Unexpected Companions: Part Two

by Persephone

Stryfe and Zero arrived on the scene just in time to hear Illyana's final words and see her put the Soulsword in Cable's hands and offer to let him kill her.

A strange and different metal began a campaign up over Cable's arm as soon as his hand closed around the sword. The techno-organic virus fought back, inimical metals clashing in silence.

Nathan looked down at the sword as a bizarre, icy, tingling pain began climbing his metal arm, and yelled both at the agonizing sensation and at the sight of the armor.

Stryfe, in the same instant, cried out against Illyana's offer to die. Not that he was terribly articulate about it, but that was the idea.

Cable, thoroughly disturbed at this point both by Stryfe's arrival and by the armor that was unnervingly and with great determination waging war against the techno-organic virus for possession of his arm (with no apparent concern from either party as to the fact that it was HIS arm), finally forced his fingers to uncurl, and the Soulsword clattered to the floor. Its intangibility didn't seem to extend to flooring.

Then he whirled again, raising his gun as Stryfe took a step forward and stopped. "You."

"Yes," Stryfe spat, contriving to make the monosyllable nasty. "If you --" he added tightly, then looked to Illyana.

She picked up the Soulsword again and stood slowly, eyes darting from one to another of the four other people in the room.

"If I -- what?" Cable mocked. Domino shifted her weight and moved her own gun to cover Zero, who stood in perfect serenity while Stryfe and Cable glowered at each other.

Stryfe thought quickly. He had Cable's attention, which meant it wasn't on Illyana. Which meant, in turn, that Cable was not likely to attack the girl. It was possible that he didn't plan to, but given what he'd heard and seen, Stryfe was not prepared to risk it.

And while he might be... somewhat distracted, he really shouldn't have any trouble baiting Cable. With their history, it didn't tend to require terribly intensive concentration. One reckless move from Nathan, incapacitation so the man couldn't decide to take the vengeance Illyana was offering....

It occurred to him that the whole idea of his making calculations to protect an innocent child from Cable really ought to be hysterically funny in other circumstances. Then again, in other circumstances it wouldn't be at issue.

With growing exasperation at the entire train of thought, Stryfe derailed it and tried for something more productive, like thinking of a provoking comment.

"What's wrong, Nathan? I thought shooting the messenger was a practice normally employed in the case of bad news."

The first thought that penetrated through Nathan's natural and rather territorial interest in killing the old and very personal enemy who had just appeared on his space station ran along the lines of What is he TALKING about? Curiosity failed, however, to override the threat perception. Stryfe talked nonsense fairly regularly; it was probably some sort of smokescreen.

As the man was almost certainly ready to deflect a shot, even if for some reason he didn't appear to be wearing armor (No, he could NOT have lent it to the blonde girl. It would never have fit.), Cable growled out, "Have I gotten GOOD news lately about something?" and tackled him instead.

Stryfe lashed back, telekinetically, and threw Nathan off him, shielding at the same time against a shot from another direction as Domino jerked her gun to him from Zero and fired as soon as he'd thrown Cable clear.

Illyana shrieked at them to quit, first in Russian and then in English. Neither one paid her any attention; Cable didn't quite hear her, while Stryfe merely wondered irritably what she expected him to do instead.

Stryfe prepared mentally to try to slice through Cable's shields, moving forward with the intent of providing his own distraction.

Cable lunged to meet him, firming up his shields.

And pools of light rose up from the floor and swallowed them both, depositing their feet on some other landscape before their eyes found the dim light of what had to be Limbo. Something, or somethings, grabbed them roughly from behind and held them tight, arms pinned and -- somehow -- powers blocked.

Domino and Zero were nowhere to be seen. Illyana stood a few yards away, face white and lips set.

"Both of you. Stop it. Now. Please." Her voice was strained. Cable's head jerked up, eyes slightly wild.

"If you think you _owe_ me so much, let me kill him! Or... you do it."

"Christopher... that's one of very few things you could have asked of me that I would refuse." She lowered her eyes. "I've killed too many of my friends already."

"Don't let that slow you down." Stryfe glared across at Cable. "I don't have friends, do I? It's not allowed."

Illyana looked up sharply, sapphire eyes shadowed. "Well. I thought we were friends. Though," she admitted hollowly, "you might do well to avoid me, after... this morning's developments."

Stryfe watched her tensely. "Why avoid you? Because you told me my existence was pointless? Nathan here does that all the time; I still talk to him far more often than he'd like."

"Where does pointless come into things? I said you weren't one of the kids I was responsible for getting kidnapped by demons!"

"Which made me his clone." Stryfe laughed humorlessly. "I should thank you for that?"

"I wasn't expecting thanks, no. For what? NOT nearly getting you killed? Not exactly something that requires a lot of gratitude." She stared blindly at the Soulsword's blade. "What do you mean, made you his clone? I had nothing to do with that. Does it matter?"

"It matters to ME." Stryfe tugged angrily against the restraints.

She glanced toward Cable, eyes troubled. Cable glared at her and growled, "You claim to owe me for some previous mess with demons. But you won't kill him. You won't let me. And you have demons hold me here, again? This, after you try to get me to free you from your guilt. Live with it instead. Coward."

Illyana froze, and bowed her head. "I offered you my blood to spill because it was yours by right of revenge according to any number of sorcerous traditions. I don't know for certain it would have killed me..." she hesitated, and her voice held a hint of a wail. "Do you really think I want to die? I don't." She took a deep breath, not seeing Cable's accusing stare falter. "I will live, and work out the debt as I see fit. But I will not kill for you one who has been kind to me."

She turned back toward Stryfe. "Why does that matter to you? You are who you are."

"Shut up, you self-absorbed waste of protein," Stryfe snarled at his brother. "You found something you can't blame on me so you're taking it out on her. If you kill her...." He glared and strained forwards again. "Then there'll be nothing to protect you from me, will there?"

Cable glared back. "I wasn't the one who offered blame, she was. I said I'm not going to kill her just to let her get out of living with something she thinks she has to atone for!"

Illyana blinked at Stryfe, ignored Cable, and repeated herself. "You are who you are. Please stop insulting your brother and answer me? He's more likely to have some measure of control over Limbo than you are anyway."

Stryfe looked away. "You don't HAVE to atone for anything; it's a choice you make. And playing the martyr isn't a particularly useful way to go about it."

She sighed and walked over to him. A demon grabbed Stryfe's head and turned his face toward her; she glared at it until it let go. "He had the right. I may have stained most of my soul, but I can still choose right on some occasions. For that matter, I'll probably be more use to him alive."

Cable elbowed the demon holding him sharply in what passed for its ribs, and shook his head incredulously. "Use! I don't want you to be useful; I want you to leave me alone -- and not do any MORE damage than whatever it is you've already done -- and stop expecting me to give you some kind of absolution! I'm hardly qualified to give absolution even if I wanted to." He twisted and got his left arm free for about four seconds before it was pinned firmly behind his back again. "And let me OUT of this," he growled.

