked with joy. (Joy...?) Yes..., she thought to herself. She flew through the sky, her fingers splayed wide to feel the rushing wind through every cravasse of her body. Naked and free, she executed turn after turn, piroetting with the ease of a born dancer, laughing until her sides ached. The sky was painted with her comet trail, and she thought she was born to paint the sky. She flipped upside down and tried to catch her toes, whirling in the sky like a human wheel. She had never felt so at ease in her own bones....
[want down]
She plunged from the sky, morphing on her way down into a dark moddled brown horse, and landed on the lush green grass lightly. Her transformation seemed natural, this time. She didn't feel any real shock anymore at these manifestations. Instead, she pawed the ground, feigning to test its abilities. And why not? Wasn't it Xavier who had said anything was possible in one's mind? She didn't want to continue the train of thought...it brought her back to unpleasant memories....
So she tore across the land instead, leaving clumps of vegetation in her wake. She kicked at phantoms nipping at her heels, bucking like a new colt and heedless of anyone who would try to tame her. The sky was still streaked with her signature from her blastfield and Sarah found herself....
"Sarah, you must wake up," a golden voice intoned.
She was on the grass, in her uniform. She could feel her bones shifting around inside her while a steady ache built behind her eyes. She shook her head, moaning in pain as voices clamored inside her mind.
"Sarah......you..have..... forgotten us...," another voice accused.
She looked into the sky, seeing only the trail of her blastfield, and shook her head, this time in denial. She tried to speak, but could not form any words. She tried to shout, straining her vocal chords to find her voice, but she could make no sounds.
"You are no Morlock....,*Pretty-One*," a new voice hissed.
She snarled mentally at the insult, and ripped a boneblade from her back. She stabbed the ground in fury, trying to scream this time and still finding she was mute. Frustration and anger built as her headache climbed in intensity until the pain drowned out the sound of a golden voice trying to reach through her shields.
"Sarah, please! Marrow! You have to remember me or I can't help you--"
The voice disappeared, and Sarah found herself, Herself again.....
----
She opened her eyes in the MedLab, not seeing anything but a bright light piercing her sensitive eyesight. She didn't blink, so paralyzed was she in her mind. As she awoke, phantom images and smells rushed through her thoughts, the trauma of her years in exile at the Hill and a childhood dipped in blood.
Like a dogma, she felt herself pulling her bruised psyche together again. And she was scared. She was lost in her mind, so scared, and she projected loudly to anyone that could hear:
##MOTHER-BRIGHT-LADY-HELP-MEEE-HELPMEHELPMEHelpmehelpmeee!!!!##
Dr. Cecelia Reyes pulled her head up casually from her position behind a Shi'ar control panel, yawning for a moment and rubbing her sore eyes. She enjoyed her stretch languidly, pausing in her quest to help Beast decode the Fucking Virus. As she arranged herself more comfortably at the console, she twisted her torso as she heard an intense scream at her back.
Sarah didn't know it, but she was now quite capable of screaming loudly and without restraint. This time, though, it was both mentally and physically, and every telepath and psion in the mansion and within a few blocks radius felt her anguish while they 'heard' every word.
Jean Grey-Summers awoke in the hulking computer chair graciously offered by Beast and felt her eyes fly open wide and her mouth drop open as a bit of blood made its way out of her eardrums. Her link to Scott screamed for help, and her husband, who had been listening to Gambit's explanations with the Professor, nearly fell to his knees with the intensity of it.
The Professor was gripping the arm cushions of his plain wheelchair so tightly that his forearms bulged with the tension. He too uttered no words as he silently rode out the mental storm he felt from his newest recruit. He would have seen his first student, Scott Summers, in considerable pain as well, and would have felt immediate concern for his well being, if he could have opened his eyes.
In the kitchen, Betsy Braddock dropped the small cup of tea she was currently enjoying with her lover, Warren Worthington III, the teasing mood falling from her face as she clapped her hands over her ears in an instinctive and futile gesture...trying to keep the pain out.......
Naturally, Cecelia was shocked into action as she saw Jean begin to convulse in Hank's old computer chair.
"HANK!!!" she shouted as loudly as she could. "Get over here, stat!!" she cried, slipping into her doctor role easily as she rushed over to her teammates' sides. She was just in time to catch Jean before she fell out of the giant oversized chair that Beast usually occupied when working on the Fucking Virus.
