“What, like imagining Wolverine shooting gold balls everywhere?” asked Fabio eagerly.
“Not exactly,” replied Eva. “Although that sure is a mental picture.”
“I think I get what you’re saying,” interjected Christopher. “Imagine Wolverine and Cyclops and Emma getting teleported to Limbo and having a complete freak out like we did until the Stepfords psyched us up. You’d never expect them to pee their pants like we nearly did, but they had to be new sometime.”
Eva flushed as she thought of it. They’d all been transported to Limbo, and instead of greeting the challenge with excitement, they’d all panicked. Even her. Only the psychic powers of the Stepfords had saved them from imprisonment and damnation. If she was going to be a famous superhero one day, she’d have to get over that.
“You had it inside you all along,” said one of the triplets.
“We just helped you along a little,” added another.
“Honestly,” said Benjamin. “We need to get you guys nametags or something, because it’s driving me nuts not being able to tell you apart.”
They all smiled at him in unison, and he blanched. Eva didn’t blame him. Honestly, it was more than a little creepy.
“Um… so yeah. I was just thinking about that,” said Eva. “I’m sorry to interrupt.”
To her surprise, Emma didn’t seem upset about it at all. Instead, she seemed amused. “You’re more right than you know, Eva. We made so many mistakes, but they tend to get left out of the stories. Heroism and villainy sells. The more extreme, the better. And once people think they know you, it’s hard to change their minds.”
“Kind of like how most people feel about mutants,” said Benjamin sadly.
They all fell silent. None of them wanted to touch that topic. After all, what could any of them say about anti-mutant sentiments that hadn’t been said already? M-Day had come and gone, wiping most of them from the planet, and it had fixed nothing, because the existence of mutants had never been the problem. The problem had always been in the darkness and hatred that grew in people’s hearts, and no words would ever change it.
“We should get started,” Emma said finally, breaking the heavy silence. “We’re going to try something a little different this morning. We’re going to do a little team building. Because again, I’m not going to lie to you. Your teamwork is embarrassing. I’ve never been the best of team players myself. If I think you’re bad at it, then you must genuinely be awful. If you’re ever going to go out into the field on your own, you’ve got to get better, because honestly, you’re not even close to ready.”
Eva and Christopher met each other’s eyes, wincing. Eva didn’t know what bothered her more, the implication that the students were miles away from seeing any real action or that Emma Frost had a better grasp of teamwork than they did. Emma had never been a team player. Not at the Hellfire Club and certainly not with the X-Men. She had a reputation for it.
“Here’s the thing,” Emma was saying, “for a long time, I thought I didn’t need anyone. When Professor X offered to let me join the X-Men, I turned it down, because I thought that teamwork equaled weakness.” She paused, looked down at the table in front of her. “But now I know that I have that backwards. Which is why we’re going to work on it. You’re stronger together, but only if you can work together. You need to develop trust, and that comes with practice. Are you with me so far?”
She glanced around the table. Everyone nodded.
“We’re starting with trust falls,” she added.
The students collectively relaxed.
“Is that all?” David asked. “That’ll be a snap.”
Emma bared her teeth in a chilly grin. “I’m sure you think so,” she responded.
•••
Like the rest of the group, Christopher had expected trust falls to be a breeze. He’d thought they were beneath him. After all, he was an X-Man now, or at least a trainee. He didn’t think that Shadowcat or Colossus had spent an afternoon falling backwards into their teammates’ arms. Kitty would have phased right through them, and Colossus? Well, he would have crushed them into kibble. So he hadn’t exactly been thrilled with the activity. He’d put his all into it, because he’d always been that kind of student. He’d always found most classwork to be stupid, but you had to play the game to succeed, so he played it with panache.
It turned out that the lesson had been tougher than he’d anticipated. He kept wanting to catch himself. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Eva and Fabio. They weren’t the kind of jerkwads to dump him on the ground and guffaw like they’d just pulled a fast one. But he could catch himself, so why shouldn’t he?
He asked the question as Emma made a circuit around the room, monitoring their progress. In response, her teeth flashed in a pleased grin that made him instantly nervous. If the White Queen was delighted, she had something up her sleeve.
“That’s a good question,” she said. Then she raised her voice. “Everybody circle up. Christopher wants to know why he should trust his teammates to catch him when he’s perfectly capable of catching himself.”
“That’s easy,” said one of the Stepfords.
Emma shook her finger at them. “Easy for you, maybe. But you three are unique in how well you work together, and you ought to know that by now.” They sighed and nodded. “They need to see it for themselves. Besides, could you coordinate as easily with Eva? Or Christopher?” The Stepfords blanched, and Emma nodded. “That’s what I thought.”
She turned back to the rest of the class and nodded thoughtfully.
“Let’s experiment. Christopher, we’re going to put you up on the table. You’ll fall backwards, and we’re going to line everyone up to catch you. I want everyone in on this. It’s a long way to fall, and Cyclops will be ticked if we end the session with a head injury,” said Emma, completely serious.