Illyana looked at him over her shoulder. "Fine." She raised her eyes slightly. "Let him go." The command was obeyed. Cable staggered forward a step before running into some invisible barrier. "I'm going to send you home," Magik said quietly, "to get reacquainted with everyone. You can leave when you want, of course, but I'm warning you: I've got friends, old teammates, in X-Force who MISS you. If you don't at LEAST stop in on them and say hello and leave some sort of forwarding address, I'll track you down again and again and bring you back as many times as I have to until you do."

A stepping disc swallowed him as she turned back toward Stryfe. "Now." She flicked silver-clad fingers at the demons who held him, and they retreated sullenly. "Without the interruptions...." She trailed off, looked frustrated as he continued to scowl, then lowered her eyes. "What is it you're telling me I've done to you? I don't understand."

"You don't... understand." His voice rose. "You don't UNDERSTAND? No, of course you don't." The words dripped venom. "You've always been the special one everybody pets and adores, haven't you? Haven't you?" He gave a contemptuous snort. "So of course you don't understand."

Her eyes darted up to meet his for a moment, sea and sky, then fell again. "Yes." Her voice was almost inaudible. "I suppose, pretty much, I always have been."

She had always been the special one. The youngest, the little girl, the darling -- and in between, though hardly "adored," she had been perhaps the most sought-after creature in that little corner of Limbo.

Given her state of mind at the moment, this was enough to keep her from arguing the point. Still, she folded her arms as if cold, somehow not letting go of the sword or slicing herself with it. "Sometimes," she added, just as softly, "being 'special' isn't all it's cracked up to be."

Stryfe glared at her. "I know that. I know that from times and places that make this pathetic attempt at hell look like paradise. here are nasty ways and nice ways, Illyana. And thanks to you, I don't have any nice ways left." Nor, he added silently to himself, the heart for most of the nasty ones -- but he would have to find it again, wouldn't he?

Illyana's head snapped up and she gazed at him in bewildered hurt before shutters seemed to go up behind her eyes. "Well, this IS one of the nicer parts of Limbo," she muttered. "You're not making any sense. You can do what you want, can't you? I'm not planning to keep you here."

"Do WHAT, exactly? I'm not even ME anymore! HE is, and I'm just some second-rate copy that was never supposed to exist! No matter what happens to you, you'll always know who you are."

She looked at him for a minute, then paced around him in a slow circle before facing him again. So that was it. Now that she thought about it, she cringed a little inside, thinking how much of a shock her hasty, half-coherent explanation must have been.

"You are you," she insisted again, forcefully. "And -" she shouldn't do this; she should just send him home. It wasn't as if she had any business acting as if she had the right to --"I don't think you're second rate." She looked away. "Not that my opinion's worth much now, I guess...."

It was Stryfe's turn to look incredulous. "Oh, of course you don't. This would be why you sent Cable back to them in my place? I notice I'm being quite effectively kept out of the way."

"I kept you here to talk to you. Of course I sent him there; they're his family too."

"Too?" he asked bitterly. "Too? They're his, period. I'm the clone, remember? The copy? I was just there by mistake, because they thought I was HIM."

Magik's eyes flashed with the first real sign of anger she'd shown since bringing them all here. "You still belong there as much as he does. He didn't HAVE to disappear like that, you know. What difference does it make for that, that you're his clone instead of the other way around? So you missed the near-sacrifice and the technovirus. Consider yourself lucky. You missed getting born on the kitchen floor and being held and cuddled and having your diapers changed by eventual members of X-Force --"

"Right. I wasn't born at all, and never got held and cuddled by ANYONE. Lucky me."

She stopped, mouth still open, then closed it and just looked at him for a few moments. "That's sad." She glanced sideways and watched a circle of silver sparks spring up around them, then thrust the Soulsword back into her body. The armor melted away and she took the two steps to reach him and put both arms around his waist, which for her was still just below shoulder-high. Her mind was screaming at her not to do this, not to risk it.

Demon sorceresses did not hug. They were not affectionate. It was too dangerous for both parties. Her evil would put him in danger, or if he had a bit more sense he'd push her away... but her heart said this was her friend still, and she had hurt him even if she didn't mean to -- see, isn't that what you always do to everyone, to everything you care for? accused her memories of Limbo -- and he'd held her this morning when she needed it. And she needed it again --no you don't, don't you dare think that, mustn't-- now, too.

Her heart told her mind to shut up.

Stryfe froze for several seconds, muscles clenched, forgetting to breathe. Illyana entertained for an instant the panicked thought that she'd somehow done him harm, before he drew a careful, very slightly shaky breath. They stood there a moment longer before he slowly brought a hand up and put a straggling lock of golden hair back in place, then tentatively placed the arm around her shoulders.

Illyana relaxed, through her worries desperately relieved that he hadn't chosen to shove her away on account of her reclaimed sorcery, and tightened her arms around him, almost convulsively, as she buried her face in his ribs. Stryfe closed his eyes and wrapped his other arm around her too.

She wasn't pulling away, he realized. It occurred to him that Illyana really would have been utterly appalled at the very idea that she might have baited him in this fashion only to thrust him away in scorn. She meant it. She must. But... that had been when she thought he was the real Nathan Christopher, hadn't it?

Still, she had made no move away from him yet, and... from what she had said, it seemed as if... as if it truly didn't matter to her.

Did he dare believe that?

Could he bear to disbelieve it?

Ever so slowly, Stryfe began to relax into the child's embrace. He almost flinched when she freed her hand, but it was only to pat him gently on the back.

Something small and light collided firmly with his nose and then clung to it. Stryfe snorted involuntarily and jerked backwards, knocking whatever it was away telekinetically and reflexively rubbing at his nose with one hand.

Illyana stirred -- actually, she stumbled forward rather ungracefully when Stryfe jumped, then got her balance back and peered up at his affronted grimace and the small, gaudily colored insect he held in a tiny golden bubble, just far enough from his face to be able to focus on it.

"What is this thing?" The thing gave an abortive buzz.

"I don't know. Let me see it," she replied sensibly. Stryfe hoisted her up one-handed, and she leaned her forearm on top of his shoulder while she peered at the creature. It was shaped like a housefly, mostly, but it was mauve -- with orange stripes -- and had 13 wings, the smallest a withered-looking little fragment of tissue in the exact center of its back. It was also partly crushed. She searched her memories. "I think it's a minor demon, actually."

He looked startled. Illyana winced slightly at his statement --way to go, remind him of that -- then glanced back at the insect, then at Stryfe again. He also looked a little skeptical. "This is a minor demon? It looks like a bug."

Her lips twitched. "Very minor. As innocuous as they come; it wasn't even enough to trip my wards."

Stryfe actually laughed, if a bit shakily, as he set her down. Feeling somehow that neither of them was really ready to let go yet, she leaned against his side and gazed up, studying his face. He looked... a little less stricken, at least. She felt another pang of guilt for being so abrupt with him that morning. And he'd still....

"Did you, ah, want it for anything?"

Illyana frowned for a moment, then shook her head. The bubble winked out and the creature emitted a rather dismal, whining buzz as it arced to the ground and bounced. She followed its struggling crawl into the shadows with her eyes, but made no move to help or hinder.

"Thank you," she said finally.

He looked down at her in genuine surprise. "For what?"

Illyana flipped long hair over her shoulder and stared at the dark, smooth, barren ground. Then she raised her head and met his eyes. "Well, among other things... thank you for coming to look for me, and --" she hesitated, and looked back down -- "and hugging me when I needed it." She didn't dare keep on "needing" hugs, though....

