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"No!" Tiara woke up screaming. Sweat rolled down her face as she bolted to a sitting position. Her breathing went form labored to calm as she realized what had happened.
*Another dream,* she thought. "Just a dream," she said aloud. Slowly, Tiara lifted the cover from her bed and slipped out.
"Hope I didn't wake anyone. I wouldn't want to have to explain this to Scott. He's probably lost more sleep over these dreams then I have."
She gently opened her bedroom door and peaked out into the hall. The hallway stood before her, dark and uninviting. Silently, she stepped into the hall and made her way toward the stairs. She walked down them, moonlight from a nearby window lighting her way. Reaching the bottom, she made her way toward the kitchen.
Meanwhile, on the grounds of the School for Gifted Youngsters, the cool stillness of the early morning is broken by a sudden iridescence. With a sudden flash of light, a woman, appears. Then the light vanishes as quickly as it appeared.
"It's working," she said. "I know this place, from the rescans. This is the boathouse by the Spuytin Dyvil Cove!"
She is simply known as Askani. Her mission is as simple as her name: to preserve life. More specifically, the lives of those who are referred to as 'the chosen ones.'
Pulling a small computer out of what seems to be thin air, the Askani does a sentient scan.
"Scantime registers a nexus-lock with the Chosen's family," she said to herself. "Odd, though. I'm reading three entities, not two."
She sprinted towards the mansion. As she approached she noticed a small stream of light eminating from a window on the first floor. Curiousity knawing on her every nerve, she slowed her run to a crawl and carefully neared the window.
In mid-stride she stopped, pondering her mission. Could she do this? Could she go through with this? Another had already tried to save this node, and failed in as many ways as she had succeeded.
Tiara noticed a bright flash of light by the boathouse. Getting up form her place at the kitchen table, she grabbed her coat from the hall closet. She wrapped it around herself as she hurried out the front door and around to the kitchen window. She was hoping to get a better look at the light, but it had vanished.
Instead, she saw a young woman running toward her. She looked familiar to Tiara, like someone she'd seen in a dream. Whoever she was, she was in a hurry. Whether or not she was running from someone or something, Tiara didn't know.
Pulling the coat tighter around her, she called out, "Hey!"
The woman stopped and stared at the young girl.
The wind whipped Tiara's auburn hair into her face, but she didn't move. She just stared back at the stranger.
"Are you okay? Are you in trouble?" Tiara asked.
Suddenly, the Askani dropped to her knees in pain. She screamed.
Tiara was immediately alarmed. She approached the stranger with caution.
*I know her,* Tiara thought as she got closer. *I know her, but from where?*
"Are you alright?" Tiara asked the Askani, helping her to her feet.
"A charge in the ion flow," the woman muttered. "There's been a flux in the E-M field."
Tiara didn't understand what she was talking
about, but it didn't sound good. Judging by the terrified expression
on the
Askani's face, Tiara knew it wasn't.
"He's back!" The Askani hissed. She gripped Tiara by her shoulders. "By the light! He's back!"
The Askani's fear was suddenly contagious.
The night air seemed colder now, seeping through Tiara's jacket.
Tiara noticed the Askani staring at the boathouse. Another light
flashed there, and
grew larger by the second.
"What's this?" The Askani asked, more to herself than her young companion.
"Another portal?" Tiara theorized.
"But who?"
In answer to the Askani's question, someone stepped from the mesh of light. Tiara was blinded for a moment, but it as obvious to her that the Askani knew who it was.
"Kinsmen, preserve me!" The Askani said. "You?!"
"Good evening, sister Askani," the newcomer said as it stepped towards the two girls. The voice was definitively male. "And to you, too, Lady Tiara."
Tiara's eyes adjusted to the light. One look at the young man and the silent, white-clad figure next to him brought back memories for her.
*Can it really be you Tyler?* Tiara asked herself.
Confirming the young girl's thoughts, the Askani said, "You are Tyler, son of Dayspring. I know you from the rescans. But why are you here? And why do you have an Adam unit with you?"
*Zero!* Tiara thought happily. *I thought I lost you both for good.*
"I am here for the same reasons as you," Tyler said to the Askani. "As for Zero, well, he's here to make sure you help me."
The Askani quickly got to her feet, only to float several feet above the ground. Through shear force of will, Zero had trapped the Askani in some sort of force field. The Askani struggled to get free, but it was no use. Her hands and feet were then bound together.
"Tyler, what are you doing?" Tiara yelled at him.
The young man looked at her oddly. "I'm sorry, but I have no choice."
"There's always a choice," Tiara muttered the words Scott had often told her.
Without warning, Tiara found herself trapped in a similar force field as the Askani.
"This is insanity!" The Askani screamed at Tyler. "I beg of you, don't so this now. I time-tripped too late! The Chaos-Bringer has returned! The chosen mother and father are in grave danger!"