They did as she instructed. Christopher climbed up on the table, already regretting his question. Part of him said that a trust fall exercise couldn’t possibly be that bad. The other part said that with the White Queen on the other end, a sharpened pencil could be a lethal weapon. They’d learned that last week, so he really shouldn’t be making any assumptions of safety.
But he was committed now, and he really wanted to know. Why should he trust his teammates to catch him when he could easily do it himself? If this exercise would show him, he needed to trust Emma Frost enough to volunteer. Maybe that more than anything was the test. If they were really going to become X-Men, they had to be all in, even when they didn’t quite know what was going on. Even when they were kind of scared.
He crossed his arms over his chest and clenched his muscles, preparing to fall backwards into the waiting arms of his classmates. Emma climbed up onto the table, standing just a few inches away. Did she plan to push him? Of course, it made sense to be caught when you got shoved over. He wouldn’t be able to catch himself. If this was the big lesson that she intended to teach, he would be very disappointed.
“Go!”
The moment he began to fall, Emma whipped a knife out of her belt and stabbed herself in the chest without a moment’s hesitation. The blade slashed deep into her flesh, sinking into the gap between her ribs. Her face tightened with pain, and she sagged toward him, blood spurting from the wound in a grisly arc. It painted both of their clothes in a red torrent. Christopher’s eyes locked onto the bright and shining liquid as horror overtook him.
“Emma!” he shouted. “No!”
Time slowed to an excruciating crawl. His heart seized as he stared at the hilt of the weapon in her chest. This couldn’t be happening. He wanted to cry and hide in his room and eat comfort food while someone else fixed this horrible mess, but the cavalry wouldn’t be coming. There was no one but him, and that terrified him most of all.
Eva and Fabio both screamed.
As he fell backwards, he snatched at her desperatel
y. If he didn’t heal her right away, she’d be gone. The school’s remote location made emergency medical help a non-starter. Every second counted.
He nearly missed her. She collapsed in slow stages, more slowly than he expected, and he almost missed her as he fell backwards off the table. His blood-smeared grip nearly slipped off her. But then he held her tight with one arm, and he pulled the knife free, put his hand over the wound, and his senses slipped over her like a net.
When he’d first arrived here, Cyclops had asked him to describe what using his powers had felt like, and he hadn’t known what to say. The first word that came to mind was that it felt intimate. He was lost in the universe of Emma Frost: every atom of her moving in perfect concert. But he could also see the vast and horrible injury she’d inflicted upon herself. He matched her heartbeat to his, brought her breathing in line with his, and sped up the healing process to repair the damage to her heart. Finally, she began breathing on her own again, and he could release her.
He realized then that his teammates held him tight in a cradle of their arms as he embraced the blood-spattered White Queen. While he had tended to her injuries, they’d caught him. They set him reverently on the ground as he inhaled great gulps of air like he’d just run a marathon. His heart raced so fast that he could feel his pulse throbbing at his temples. Normally, his powers didn’t tax him so, but the panic and adrenaline overtook him at last. He couldn’t believe that had happened. How could Emma have done such a rash thing just to prove a point about teamwork? The lesson didn’t match the risk. It didn’t even come close.
A metallic clatter drew his attention – the bloody knife, clattering to the tile.
The noise roused Emma. She opened her eyes and smiled in evident self-satisfaction. Then she stood up, calmly retrieving her blade and wiping it clean with a cloth she pulled out of her pocket.
“That’s why you need your team to catch you sometimes,” she said calmly. “Because sometimes there’s a job that only you can do. If you’re falling and you take the time to catch yourself, the job doesn’t get done. If you don’t catch yourself, you die doing the job. The only way to get it done and get out alive is teamwork. You get me?”
“You… that…” Fabio said, gaping.
“Do you have a problem with my teaching, Fabio?” she asked, her expression inviting.
He blanched. “No. No, ma’am.”
She turned her pale gaze onto Christopher. “And what about you?”
He didn’t know what to think, but he wasn’t going to pick an argument with someone who was crazy enough to stab herself. Who knew what else she was capable of? He shook his head, clamping his lips shut.
“Fine. I think that’s enough for the morning,” Emma said. She looked vaguely disappointed. “Simulation over.”
The room flickered and the blood vanished as if it had never been there. The knife flickered out of existence. The students looked around, shocked and confused. David kept repeating a very bad word under his breath. Christopher stared mutely at his hands as if unable to believe what he saw. No blood. His hands and clothes had been covered with it, but now it was gone. The rip in Emma’s clothes where the knife had gone in had vanished.
The whole thing had been a simulation.
He should have known all along. They’d been training in the Danger Room on a regular basis. The room projected very convincing holograms to allow the students to safely engage in combat training. Most of their lectures were held in a series of monotonous grey-painted classrooms in a separate wing. Moving this one to the Danger Room should have clued him in, but he just hadn’t thought about it. After all, the instructors had always told the students before they entered a simulation. He’d felt the heat of the blood as it washed over his hands, and it had never once occurred to him that it might be fake.
He felt like an idiot.
Emma put her hand on Christopher’s shoulder. When he looked up at her with wet eyes, she returned his stricken expression with what seemed like a genuine smile. He had no clue what she was smiling about. He should have seen through the ruse, and he hadn’t.