"Why wouldn't I come to look for you?"

She blinked hard, several times, without taking her eyes off the too-sleek dust at her feet. She was not going to cry. Really. No matter how warm it made her feel that he sounded as if she should have taken that for granted, and no matter how much it hurt to think of having to hide from him. She opened her mouth to say something, not sure what, but he continued before she had the chance.

"Of course I would." He laughed self-mockingly. "You've made yourself a part of everything between me and Nathan now, whether you meant to or not, and there you'll stay. No matter where you go, there we are. You might want to cut all ties, little one, run off and hide by yourself... but I guess 'Cable' just proved that it doesn't happen, didn't he?" He gazed off into the warped landscape. "And I'm going to hold you to it. You'll never get rid of me. I might hate what you've done to me, but you're still..."

Illyana, still pressed against Stryfe's side where she'd slid down from looking at the minuscule intruder, stiffened. Cut all ties... how had he known? She had thought she had shields, based on the sorcery she'd taken up, or had thrust on her, depending on how you looked at it. Then again, he was an extremely strong telepath, someone she was accustomed to trusting, and she... was somewhat emotionally ruffled, not to mention the interesting issues involved in evaluating her current level of expertise.

She didn't want to get rid of him, her heart cried out. She didn't want to cut ties. But she was so afraid of what might happen if she went back. Of the unease in their eyes, or worse, trust and later -- perhaps -- betrayal. "Still what?"

"You're still the only one who trusts me. Now more than ever, probably."

Illyana finally looked up again, at that. "I don't see why...."

"I'm not even someone they're supposed to care about anymore. I lied to them all this time, even though I didn't know it was a lie.... Their attention will be on Ca-- Nathan now, where it should be." "Should" had more than a little resigned sarcasm about it.

"They're 'supposed' to care about both of you!" she exclaimed, for the moment forgetting her own worries. "You're still their son. And if you think they won't pay attention to you now, explain to me how you reconcile that with all the time I seem to remember being spent trying to track down Cable... Christopher, Nathan, whatever."

"That's different. And don't try to tell me it isn't, because it IS. We're different. And I don't even know if I want their attention, let alone the dirty looks and the pity...."

She let go of him and folded her arms, leaning back slightly. "I never said you weren't different, but it sounds like you think just because they had it mixed up as to which of you was which, they'll stop caring about you because you're Cable's clone. When they thought he was yours, they still looked for him. So that doesn't hold water." Illyana shook her head. "And don't try to tell me you don't want to go home."

"If I have to go back, you're coming with me."

She dug a toe into the ground, not looking at him. "Who said I wasn't?" she hedged.

"You just did. I've known you since before you could read, Illyana." He'd watched her that long, at least. "Your lips might lie to me or try to distract me, but the rest of you can't. I've been where you are, and I can tell exactly what you're thinking. Without the telepathy, although I could do that too."

She closed her eyes. "I want to go back. Believe me. But I shouldn't." She had to force the words out through a throat that was much too dry, and was almost glad she'd pulled away from him so he at least couldn't feel her trembling.

"Why?"

"Because."

That wouldn't do at all. He was her friend. He deserved more of an explanation than "because."

He was her friend, and she had to find some way to give him up and keep him from trying to look for her again, so that she wouldn't yield to tempation and jeopardize him as well as the rest of the only world she really wanted to live in -- and hence didn't dare.

But to push him away, she would have to hurt him. But if she didn't, she might do worse.... He was still waiting. She compromised.

"Think about it, Christopher." So she'd called Cable that, a moment ago. She'd been calling Stryfe that for much longer, and the only first name she'd heard that Cable had given for himself was Nathan. She summoned a faintly derisive smile and hardened her eldritch shields. "I'm hardly prime company myself, right now. You say I trust you. But do you really think you can trust me?"

Stryfe winced slightly and almost took a step back. Calling him Christopher, now of all times, was almost a slap in the face -- and the girl had almost appeared to put on a new personality like a garment. He realized, with a slight chill, that after a fashion he had just seen Illyana give way to Magik.

Next he realized that she had done it on purpose, and the indignation of that knowledge was what let him catch himself before that backwards step.

Stryfe considered carefully. He wasn't about to tell her of the cold clenching in his gut at the thought of going back to the X-Mansion, back to Scott and Jean and everyone else and Cable, without even the one person there who had trusted him unquestioningly all along, however naive it had been of her.

Not to mention the utterly lovely prospect of having Piotr ask him where his little sister was.

"Are you telling me I can't trust you?" He was hardly in the habit of trusting people, even now, but some time ago he had discovered that he no longer felt like trying to get away when Illyana climbed on him or hugged him, and stranger still, he had found himself talking to her almost unguardedly.

Illyana turned away, and Stryfe couldn't help wondering why he'd felt such a loss ever since she pulled back from that first, terribly unexpected and almost impossibly reassuring hug. "That's just the problem. I have no intention of betraying you in any way I can possibly avoid... but... you'd be a fool to trust me."

"And you were a fool to trust me. Any trust is a risk, Illyana."

"Then why take the risk? I can send you back easily enough, no worries there." She turned to face him again, head tilted and lips ever so slightly quirked. "I do have the control I learned; there's no particular danger of my accidentally landing you in the wrong time, at least."

Stryfe shook his head. "That would be the least of my worries, I assure you." He fought off a shiver and finally realized that the chill he felt was not merely emotional -- the air was very cool here, and a light, frigid breeze wandered the bleak landscape.

"Really."

"Illyana," he began again, wondering at the absurdity of himself -- of all people -- arguing for trust. "If you're worried about whether we should trust you, does that not at the very least mean we can trust your intentions?"

She spoke very softly and very hollowly, with a wry humor as bleak as the horizon. "Surely you know what they say about good intentions."

He glanced around. "Aren't we already there? Perfectly safe, then."

Illyana's mood refused to be lightened. "Unless I leave, right?" She sighed and looked up at him again.

Yesterday, her eyes would in all likelihood have been happy. Laughing. Not haunted. Yesterday she would never have even considered the thought of leaving her home with Piotr and the X-Men, and planning not to return.

Yesterday she would have flopped down beside him with a book, and melted his heart yet again after it started collecting flakes of ice from the uneasiness so few could keep from their gazes as they regarded him.

Yesterday he had thought he was Nathan Christopher Charles Summers, not some clone, and yesterday Illyana had not remembered Limbo.

The silence stretched until Illyana finally shook her head and huffed in exasperation. "That's why, you know. You asked why I shouldn't go home? Because if I do, I put everyone I care about in danger. Because if I do, you'll have a demon sorceress in your midst. Do you know what kind of peril comes from that? It's a taint at the very least."

She took a shuddering breath. "Because if I return, I will want to stay. And the longer I stay, the more I neglect Limbo and the more readily I can lose control of it. Few of the New Mutants did trust me completely, and as it turns out, they were right not to. I prefer Earth and its universe to Limbo, and therefore I have to live here, not where I would like to. I do not want a repeat of what happened when Sym and N'astirh got the chance to conspire against me. Surely you don't either."