"I know," Tyler said stepping back into the light of the portal. "Ironic, isn't it? Zero, if you please. It is time to take our guests home."
*Chaos-Bringer?* Tiara thought, her eyes widening in fear. *If Stryfe had returned then just maybe. . . .* But then another realization hit her. <<Scott! Jean! No!>>
With that thought, the portal flickered once more. In the barest of moments, Tiara's last thought reaches out to the two people she loves most.
XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX
In the darkness of her room, Jean awoke with a start. She looked over to see Scott awake as well. The look of terror in her eyes scared Scott even worse than his dream about Tiara.
"What's wrong?" Scott finally asked.
"He's back, Scott," Jean replied.
Scott sat up and hugged his fiancé to him.
"Who, Jean?"
"Stryfe. Stryfe is back, Scott. Somehow. I felt his anger. His hatred, magnified in intensity. I've never felt anything like it."
"Tiara," Scott whispered. "I. . .I had a dream about Tiara. She was taken away. I heard her scream."
"So did I," Jean confirmed. She pulled away from him slightly. "But how could we both. . . ."
Scott bolted out of bed and ran down the hall to Tiara's room. The door was open. The room was dark. Her bed was empty.
Jean came up behind Scott and place her hands on his shoulders.
"It wasn't a dream" Scott said, hanging his head. "She's gone."
"And Stryfe's coming for us," Jean said. "He doesn't intend to lose this time. He will see us both dead."
"And Tiara, too," Scott finished.
Tiara watched Tyler, standing upon the metal terrace directly above the cell holding herself and the Askani. He held up a mask into the air like a sacrificial lamb. The stars of the night sky peaked through the skylights on the ceiling. Tiara listened as Tyler yelled into the night.
"Such pain and anguish you have brought to ALL our lives! You brought your own brand of misery to ANY and ALL who dared seek to live a beneficial life.
"Even dead, you can't keep from getting involved in the affairs of all timewalkers in the present. You've come back, haven't you Stryfe?"
Tyler laughed into the darkness.
Tiara looked at the woman beside her.
She had been weakened by Zero's force field they called a prison.
Her arms and legs were still bound together. Her eyes were closed,
like she was
concentrating on something.
"Are you okay?" Tiara whispered to her.
The Askani looked at Tiara for the first time since their capture.
"You show a compassion, so unlike him," the Askani told her. "So much of your childhood taken away. But the chosen's daughter was only a myth."
Tiara was confused. Chosen's daughter? The Askani was talking in riddles. But before Tiara could ask another question, both women were hit by an energy wave with a ferocity like lightening.
Tyler laughed again.
"So much to be done, but there is little time to do it," Tyler said. "Isn't that right, my unhappy guests? Isn't it ironic that you," he pointed to the Askani, "a fellow traveler of time, is my captive, a member of the sacred family."
"Release us," the Askani demanded. "You jeopardize the lives of the chosen's family. You jeopardize everything!"
"I AM the chosen's family!" Tyler howled. As his eyes settled on Tiara, he relaxed a little. "I believe we have met before, young Tiara, but I know not where. I sense that you are a time-traveler like me--" Tyler let his voice trail into nothingness as he thought a moment.
Tiara was shocked. *He doesn't recognize me!*
"Do you not recognize your own blood kinsman?" the Askani asked. She, too, was shocked.
Tyler turned away from his prisoners.
"You don't know who I am?" Tiara whispered.
"The name is familiar." He thought again for a moment, then decided to change the subject. "Come Askani. Hold my hand. Take a walk with me."
Suddenly, Tiara was thrown from the force field and into Zero's waiting arms. Silently, Tyler pushed on the forcefield and walked out of the room with the Askani. When they could no longer be seen, Zero released Tiara from his grip. She turned toward the blank-faced man.
"Zero," she said hopefully. "You recognize me, don't you?"
A voice Tiara had never heard before answered, "Of course. I helped you to escape from Stryfe."
"You. . .you can talk now?"
"Yes. Master Tyler has freed me from my original mute state and reprogrammed me for free speech."
Tiara knew that Zero was a machine, an Adam unit Stryfe had discovered while on the moon. He felt no emotion and did only what his programming told him to.
Just on an urge, Tiara hugged him.
Meanwhile, in the next room, Tyler 'talks' with the Askani.
"Tyler s...s...stop...p! You can...not...pull my memories...out...t...of my...m...mind. It is ... s ... s ... for ... bid ... d ... den!" The Askani was writhing in pain, stuttering over her words. She curled into a fetal position.
Tyler smiled maliciously as his mutant powers began to draw the Askani's thoughts from her head and show them to him, like a big screen movie.
"Poor innocent," he mused. "I have always been attracted to the forbidden. Through you, I can draw images of what you know. While through me, you can feel and understand the pain of being a 'chosen one'."