Hank bounded over easily, displaying quite a bit of nimbleness considering all the machinery and gadgets littering the way. He quickly surmised the situation, having dealt with telepathic assaults for years now, but was puzzled. As far as he knew, Sarah had no telepathic abilities. Which meant one of two things was now the situation:
Sarah was manifesting a new telepathic ability, which was highly unlikely given the mutant abilties tests he had administered himself left almost no room for this possibility. She did not even possess a latent telepathy, like his young friend and former teammate Jubilation Lee, aka Jubilee.
It was much more likely that she was simply projecting quite strongly. The stronger the emotions behind a projection, the clearer the emotions would be for any telepath or psion.
"Helllllo?" Beast shook his furry head a moment, pulling himself out of his silent observations to find one very irritated and worried Dr. Reyes as she shook Marrow's bony shoulders, trying futilely to awaken her. Sarah's eyes were open and eerily vacant, while her entire body shook with the efforts of her painful screaming.
'Fascinating,' his genius mused inwardly, even while he was extremely concerned for Jean, who had taken to gripping the edge of Marrow's bed. Jean had stopped seizing was apprently trying to control her breathing into a regular pattern, while her torso was full of tensely controlled pain. As far as telepathic assaults went, this one was not as bad as he had encounted in previous years.
'My dear Cece,' he thought to himself, 'you are, for lack of better words at this moment, completely freaking out, eh?'
He glanced up at his medical partner and gave an almost sheepish grin, one he would have pulled off if he wasn't suddenly worried about the rest of the telepaths in the region.
"Yes, forgive me, I was only surmising the situation and ruling out certain unlikely possibilities in my mind," he said pleasantly. His tone was almost out of place, and Cece forced herself to remember that she had not long ago realized it did not mean he was not as concerned as she was in medical emergencies; he was just different in the way he dealt with emergencies. While she had to always strive to remain calm, Dr. Henry McCoy seemed to have the process down to a perfect science.
'He's just different in everything he does,' she thought with irritation, but with a great deal of envious admiration.
"So, we should be worried about Xavier and Betsy too?" she asked nonchalantly, glancing to and from Jean and Sarah. She had given up trying to awaken Sarah. There had been no response so far, and Cecelia doubted if there would be any real response despite her continued efforts.
"Probably, and Scott as well. They're linked," he said as he motioned towards Jean. He reached around Jean and picked up a hypodermic needle on the surgical tray set at her side. He plunged it into Marrow's IV drip and waited anxiously. Within five minutes, Marrow's eyes closed and fell unconscious again, and Jean visibly relaxed.
The redhead didn't lift her head for a moment, and both doctors assumed she was merely composing herself. To both of the two doctor's horror, Jean began to weep quietly. Cece's heart went out to the woman, and she gently drew her into an awkward, if not well meaning, embrace.
"What is it, Jean? It's okay, we've got you, you're okay," Cece sent only warm and safe feelings through to Jean, hoping the telepath would pick them up, and held her until the tremors stopped. Jean lifted her head, finally, and asked:
"Where's Scott?" Jean's question was predictable and Beast smiled comfortingly.
"I've already reached him through the comm, and he should be on his way accordingly," he said reassuringly. Jean didn't relax, though, at his words.
"We have to help her, we have to find a way!" Jean's voice was laced with despair. "You don't know how much pain she's been through, and she needs us and we're going to lose her if we don't find a way to get through her!" After this last burst, Jean seemed to gain control over her composure, and she ran her hands nervously through her red hair.
"I saw her mind, Henry," she began, "and it was so achingly beautiful. It was full of images I know she's never seen, and things she's never done. Things she can't do."
At this point, Cecelia was confused. "Jean, I am not exactly sure what you mean," she said carefully. "Can you be more specific?"
Jean shook her head sadly. "I just know she's in a lot of pain, Cece, and if we don't help her, she's going to leave us and we'll lose her. Probably forever."
"Jean, we have all tried in our various ways to help her," Beast intoned neutrally. 'And gotten nothing but threats and violence for all our efforts,' he finished in his mind.
"And nothing we've done has helped her! From Remy to the rest of the world, she's blaming us, and for the life of me, now I can't blame her!" She didn't mean to shout, but the words rang off the walls of the medlab.