Her words and voice remained precise, but a low shudder in the ground betrayed her emotion as the wards spat sparks in a rough circle.

"I knew, you realize," Stryfe said in response to the silent, defiant challenge that followed her words. "I'd watched you for some years well before we ever met in person. I even gave thought to whether as you grew up again you would remain the X-Men's... Siberian Snowflake, or become a sorceress again."

"Then you knew the risks --"

"I've taken worse ones, for less worth."

Illyana tried to ignore the implied compliment and stalked past him to pace the perimeter of the warded area. "If you know, if you saw, that's only more reason to agree I should stay away." She whirled on him. "Why do you want me to go back? After 'what I've done to you.'"

"I've told you, haven't I? It's worth the risks. You are. And -- do you really think I want to go back there alone, when Cable's there and they'll all be making a fuss over him, welcoming him home, and let them all assume I've been deceiving them on purpose the entire time? Hardly any of them trust me anyway, and about as few actually like me. Yes, I know, big surprise." His shoulders slumped. "And now it turns out I'm not even their real son. Just a clone, and a mistake at that. Not real."

"Of course you're real," Illyana said softly, turning to face him again. Worth the risk? Maybe it was, if Stryfe stood in that much need of a friend. "'People are always real. Everyone. Always.'" He raised his eyes to hers, mouth barely open in surprise or question at having his own words of what seemed so long ago repeated to him. She hugged him again, nestling her head against his stomach.

"What makes you think clones are people?" he asked hoarsely, arms still at his sides. "Or even can be 'real.'"

"You are. Madelyne was. That's what. 'Once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always.' And even if you hadn't been to start with, I'd have loved you into it by now." It had been so easy for her to love.

Illyana heard Stryfe's ragged intake of breath. She could feel how rigidly tense he was, and that he was starting to tremble. And a slight... tapping, almost... she let the gleaming mental shields dissolve. "You mean it..." he whispered, and finally put his arms back around her.

She felt something land on her hair and looked up to see that his eyes were tightly closed, that his lower lip was caught firmly between his teeth, and that there was a single following tear crawling down its sparkling path along the side of his nose.

"Of course I mean it." She closed her own eyes.

"You'll come back?"

"...Yes." She would. "I can't promise I won't leave again, but I'll come back. If I can, I'll always come back."

There was a certain relief to saying so, even accompanied by the dread that she'd bound her friends to her own taint. Perhaps, after all, it was better. Her arms tightened unconsciously as she considered how easy it could be to lose herself in Limbo, to the Darkchilde part of herself, if she could never go to her real home. If this were really all she had.

Her throat felt constricted, her eyes hot -- and dry. They burned, even closed.

Illyana wished for tears she could shed.

**********

Nathan looked up from the shimmering white film and loops of wire, his own eyes feeling a little too warm. He suspected he had failed to blink for a while, which didn't make too much sense considering he wasn't certain the images depended on normal vision at all. He found Stryfe sitting up cross-legged and watching him, Illyana's head pillowed on his thigh.

"So," he said in a low, rough voice. "Are you glad you didn't kill her after all?" He watched Stryfe's statement change, grow first -- could that be hurt? -- and then become guarded, with a sort of vindictive satisfaction.

All that, all those visions of Stryfe and Illyana together and so friendly with each other -- he really hadn't thought Stryfe capable of being that sentimental, not that it seemed that normal for the sorceress either, though the child Illyana had been sweet enough the few times he'd visited her -- clashed starkly with the thought of how she'd died in his timeline.

Stryfe straightened slightly, a hand going toward the hair that spilled over Illyana's shoulder in what looked like an abortive soothing gesture. "Yes," he said carefully. That was all.

"I bet. Sweet kid. Does she know how close you came to killing her? Slowly and painfully? Or is that something you haven't told her, maybe haven't told anybody?" He stopped and swallowed, thinking back to the frail, angelic little creature coughing her life out in an instrument-surrounded bed, intensifying his shields to hide the shudder and the guilt he'd felt over not stopping that before it could happen to her.

Then it occurred to him that there was no reason to hide it, not really, and deliberately, without batting an eye, he projected it across to Stryfe.

Image. Feeling. All of it, in brutal honesty.

He felt it sink through shields that were far softer than they should have been, and felt the mental quiver that went along with Stryfe's visible wince. "Stab your eyes, I told you my shields were --" And that, he noted wryly, was before the memory itself registered. When it did, the angry voice broke off on the instant.

"Like what you see?" he asked ironically. "That's what happened in my timeline. That's what you did to her; that's what you did to thousands of the mutates in Genosha before her."

"I didn't." It was almost a whisper. And Bright Lady, he'd seen that look in the mirror a thousand times. It never made him any less relentless with himself either.

"No, you didn't. Not in your timeline. But you planned it, didn't you? I saw the dismantling. You may have changed your mind, but you had planned it. Every. Last. Bit." All the anger from his own timeline, at Stryfe for causing the epidemic and at himself for allowing it, at all the pain he'd seen in its victims, at the anguish in their loved ones, at Moira's and Hank's driven exhaustion, distilled itself into his voice.

Stryfe looked hunted. "I did plan it. I didn't release it! None of that happened in our timeline; you can't blame me for yours!"

"Can't I?" Nathan replied levelly. "Oh, it obviously makes a difference -- to you and everybody else -- that you never did release it. But you did everything else. You meant to cause it." The why of any situation is secondary to the situation itself. What is, is. What he meant to do is secondary to what he did do. IF I QUOTE ANY MORE ASKANI PHILOSOPHY AT MYSELF I WILL SCREAM. I. DON'T. CARE!

"I know. Stab your eyes, do you think I don't? I chose differently from your Stryfe. I didn't kill her -- them. If you saw that much, didn't you see anything to make you realize I -- care about them now? Does it not make any difference to you that I didn't do it?"

"Why should it? It didn't help my version," Nathan pointed out grimly. "But how would you like Illyana to know you came one step from consigning her to waste away like that? Or see how her alternate died?"

Stryfe actually paled, before fighting a visible battle for control of himself -- and control of his shields, the strangely softened golden wall Cable had pierced, so much more easily than he would have expected. He tried to keep a foot in the door, a tendril of thought penetrating Stryfe's mind, but it didn't work. It just barely didn't work.

"I wouldn't," Stryfe managed finally, with a reasonable semblance of calm, "as you well know. And no, before you comment, I don't really expect that to make any difference to you. What might, though, as you're so concerned over her alternate, could be thinking of the effect on her...."

Cable glared at him. Stab his eyes -- he found the right buttons to push too, too easily. "Shameless, aren't you?"

Stryfe smiled thinly. "Under the circumstances... not precisely, but I'm choosing to ignore it."

Illyana chose that moment to stir, and Nathan choked back the bile at realizing he was doing as Stryfe wanted, and didn't tell her. Even knowing all he did about what the man across from him had done, could have done, had almost done, he didn't tell her, because he knew he'd hurt her worse that way than this Stryfe was ever going to do.

Then he slept. He wasn't sure whether he trusted the two... or if it simply didn't matter anymore.

**********

In what passed for morning, they moved on. Nathan found himself awakened by Illyana crouching just out of arm's reach and whispering at him -- an odd method, to be sure, but apparently she wasn't certain of his mood or reflexes immediately on awakening. This was, most likely, wise.