Zero stood with a hand on Tiara's shoulder. They stood together in the doorway, watching Tyler and the Askani.
"You are subjecting the time-cross designate Askani to undue pain," Zero said to Tyler. "It would be in your best interest to cease such activities."
Tiara ran to the Askani as Tyler's attention shifted to his android companion. Briefly, Tiara reached out to the Askani with her mind and felt her pain.
"I'll try to get you out," Tiara said, desperately searching for a button or a weakness in the force field.
The Askani smiled weakly.
"You must not let him. . .let him harm you," she said to Tiara. "If I fail in my mission to save the chosen's parents, I. . .I will. . .at least. . .save his. . .his children."
Tiara's eyes widened and she stared at the Askani.
*Then it's true!* Tiara thought. *Cable is my--*
"Is she not hurting my by withholding the information I need?!" Tyler's voice cut into the young girl's thoughts. He turned to face the Askani and saw Tiara standing there. Tyler thought the Askani had said something about the chosen to the young girl.
"What was it you just said?" Tyler asked, kneeling beside the Askani. His voice was much lower, calmer.
"You can hurt. . .hurt me with your. . .words. . .but I must. . .NOT. . .fail. . .in my mission," The Askani said. "If I can't save. . .the parents. . .I must save. . .the children."
Tyler looked from the Askani to Tiara.
"Children?" Tyler said curiously. "I am the only one left." He paused a moment, remembering something. "You," he pointed at Tiara. "You can't possibly be her. My sister is. . .is. . . ."
"Alive," Zero finished for him. ""She was taken away with you from your family. She had tried many times to escape--"
"The masquerade party," Tyler said, his hand rubbing over his chin. "In the woods."
Tiara remembered the dream, only it hadn't been a dream after all.
"Zero had tried to help us escape," Tyler said thoughtfully.
"But he chased us. I fell into a hole and couldn't get out," Tiara said, her voice barely a whisper.
"I. . .I couldn't stop him," Tyler said. He shook his head and looked furiously at the Askani. "But it was just another implanted image, the programming Stryfe had done to me! My sister died with my mother!"
The Askani sighed. "You wish to know the truth, Tyler, son of Dayspring?"
"More than anything," Tyler replied.
"Such knowledge will only accomplish one of two things," The Askani told Tyler. "Either it will release you from the emotional hardship you have known since your injury, or it shall show you the tragic error of your ways, in so harshly judging those who have only sought to care for you." She paused. "Are you prepared for either contingency?"
"Only all my life," Tyler replied.
"I want to know, too," Tiara interjected. The Askani looked at her with a brief smile. "I want to remember."
"All will be known." The Askani told
Tyler, "Steal my
memories. Give form to that which
you wish to know."
XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX
The bunker headquarters of the militant outlaw mutants known as X-Force in Camp Verde, Arizona. The man once known as Cable stared in disgust at a dusty mirror. "Ah, Nathan. You ruined a good month's worth of work. That's how long it took me to grow that beard the last time I controlled your body! Now look at me. Forced to start over in this pathetic timeline!"
Patrolling Cable's room, Stryfe found several types of weaponry and a few boxes of ammunitions.
"After so many years of preparations, you ruined them all, Nate. My mistake, really. I tried to make the murder of the parents an epic event. And Tiara. . . ."
While searching through the boxes, he came upon a holocube. He examined it closely, turning it from side to side. With a thought, it clicked to life. There before him, a young Tiara was playing a game of catch with her mother.
"It was all so perfect," he said, staring at the hologram. "But you ruined it, Nate." The hologram disappeared and Stryfe crushed the cube in his hand. "Redemption for a lost life on a grand scale. No more, now. It will be done to them as they did to me. Coldly. Clinically. Dispassionately."
"Cable, are ye daft boyo? Ye're talking t'yerself, ya know?" someone said behind him. "Ye flew away an' came back wit'out as much as a how d'you do to any o' us."
Cable slowly looked back while he was still loading his dufflebag. She was an intense young woman, he remembered. One of the members of X-Force. She had the gift of a sonic cry, one coupled with her soft Gaelic beauty.
*What was her name?* he thought.
When the young woman got no response, she asked, "Sir. . .are ye all right? If'n ye want to talk about anything ye know ya can."
Without warning or thought, the young woman was knocked out by a telepathic jolt. Sighing in satisfaction, Cable lifted the girl and placed her on the bed.
"Hmmm. . .perhaps there's a reason for Cable to associate himself with so many mewling brats after all. Her mind had NO defenses against a concentrated telepathic blast," he said as he gathered up his arsenal and left the room.
Someone else came running down the hall towards him.
"Cable?! Did I hear Siryn cry out?
Is something wrong?" The young
man known as Rictor asked.