"I've been in her mind now, Hank. I know why she's been acting like this, I think. And I know that she's given us one last chance to help us understand her, to help us help her. And by God I'm not going to disappoint her again." Jean's voice was full of fire again, and she seemed to glow with a new determination that had not been there before.
"I'm glad to hear that, Jean," said a new voice, and Jean turned to see her mentor and her husband enter the Medlab. A smile of relief lit her face as she saw her husband was indeed quite well.
"Because I have a mission for her, as soon as she recovers," the Professor said gently.
"And perhaps, finally, we can find a way to draw her into the team," said Cyclops. At his wife's pained expression, he added, "And, perhaps, also into our family."
----
Part Eight
Hours later, Sarah sat up in the Medlab, hearing only the sounds of whirring machinery and the occasional scampering of Hank's pet lab mouse. Her head ached, but the rest of her body felt surprisingly refreshed. She glanced around the shadowy lab from the corner in which she occupied, but found the room to be empty of anyone else. The damned overhead light above her bed was still on.
She was alone, as always. She knew she shouldn't have been surprised, but after what Gambit had done to her, she had hoped to have awoken with him at her side. Preferrably close enough for her to kill him, the bastard.
She sat quietly, thinking and rethinking her current situation. So the Cajun had been the one to save her life that horrible night. She had never really thought about who had been her savior that night, and even just recalling that night in the least had always given her night terrors. Sometimes, when passing garbage cans or strolling through parts of the Tunnels, certain scents would trigger memories of that night, and Sarah would be reduced to a snarling ball of tears.
When the nightmares began to induce insomnia, she would excersise heavily in her basement or run her "Hill" program in the Danger Room. When the exhaustion of both would still not prompt her to sleep, Sarah began to think of more creative ideas to keep her nightmares at bay. At first, she began to program scenarios for the Danger Room which required a certain level of strategy and violent ruthlessness. Privately, she was very proud of those programs, and had even enjoyed the mental workout it had taken to plan some of the ones that could only be truly experienced with the Danger Room safeties off. She had yet to show them to Cyke, but she always told herself it was only because she knew he could not handle the programs' levels of violence and cunning.
Once the novelty of playing with the Danger Room had worn off, the nightmares receded for a while. Then the kitchen incident had brought them back into the forefront of her mind, and the nightmares increased in viciousness and continuity. One particular nightmare had been of a shattered mirror, whose shards had begun to carve into her body. In the dream, she had been on a pristine white linen table in the Tunnels, while the Morlocks hacked into her flesh and ate their fill. All the while, they had taunted her, telling her she was no longer a Morlock, that she had become a traitor as she assimilated into the X-Men. When Sarah awoke from the night terror, she found she had ripped nearly all the bones from her chest cavity and flung them across the basement.
That was when she had started her strange skeleton. Picking up the bones she had ripped under the influence of that nightmare, she began to carve as many of the faces that she could recall onto the bones. It hurt, so very badly, to remember them. The ache in her chest as she began to remember faces she could not name throbbed out of synch with the pain her body produced as it mended itself. She thought the pain was a justified penance for her living while so many others had died. She felt those 'others' were angry now, and needed to be laid to rest. As the months had passed, the nightmares had receded again, so long as she worked on the skeleton from time to time.
And she found it was true. She was no longer a Morlock. Sarah, the Morlock, had died in those tunnels, and was screaming to be laid to rest. Sarah, now the X-Man known as Marrow, was screaming to be born.
As she sat on the table, lost in her thoughts, she heard the shuffling sound of the elevator's doors being opened. Her head snapped up and she sniffed the air cautiously, and detected a faintly canine scent.
"Hey Old Man," she snarled quietly, a small smile gracing her lips.
The man stepped from the shadows into the pool of light around Sarah's bed. He came right up to the edge of her bed, deliberately invading her personal space and territory. Asserting his dominance, like any good alpha male. Dressed in casual clothes, his traditional blue jeans and thick flannel shirt, he nodded once to her.
"Marrow," he said as he glared at her, his piercing blue eyes never leaving her face.
She glanced down a moment, realized she was completely naked on the bed, but did not succumb to the sudden surge of modesty she felt. Instead, she answered his challenge of dominance, and she leaned over her bed slowly, her movements very cautious and questioning. Her small, roughened hand reached out from the pool of light into the edges of the shadows to touch his face. The scratchy cotton sheets pooled at her waist while her body painted a strange shadow on the wall. To his credit, Wolverine did not once glance below her eyes, preferring to keep an edge in case of a sudden surge of violence from her. His hands where fisted at his side, aching to pop the bone claws that lay beneath the skin.