He didn't know whether Stryfe had slept or not. The man seemed moody, but not significantly more or less so than the previous day.

A shiftline swept over them, making Nathan shiver despite the oppressive, humid heat on the other side. He raised his head sharply, fighting the sudden weight of air that, despite its comparative clarity, felt far heavier with moisture than the fog they'd just left behind. There were more coming, moving in clusters; all the laws of probability said that with that many together there would be a deadly zone in the mix, and Murphy lent his considerable mass to the equation.

His eyes narrowed and his steps slowed as he concentrated on the approaching shifts. Those approaching, and those --

Forming!

"Stop!" he barked, grabbing at the two just ahead of him and halting Illyana in her tracks -- and jerking Stryfe backwards as a shiftline ripped open where he'd been stepping.

Stryfe stared at him. "I didn't even sense that," he began, eyes a little bit wide. He stopped as Cable shook his head urgently.

"No time to discuss it. There are more coming, as if there weren't enough around already -- it's like a breeding ground; we need to get out --"

They were out. A thin line of silver passed across his vision and drew a completely different universe around him, and he couldn't feel the shifts anymore at all.

"Well, that was disorienting," he muttered. "Limbo?"

"Yes." Illyana was standing poised, as if expecting something to jump at them, but her shields were low and he could sense no real anxiety from her. "If this wasn't what you meant by 'out,' tell me now."

"Not exactly what I had in mind, but it works...."

Stryfe, Nathan became aware, was still staring at him, as if the change of venue hadn't even constituted an interruption. Then again, since they were the same height, maybe it hadn't. "Thank you." Nathan turned around at that and returned the stare for a moment.

Manners, Nathan, Redd's voice said calmly in his head, and he jumped and actually looked around, drawing a rather mystified element into Stryfe's gaze, before mumbling slightly over the words "You're welcome."

Illyana saved them from further awkward conversation by asking for directions to a relatively shift-free area, which proved difficult to locate since they first had to find a way for Nathan to sense the shifts from Limbo. He hid his reluctance to do so -- Limbo wasn't precisely pleasant, but the absence of the grimy transitions was rather a relief.

Silver-white plates finally deposited them in the middle of a vibrant green meadow, with what looked like a fruit tree a convenient few meters away and pink flowers dotting the grass. It looked idyllic.

Nathan was utterly certain it was not.

"Well," Illyana observed, looking around in some surprise, "this seems nicer than I was expecting."

"Seems," Nathan murmured. "Good choice of words." It should be safe enough to walk. He kicked at the grass, which patted his foot a little reproachfully, and went over to the tree, where he stopped and stared up at it.

"Waiting for anything specific?" Stryfe's voice inquired from a few steps back.

"Me? No, just watching the leaves grow," Nathan replied airily, still studying the tree. Stryfe made a slightly impatient noise. Nathan could see why. The fruit looked delicious. Inviting, bright ruby-red, almost like jewels set among the leaves and bowing the slender branches with the weight of their sweet juices. He felt his stomach growl. The tree could almost have been designed to act as a lure.

He shrugged and, still warily, reached up and closed the fingers of his left hand around a fruit.

There was a drawn-out, vicious hiss and he drew back quickly, shielding and dropping the fruit to bounce on the soft grass, as something wriggly shot down the length of his arm to end with a loud clang and a faint snap. He noticed something small and sharp-looking arc away and fall while he snatched the little wriggling creature away from the side of his neck and held it out to look at.

He found himself looking at a devastatingly beautiful little serpent with glittering emerald-green scales, a swollen triangle of a head, and a jaggedly broken ivory fang. That had been too close, too, and he'd been expecting a booby trap. Just not quite such a fast snake.

It hissed again, angrily, and he tightened his grip on the writhings of the rest of its body and removed his thumb from the head. It promptly struck at him again, lightning-fast, and snapped its other fang off short on his metal thumb. Another hiss of pain and it tried a third time, flinging a drop of blood into the air from the tip of the shorter broken tooth.

"Well," he said to it. "Aren't you cute."

Stryfe emitted a rather choked noise from behind him, and then added, in the mildly strangled tones of one who suspects the person to whom he is speaking has abruptly mislaid his wits, "Cute?"

"Well, it is," Nathan replied, fighting a grin without turning around. "Absolutely adorable. Great at ambushes, too, except it missed the lesson about not biting victims with metal skin. Unless you have metal teeth, of course."

"Nathan, it is a venomous snake," Stryfe pointed out, obviously putting some effort into sounding composed instead of irritated.

"Really? I'd never have guessed. What tipped you off, the venom running out of the fangs it snapped off when it tried to bite me?" He'd managed to get his thumb past the thing, and while it tried to gnaw at what should have been the nice soft web at the base, he massaged the venom sacs until they spent themselves. The runnels actually seemed to be starting to corrode his hand by the end, but he wasn't too worried.

"Nathan...." His clone was beginning to sound exasperated.

Cable turned. "Yes? Here, catch." He made as if to toss the snake Stryfe's way and almost laughed aloud at the other man's statement and the quick preparation for a telekinetic block.

"NATHAN!" Illyana snapped at him.

He managed to look a little sheepish even as the grin tugged his mouth wider. "All right, all right. I was just kidding." He looked back at the snake. "I wonder if I should put it back or keep it? Not like it's in much shape for hunting anymore."

Stryfe warily lowered the shield he'd raised and gave Nathan an incredulous look. "What, you're thinking of keeping it as a pet?"

Nathan hadn't really been planning on it, but it was starting to seem like a better idea, at least for teasing purposes. "Why not? It's adorable, and it can't eat much...." He was going to persuade himself in a minute if he didn't watch it. Besides, he had damaged it already. Of course, it had been trying to kill him, but still.

Having run entirely out of venom and mostly out of energy by this point, the snake's frantic assaults on his hand had dwindled to sporadic squirming. Nathan thought the head massage might have had a relaxing effect, too. It was a pretty little thing, and would probably die if he just let it go....

Besides that, judging from the look he was currently getting, keeping it would drive Stryfe crazy. Crazier. Whatever.

"Yes, I think I'll be keeping it." Oh, definitely crazier. He watched Stryfe get control of his features with considerable effort. And grinned.

Illyana looked from one to the other of them and shook her head. "I'd say I was in a way glad we aren't all our right ages, because if we were I'd have probably had to babysit the pair of you, except for one little problem. I didn't get out of it after all!"

"Oh, don't worry about it...." He held up the snake and peered into the lidless eyes for a moment, feeling about telepathically for the tiny mind and lulling it into recognition and calm. Not to mention reinforcing the lately-conditioned impression that biting him would HURT, though he didn't have much faith in the efficacy of the latter part, as it hadn't seemed to have any influence at all so far. "Perfectly safe and docile now."

The serpent hissed a little weakly and thrashed as if to belie his words, but when he dropped it serenely into a pocket it simply slithered down to the bottom and lay there. It did nothing more than wiggle occasionally until he took it out and fed it a small glob of what Illyana claimed was liver jelly when they made camp for the night. The fangs looked as if they were coming loose; he began to wonder if they'd grow back in.