“I’m sorry to have tricked you, and doubly so to have frightened you,” she said in her low voice. “But the lesson isn’t as effective if you know it isn’t real, and there are two important things to be learned here. Trusting your teammates is important, of course, and I’m glad that you did. If you hadn’t trusted them to save you, and I truly had been in danger, it would have put me at additional risk.”
“That’s what I thought,” he cut in, his voice hoarse. “In the middle of it.”
“You did well.” Her gaze swept the room. “And that brings me to the next point. Out of everyone on the team, you all need to trust your healer, and you need them to trust themselves. They might not be the flashiest one on the squad, but when your blood’s spurting out between your fingers, they’re the only ones standing between you and the reaper. I know you’ve had your doubts, Triage, but you belong here. And now we all know it.”
The students all stood, silent and thoughtful, and digested this. She flashed them all a pleased smile and sauntered out the door with the air of a cat with canary feathers in its mouth.
“Crikey. Did that really just happen?” Eva asked in a shaky voice.
“I’m pretty sure we’re on one of those prank shows. Somebody with a camera’s going to jump out at us any minute now,” suggested Benjamin.
“I sure hope not,” said Christopher. “It won’t do wonders for my reputation if I puke on camera.”
He staggered out of the room towards the bathrooms, wondering what the heck he’d gotten himself into.
Chapter 4
During the lull between classes, Eva decided to follow up on her offer to Jean. The question was: who to approach? The whole stabbing situation with Emma had freaked her out quite a bit, and Cyclops had all of the time-displaced students in the infirmary, running them through the physical and mutant ability testing for new students. She wanted to avoid Magneto if at all possible. That left Illyana, also called Magik, who she finally located in the cafeteria.
Magik looked a lot like Emma Frost, blonde-haired and blue-eyed, but with longer, straighter hair. Like the White Queen, she also favored skintight black clothes, but when she got angry, instead of turning into a giant walking diamond, she pulled a sword out of thin air that was almost as tall as she was and stabbed things with it.
Although given recent events, Eva didn’t want to think about stabbing anything. She’d reached her daily quota.
Eva sat down on one of the stools and waited for Illyana to notice her. The sorceress rummaged through the cabinets, grumbling to herself, but finally she realized she wasn’t alone. She stood up and dusted off her palms, looking Eva over with a critical eye.
“Something happened,” she said in her heavy Russian accent.
“It shows on my face, huh?” asked Eva.
“I would not advise playing cards.”
Eva told her everything. Illyana wouldn’t flip out on her. After all, she went to Limbo all the time. Eva had been there only once, and it wasn’t exactly on her list of top ten vacation destinations. Dormammu, an evil sorcerer, had trapped their entire team there, and she’d had trouble falling asleep at night ever since. Every time she closed her eyes, she thought of the implacable onslaught of the Mindless Ones and their cold, clammy hands, the sorcerer’s mocking laughter, or the fiery, barren expanse of Limbo stretching further than her eyes could see. If she never had to return to that awful place or see Dormammu again, she’d be happy. Returning there repeatedly – on purpose, no less – took guts. They’d been lucky to escape with their lives.
“So that’s what happened. Should I be worried?” she concluded.
“Worried?” asked Illyana. “About what?”
“About Emma.”
“Oh.” Illyana waved her hand. “I wouldn’t be concerned. Inj
uries suffered in the Danger Room do not carry over into the physical world. Once, I came out with a headache, but I believe that was due to the shrieking.”
“But it was awful! We all thought she’d stabbed herself in the heart. That’s not normal!”
Eva started to shake. She’d held it together pretty well after that first shocked scream. After all, she’d seen death over the past few weeks. She’d been on a few easy recruiting missions recently chasing down minor criminals, and sometimes innocents had gotten caught in the crossfire. Their instructors had taught them to be careful about friendly fire, but bad guys never seemed to care who they hit, so Eva had seen a few things that shook her, but nothing as extreme as what Emma had done. She could have died. Couldn’t she have given Christopher an inspirational poster with a kitten on it and called it a day?
Illyana poured her a glass of water and slid it toward her. Woodenly, Eva sipped at it. Water sloshed over the edge as her hand trembled uncontrollably.
“I understand what you are saying. It was not so long ago that I was in your shoes. I was new once too, and many things were overwhelming.” Illyana looked down at the table, sighing. “What Emma did is in many ways awful. It was a hard thing to see. But there is no lasting damage, yes? Your life goes on unchanged?”
“Except for the nightmares,” Eva muttered. “I’ll probably dream about it. I dream about Limbo a lot too.”
“Ah. I am sorry about that. Dormammu is trapped there, and he’s eager to find a way out. He sees his magical skill as a road to power over the planes of existence, and it blinds him to what is truly important. That, I think, is what frightens me: the possibility that someone might live blinded to all but their own desires.”
Eva shuddered. Although she hadn’t thought it through completely, Illyana was exactly right. The evil sorcerer had scared her for many reasons, but most of all, what had stuck with her was the aura of bottomless hunger that hung around him. She knew without a doubt that he would stop at nothing in his quest for power. She had faced that and lived. She might bear the scars, but she could still go on.
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