While he didn't move, his glare was reduced to a questioning visage. Adrenaline pumped, as he searched her face and scent for any hint of aggression. It was almost a disappointment when she only let her palm gently touched his cheek, and the Mona Lisa smile on her face turned into a full-fledged smile of something very close to gratitude.
'This makes no fucking sense,' he thought. 'What the hell is she up to?'
"You can call me Sarah," she said quietly, "and I guess you're here to tell me Egghead wants to talk to me, right?"
He didn't say anything at first, but as he was about to break the silence between them, she said tiredly, "Just tell me what rule I broke while I was gettin my beauty sleep." The palm withdrew, and Wolverine thought he felt his face was cold without her hand there.
"Ya didn't do nothin, this time anyway," he ground out. "Cajun's in the dog house though." He studied her face carefully, but no one could have missed the scowl her face turned into.
"Get dressed," he growled. "Chuck wants to see us both."
"Turn around, and I will," she challenged.
"You didn't have a problem with modesty a minute ago, darlin'. I'm sure ya can handle it now. 'Sides, aint nothin I haven't seen before, a hundred times or more." He casually lit up the last bits of a cigar as he taunted.
Her scowl melted into a grin, and she said: "Old Man, I can guarantee you aint never seen nothin like me."
And she hopped off the side of her bed, naked as the day she was born, and enjoyed the shock on his face as he saw her completely. He didn't mean to stare at her, but as she had bounded off the bed, her dusky pink body had revealed a sight almost physically painful for him to see. Her entire body was spiked it seemed, and he wondered if she had extra endorphins to endure the pain of her mutation.
Her collarbone sprouted beyond her body to form twin spikes. Another sprout had them rounding out eventually to form hooks encasing the top sides of her shoulders. Logan knew she would have to pull the whole thing eventually or the calcium would rot and poison her system.
Her breasts would have been high and full, but one of her ribs had decided to 'pop' through the right breast and continue to snake across until it formed a handle extended past her body. Remembering how tender and sensitive his beautiful dead wife's breasts had been, Logan speculated this incarnation had to have been especially painful. The wound it caused had healed, but it must have been fairly recently because blood was still congealing further down her torso. The other breast was completely covered by a 'bone cup'. It was simply sealed over by bone, probably for protection. It connected with her breastbone, which had risen above her skin to form a protective plate over her heart. Apparently, her body decided it would not take any risks with this last remaining heart. He wondered if it was her body's reponse or Marrow's limited control over her bone growths which had formed the plate over her heart.
The rest of her ribs sprouted long handles from her sides, while the two 'floating' ribs wrapped closely to her body protectively.
Her pelvic bones had mutated as well, pushing small spikes along the ridges of her hips and lower abdomen. Beyond that, however, the mutation around her lower abdomen and pelvic region had been relatively slight.
Both femurs had split and sprouted. Half of the bone still served the function of supporting her body weight while the other half came out of the sides of her thighs at a thirty degree angle, nearly touching her hands while they laid at an uneasy rest. If needed, she could pull these bones quickly, and since they were the heaviest bones in the human body, they could make formidable weapons. That is, if one could fight through the crippling pain of six inch diameter wounds pulling them would cause.
Her kneecaps were covered in bone, giving her natural pads. Her ankles and heels were spiked with sharp bones, very useful in fighting. Her arms, resting lightly at her sides, bore its mutantcy only at the elbows, where Marrow could rip whatever bones she needed. Her wrists, however, were covered in a thick bracelet of smooth bone. Small slivers of exposed bone flecked her entire body, like a spray of freckles. Scars of every dimension and length covered her skin, the most concentrated patches around the most evident bone growths.
She had never looked more inhuman than she did just standing before him completely naked.
"Told ya," her voice came through his senses.
He pulled his eyes from her body and really examined at her face for evidence of her mutant gift. Her brow was clear, her punky hair full, but her cheekbones were exposed for all the world to see. It was strangely haunting to stare at the young woman; it was like staring at someone already dead. He recalled seeing the bones of many of his opponents after maiming them in the kill; the young woman standing before him beared a resemblance to those mutilated opponents, so brutal was her mutancy.
"Speechless?" she sneered. "Just think, this is only my front side."
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