It didn't try to bite him again, and apparently went to sleep while he lost the battle with curiosity and again accepted the scryer he hadn't noticed Illyana take back the previous night.

**********

As neither Stryfe nor Illyana had actually been present (they had, in fact, still been alternately arguing and being mushy in Limbo, which apparently found such proceedings a little unusual), Nathan found it slightly difficult to persuade the scryer to focus on his own alternate's return to the mansion in much detail.

It cooperated eventually, however, and revealed a scene of general pandemonium and welcome, eventually broken into by the arrival of the X-Men in X-Force's vicinity, whereupon confusion dominated, especially once Piotr ascertained that his sister was missing. Concerned, he eventually resorted to taking on his armored form in order to get close enough to Cable to inquire after her without being squashed.

Domino apparently had established some reasonably friendly relationship with Zero, as the two arrived in company. This generated still more confusion, as Stryfe's (or Christopher's) mode of transportation had returned without him. It was a situation somewhat akin to an empty saddle, though as Domino pointed out -- loudly -- there was no reason to assume the teleporter who had yanked Stryfe off to who knew where -- "Limbo," Cable inserted -- couldn't bring him back, too.

Illyana solved that particular problem fairly handily by emerging from a stepping disc, in a well-selected area of bare floor. It was perhaps fortunate that she was still holding the Soulsword and hence armored, though probably if she hadn't been Piotr would have stopped to think and de-armored himself before scooping her up into a hug. As it was, the embrace clanged.

The clamor finally died down long enough to let both Cable and Stryfe answer the numerous inquiries as to where they had been all this time, which was perhaps a more apt question for Cable, as he'd been gone for significantly longer. For the most part, Cable opted to be evasive, but got the distinct impression he was going to have a lot of trouble if he tried to avoid continued contact. He was also, he suspected, going to have a lot more trouble if he attacked Stryfe, as the man had actually offered to leave and been threatened with being sat on if he tried. Not that this would probably be terribly effective, but it was probably a figure of speech anyway.

"All right, if you're Christopher, what are we supposed to call Chris, uh, Stryfe?"

"I'm Na--" Cable began, but was overridden.

"I mean I suppose we could call him Chris, too, but it would get confusing."

"How about Stryfe?" Stryfe suggested, a bit dispiritedly.

"I guess that could work."

The babble continued. Stryfe and Cable spent much of the next few days growling at each other, but refrained from actual assaults as long as someone watched them like a hawk the entire time. Mostly. There was one occasion when Stryfe incautiously, or perhaps maliciously, made reference to the wars of the thirty-eighth century in answer to someone's attempt at making conversation.

Cable tackled him into a large schefflera. "How DARE you, you --" Nobody except Stryfe and possibly a few other telepaths followed the rest of what he said, and they steadfastly refused to translate for anyone else.

"Both of you, cut it out!" Illyana snapped from the nearest doorway. "Do I have to send you both to Limbo again?"

Cable glared at her but didn't try again when Stryfe cautiously removed him to the other side of the room and righted the plant, seething inwardly. "I seem to keep ending up there by your machinations, don't I?" he growled. Illyana went white.

Stryfe turned and took one step forward before Jean stalked in from the hall behind the young sorceress, who moved into the room and towards Stryfe to get out of the way, and possibly to help keep him in line.

"That was uncalled for," Jean said firmly. "I won't argue over the grudges from your... shared history, though I do expect a certain standard of behavior." She ignored the involuntary snorts. "But you have no business talking to Illyana like that: I don't know what impression she gave you of what went on when you were almost sacrificed, but it was hardly all her fault! Some of her... um... servants staged a rebellion and dragged Madelyne into it; Illyana opened a portal, true, but she was tricked too. She had nothing to do with wanting you killed; that was supposed to take control away from her, as far as I could tell."

Illyana made a faint noise, as if to protest some or all of what Jean had said, but didn't get any further. Cable folded his arms and transferred the bulk of his attention from Stryfe to her. "That's very interesting and not very close to what you said." He frowned at the medallion around her neck and jerked his head. "What is that thing?"

Illyana looked down and lifted it cautiously. "This?"

"Yes."

"It's -- a sorcerous tool." She obviously didn't want to be talking about it, and bit her lip before flipping it open and going on. "Each stone is a bloodstone. They stand for evil in me -- not really fractions of my soul, which I thought at one point, but... acts... I've performed, that -- that stained it badly, that were in a certain... category, or level, of evil."

She swallowed. "At least by the definitions in Limbo black magic. Some systems, the rankings vary, but that's the rulebook for here."

"A tool for what?"

Illyana went very white. Stryfe looked daggers at Cable from behind her. "Belasco said filling all the spaces was to make me into a gateway so the Elder Ones, whom he serves, could leave their prison dimension and come through Limbo to Earth," she said wretchedly.

A muscle in Cable's jaw twitched as he stared down at her. "Let me see?" He meant it as a request. It might as well have been a command.

Clearly reluctant, unwilling yet with the air of being unable to refuse, Illyana dragged the chain over her head with motions as ponderous as if it held a millstone instead of a small bejeweled medallion, and dropped the pendant into Cable's large palm.

He frowned, transferring it to his left hand on instinct at the strange, not entirely physical prickling he felt from it.

Cable looked back up from the necklace, chain dangling from his fingers as the pendant nestled in his palm. "I still don't completely understand what went on," he admitted, meeting Jean's eyes and ignoring Stryfe with difficulty, "but stab my eyes if I know why she spilled that nonsense about letting me kill her! What you've said doesn't make it sound one BIT like her version; what did she think she was doing?!"

Stryfe started forward a step. "She is a child and she was hysterical at the time! What did you think YOU were doing?!" he demanded.

Cable turned to glare at him, a bit defensively, wondering in some layer of his mind when Stryfe had developed this bizarre protective streak. "Minding my own BUSINESS until she showed up!" Almost absent-mindedly, he fingered the pendant, turning it in his hand and thumbing irritably at the bloodstones in turn with his metallic nail.

And the bloodstones crumbled and fell away in sticky russet crumbs like picked scabs.

He looked down at his hand in surprise as Illyana gave a low, choked cry. A little puzzled, he rubbed out the remaining residue from the sockets, turned his hand over and let the crumbs fall, and then held the pendant somewhat uncertainly toward the girl.

Illyana stared up at him, sea-blue eyes wide in shock, then snatched at the medallion with trembling hands and sank to the ground weeping, and laughing through her tears. "You did that," she choked out between sobs, "cleansed -- you said you wouldn't absolve me, but you did, you did."

Watching through the peculiar scrying device, Nathan Summers shook his head. His alternate obviously had NO real idea what he'd just done or how, despite Magik's admittedly bewildering explanation. Not that he himself was completely sure what the "Dark Ones" were, but then, he didn't know of anyone besides, perhaps, Illyana or Belasco or Dr. Strange who did know.

In the image, Cable frowned uneasily at the child at his feet as she continued. "You don't know, do you? You just wiped out... all the progress of that spell. All of it. And put me that much farther from being lost for all, and the world from the Elder Ones' return." She looked up, eyes bright and wet, and leaned back against Stryfe's shins as he approached, looking... about as confused as Cable, actually.