"Yes," Cable responded, dropping his duffel
bag. "On both counts." He pulled a gun and fired. Smiling
to himself, he remembered this boy, Julio Estaban Richter, the mutant seismic
shaker. The boy had watched as his father was murdered in front of
him. Stryfe didn't need the armor to kill then. For years Rictor
believed Cable had killed Garabello Richter. It wasn't until later
that he discovered it was Stryfe who was
the murderer.
Ironic, then, that after having gained the boy's trust, Stryfe betrays it one final time.
Cable walked away, leaving Rictor unconscious on the floor.
XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX
A continent away, specifically Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters in Salem Center, Westchester, New York, sadness looms over the woman Jean Grey as she watches old home videos.
"Maddie, zoom in on this! He's smiling!" the TV said.
Jean bit her bottom lip holding back a
soft tear. She
remembered all of it and none of it.
"Maddie. . .did you hear that?! I swear he said dad!" the TV said.
The memories aren't hers, but Jean holds them all inside her heart. They are buried deep in a par tof herself that she doesn't like to look at.
"She sounded so much like me. It's almost as if the two of us were really Nathan's parents," Jean said to no one in particular. But someone in the shadows listened. "And we could have been. . . ."
Jean's voice trailed away as Scott Summers emerged from the shadows.
"I don't look at the pictures or tapes too often," he told her as he embraced her from behind. "It hurts too much. . .for what I lost. . .for what we never had." He paused, kissing her on the forehead. "Does that sound foolish?"
Jean placed her hands on Scott's where the embraced her. She knew it was a dark corner in Scott's past as well. When will these skeletons be put to rest?
*When will our lives be ours again?* Jean thought. Scott hugged her tighter. After a few moments, Scott released Jean and she stood up to embrace him.
"That should have been us; our wedding, our child," Scott whispered into Jean's hair. "All denied us because of who we are."
Jean pulled back slightly to look up at Scott. She could picture the hurt in his eyes through his ruby quartz glasses.
"We would never have met if not for who we are," Jean said. "We can decide our own destiny, Scott. We can still choose to have a life together. A family. I know I didn't always think so, but I do now."
Scott looked down sadly at Jean. Their wedding was only three weeks away. Why were these doubts still lingering? They were going to have a life together. Scott was determined not to loose everything this time.
"I still wonder sometimes," he told Jean. "Who is my son? Stryfe? Cable? Nathan. . .my boy--"
"Don't Scott. We're gonna create new memories. The two of us. We've been through so much. We deserve that much."
Jean could feel Scott smile briefly, but knew the doubt was still there.
"I hope I'm not interrupting," a new voice said from the shadows.
"No, Professor," Jean said as Professor Charles Xavier entered the room. Scott reached for the TV remote and pressed the 'off' button.
"Second thoughts?" Xavier asked.
"Lingering doubts," Scott answered honestly for both of them.
"Don't policemen have families, and firemen and soldiers? If they do, why shouldn't the two of you?" Xavier asked. "You have so much to look forward to."
Jean and Scott knew the Professor meant Tiara. It WAS something to look forward to. But Tiara was missing and all Scott could do was kick himself for not being there for her.
*Have I failed Tiara like I failed my son?* Scott asked himself.
Jean heard Scott's question through their rapport and hugged him tighter in reassurance. If the professor had picked it up, he didn't respond.
"I've seen what's become of my son, Professor," Scott said aloud. "I did what I thought was best and. . .good Lord. . .he returned to us as Stryfe, a madman twisted by HATE. Can you guarantee us that it wouldn't happen again? I couldn't. . .I won't stand to lose another child!"
Xavier replied, "You never had the opportunity to raise your son properly, Scott. . .and that IS a tragedy. But do either of you truly believe that Nathan Christopher would have turned out the way he did if both of you had spent your entire lives with him? Surely, Tiara is a testament of that."
Silence filled the room. There were still so many questions to Xavier's last statement. What if Tiara hadn't turned out the way she was? What is Stryfe was really her father? What if Cable was? Would she have turned out different if either of her fathers had spent their entire lives with her?
A lone female voice broke the silence.
"Xavier's right."
Scott, Jean and Charles searched through the darkness to find a young woman standing in the doorway. She had entered the grounds and into the mansion without being detected. She was clearly battered, having fought. . .who knows what. Blood mixed with dirt and water dripped into large puddles on the floor beneath her.
"Good Lord!" Jean said. "Who?"
Domino couldn't stand up straight. Whatever Nate had hit her with had a prolonged, neutralizing effect. She rummaged her way through the graveyard and into Xavier's Mansion. It was a long journey, but if she wanted to help Cable, she needed the help of the X-Men.
"The baby wouldn't have grown up that way," Domino said. "He DIDN'T! The real child of Summers and Madelyne Pryor. . .the REAL Nathan Christopher. . .grew up to become the man you know as. . .Cable."