Attention drawn back to Stryfe, Cable felt hate surge again, but knew better than to start.

**********

The task of separating the two fell to Illyana less often than might have been supposed, as she was occupied being exclaimed over by her friends from when she was a New Mutant and being quizzed on whether she really remembered everything until she wanted to cry, no matter how kind the intentions.

They weren't always precisely kind. She made them nervous, now, as she had as Magik before, and since Stryfe had never fully stopped making people nervous, there was a good deal of low-level anxiety all around.

Magneto's next move was unfortunate, to say the least. Nathan compared the scenes in the scryer to his own timelines and didn't recognize the beginning at all, but when word came from Israel that David Haller had vanished and from Shi'ar space that chronospatial disaster was looming, he realized it didn't necessarily take either a space station or a mindwipe to send the boy over the edge.

Old grudges were put on hold -- even to the extent of persuading Magneto to join them in Israel for the repair effort, and even to the extent of Cable and Stryfe very grudgingly agreeing to work together.

"The fate of the world -- the entire timeline -- is at stake, and you two are fighting each other again?"

"Yes!"

"Well, DESIST!" Thunder cracked overhead as Ororo began to lose her patience with the two. "You are brothers. You might consider acting the part."

"We are," Cable protested quickly. "Cain and Abel."

The ambient temperature dropped several degrees. "That is hardly acceptable."

They looked at each other and each thought about the world at large and the family they'd both come to love, and came to a tacit agreement to cooperate. For now. If they had to. Which they did.

Curiously, as failure seemed imminent and -- true to form -- various pairs who either were couples or wished to be met what they believed was the end of their existence with a kiss to be caught in crystal, Stryfe looked around at the scattered embraces and swept Storm into one of his own.

A scene flickered at the side, whether the true incident or only something Stryfe had remembering at the time, where he watched from the ground -- no, only a tiny rock jutting from the sea somewhere -- while Ororo rode the fury of a hurricane and for once abandoned herself to it, laughing. He barely shielded from the lash of wind and water, and startled her badly when he finally rose into the air himself, drenched and windblown. She hadn't known anyone was there; she hadn't meant -- but he met her apologies with a grin and congratulations on her mastery of chaos.

She didn't fight the kiss.

**********

Nathan looked up from the scryer briefly. "You kissed Storm?"

Stryfe stared back for a moment. "What is that thing showing you anyway?" He was interrupted by a muffled giggle from Illyana. "Yes, I did. Why not?"

Nathan hesitated and then shook his head. "It just seems... odd." He didn't want to go into why it seemed so odd; the attraction they'd held for a while in his own timeline only made it stranger. "... Were the two of you together when --?"

Stryfe shook his head. "We… dated for a while, but not…. She and Mikhail eyed one another for a time as well." He sighed and looked away. "Perhaps it could have been more. Then again... just as well, most likely."

The words reminded Nathan of what had probably happened to that Storm, to all Storms, the burden, the nightmares, the guilt... the horrible deaths he'd seen give release to some. He shuddered and didn't answer, letting his mind be caught by shimmers into another past.

**********

The temporary end of the world managed to reconcile Cable and Stryfe, however uneasily, to the idea of not killing each other on sight. It did little, however, to alleviate the strain of daily conversation between the two.

"Good morning, Na-- I mean Chri--" Stryfe broke off in exasperation and glared at Cable as they tried without success to pass one another civilly in the hall. "Forget it! I am not calling you Christopher. Get over it."

Cable gaped at him for a moment before his response emerged in a muted roar. "GOOD! I've been trying to get everyone here to STOP calling me Christopher. My name is NATHAN. I have been called Nathan all my life and the next person who calls me Christopher is going through the WALL." He paused and glowered. "And if it had been YOU, it would have been SEVERAL walls. And a lawnmower."

Stryfe, who had naturally enough been being called Christopher right up until Illyana's passing revelation, not to mention having called Cable Nathan for several decades, and who was for these and other reasons having a very hard time adjusting to the new arrangement, tried to process this.

"You don't want to be called Christopher?" he managed, a bit faintly.

"NO. I do NOT. And the worst part is apparently YOU are the only one in the entire HOUSE who is cooperating!"

"I assure you I'm not doing it on purpose," Stryfe muttered, and they finally succeeded in departing the hall.

After that morning's outburst of corridor-bellowing, the occupants of Xavier's mansion began reverting to the more customary appellations, identifying Cable as Nathan and Stryfe as Christopher. They all felt kind of weird about it, but it did cut down a lot on the stammering whenever someone tried to address one of the two. It also cut down on the amount of unexplained glaring Cable did, which was a relief.

**********

Nathan looked up from the scrying film and directed a moody gaze at the flickering campfire before transferring it to Stryfe. "So should I be calling you Christopher?"

Stryfe, or possibly Christopher, looked nonplussed. As well he might, Cable realized with some chagrin, given that the question had been based on a conversation that had occurred some time ago. "Ah... it doesn't particularly matter; I answer to either one."

"Illyana called you Stryfe."

"Sometimes she does."

"Usually when he's in trouble," Illyana inserted, grinning.

"It's still my codename, actually...."

None of them noticed the approaching, nigh-silent footsteps until the looming shadow parted from the fog to rumble, "Greetings, fellow wanderers. May I share your fire?"

The words and tone were civil enough, but that voice! It haunted the second-worst parts of his nightmares, the ones that came a close second to the parts where Apocalypse spoke through Scott's mouth.

Cable snatched at his psimitar and stared up in horror at the towering figure of Apocalypse before launching himself forward, crying out incoherently in Askani and sweeping the psimitar blade around to attack. Out of the corner of his eye he glimpsed Stryfe lunging forward as well.

A streak of mist wrapped into his eyes, and Apocalypse dodged. Somehow. He simply wasn't there anymore to be hit by the attack, he was... over to the right. Cable pivoted, blood roaring in his ears and almost drowning out Illyana's furious shriek. "Sit DOWN! If he were hostile my wards would have alerted us; will you two show some sense -- augh! You IDIOTS!"

In his peripheral vision, he saw her as she yanked at the air with one hand, then cast a small dark ball sharply groundwards.

Cable had poised for just an instant, mind flying through calculations for his next move, one that should cut off Apocalypse's escape route. He sprang forward... and the next thing he knew, something seemed to explode softly yet concussively inside his skull, and he found himself flat on his face, half stunned, with his ears ringing and vision refusing to focus.

He tried to push himself up off the ground, but couldn't. As his hearing cleared, he heard a low grunt off to his side somewhere. Stryfe down as well? Fear shot through him. What had Apocalypse done, and where was Illyana?

Her voice floated to his ears, cool and formal but rather exasperated. "Sorry about that. They both have, well, issues with a number of other yous. I had wards set to warn of a hostile approach, and do not have the personal reasons that seem to keep them from hearing courtesy when it is in your voice."

"Quite all right." Apocalypse's booming voice was punctuated here by a heavy sigh. "Lately I seem to be running into a remarkable number of otherwise respectable individuals who want to tear me to shreds."

Cable heard a rude noise from Stryfe, and agreed fervently as he continued to imitate a landed fish.

"It's really quite distressing."

Illyana gave a rueful laugh and agreed, a bit faintly. "I would imagine. They do have reason to expect you to be an enemy, I admit -- not just these two, probably quite a lot of other people. To be honest, I'm a little surprised to find you so agreeable."

"I could be disagreeable if you prefer," Apocalypse rumbled blandly.

"No, please don't," she replied hastily. "That tends to cause problems."

Cable wondered whether to award the sorceress a trophy for Understatement of the Cross-Time Sludge or just for Stating the Blindingly Obvious. Or maybe he should just hit her over the head with both of them. Only he still hadn't managed to organize his limbs into anything resembling a cooperative effort, and his head still felt as if it had a small pillow stuffed into it, which was both what he was upset about in the first place and the obstacle to doing anything about it.

"Very well," Apocalypse replied amiably. Cable couldn't help feeling that there was something seriously wrong with that adverb, but the External really did sound... amiable. It was disturbing.

Illyana gave a rueful laugh and continued the conversation, beginning to attempt an explanation and send out feelers regarding why this Apocalypse wasn't attacking -- which he still wasn't. Cable quit listening. He still couldn't believe the foolish girl had felled him and Stryfe both -- they were supposed to be her allies, weren't they? Her friends? At least, she claimed Stryfe as a friend and Cable as someone she "owed" -- and she had attacked both of them in the midst of a battle with their worst enemy!

Frustrated, and with his initial suspicions of the sorceress companion to Stryfe reawakened, he charged at her when he struggled to his feet, instead of at Apocalypse.

Illyana looked towards him, eyes going wide, but did not draw the Soulsword; he would be able to --

And Stryfe lunged to his own feet and tackled Cable out of nowhere. Nathan found himself grappling with his clone, who projected fury and snarled into his face. "How dare you -- won't let you hurt her --"

"She attacked both of US on Apocalypse's behalf --!"

#I didn't like it either, but --# "She must have had a reason!"

Cable suspected Stryfe had not intended to project that first part. And then that voice rumbled in his ears again. "Would you care for me to separate them?"

"If you would."

As the import of those words registered, and before he had time to counter it, Nathan found himself and Stryfe grasped firmly and dragged apart by the back of the neck and shoulder by two huge hands, as if they were no more than squabbling puppies.

"Do you two mind?" Illyana asked, voice dripping irritation.

Cable glared at her, any hope of being reasonable lost in frustrated adrenaline and humiliation. "Yes, I do mind. I mind very much having HIM welcomed the way you did. I thought you considered me and Stryfe allies of one sort or another, and yet you attack us to protect Apocalypse?"

"Did it not occur to you, when he asked politely to be our guest, that it might be possible for some alternate version, even of En Sabah Nur, to be other than an enemy?"

"No!"

"Well, let it occur to you now," she snapped sullenly. Nathan folded his arms and was aware that he probably looked equally sullen. Stryfe looked from Illyana, to Nathan, to the impassive Nur, and Cable astonished himself by feeling a glimmer of sympathy for his clone, caught between a friend who'd just attacked him and two men who ought to be enemies but were not currently acting hostile.

"Perhaps," Apocalypse intervened, "I would do better to pass onward, rather than remaining as a source of discord." Illyana and Stryfe protested, Stryfe half-heartedly, while Cable grumbled that it was too late for that. Nur insisted.

Hence they learned little of each other's timelines at this juncture, though Illyana thought it behooved her to give some explanation of what pursuits Apocalypse was known for in the preponderance of timelines with which she or Nathan or Stryfe had familiarity, and of his role in the collapse. This Nur looked grave, and expressed regrets and a desire to help which Cable didn't believe at all, as well as registering an objection to being called "Apocalypse," and then departed through the translucent curtain of a shift that led to blazing sun over something that glittered white like snow but was coarse like sand, and blue cacti.

The three remaining watched the zone suspiciously until it drifted off away from them. This kept them from looking suspiciously at one another; Stryfe didn't seem to want to take Illyana to task for the assault with Cable present, but had been as humiliated as Cable -- and had considerably more reason to feel betrayed. Nathan was mildly disgusted with him for accepting Illyana's silent almost-apology before what passed for morning, and his own resentment -- and Illyana's, as she still appeared to consider herself in the right -- kept a chill over the party that couldn't be accounted for by the clamminess of the mists.

Still, though, they had to rest, and hardly breaking the discontented silence Cable stood -- or rather sat -- guard, and afterwards slept until the nightmares woke him. He froze instead of rising, mind racing to sort out what ought to be reality from the dream, and hence heard soft voices.

"You need more sleep. I'll keep watch now. It's not necessary; my wards should warn me early of anything they can't stop, but --"

"And if they don't?" Stryfe asked, his whisper much harsher.

"Then," she admitted, "we'd be in trouble. We could well get into trouble waking, too, though." A short silence, and then, "I told you I'd stay awake. You have to sleep sometime."

"I did."

"Not long."

"That's hard to tell here."

"It was very hard to wake you. That means it wasn't long enough."

It could have been something in the atmosphere, actually, Cable noted. She was leaving out that possibility for the sake of the argument. He didn't really think that was the case, though; Stryfe hadn't been all that extravagantly difficult to awaken.

On the other hand, when being completely honest with himself, Nathan had to admit that he was personally accustomed to sleep deprivation, which probably affected his perceptions of how long it was normal to take when waking up.

"I wasn't that slow to awaken, was I?" Stryfe returned, sounding somewhere between defensive and concerned.

"It depends on what you compare it to. It didn't take as long as usual, but it also took Nathan leaning over you."

Threat perception? An adrenaline rush could tend to speed things up too. He hadn't really thought of that, for some reason. It would probably have been more fun if he had.

"That didn't have anything to do with it."

"Oh? In that case I should probably be even more worried about you. Reflexes going, or something."

"Stop that."

"What? I'm not doing anything."

"Worrying about me."

"Somebody has to."

"No they don't."

"Do too. Go to sleep."

"No they don't. Not unless you mean as an opponent. Illyana --"

"Chris, please just go to sleep before the conversation degenerates to the 'Do not/Do too' level."

There was a faint noise Nathan suspected of indicating Stryfe had given in, at least to the point of lying down, and a smile in the next whisper. "You started it."

"Go to sleep!"

Nathan lay quietly in the ensuing silence until he judged sufficient time had passed to prevent suspicions that he'd been eavesdropping, and then sat up and reached for the scryer. Illyana frowned at him.

"You go back to sleep too," she said softly.

"Too?" he asked, feigning innocence. Actually, he feigned confusion, which was much easier, especially since he was still drowsy enough he would have liked to go back to sleep if it weren't for the dreams.

Illyana gestured towards Stryfe, who hadn't stirred. "You should both be asleep."

"I woke up, can't get back to sleep now."

"Did you try?"

"Not really."

"That might explain it," she pointed out dryly. She shifted a bit, armor making a faint musical sound against itself. Nathan caught himself thinking she'd make an excellent cricket. Either he was really sleep deprived, or he was losing it.

"I don't want to go back to sleep," he admitted. "The dreams...."

Illyana looked at him for a long moment. "Is it better or worse when you're too tired to wake up and get away from them?" Then she turned her head again and stared into the distance. She didn't seem to expect an answer.

"I'm curious." Nathan picked up the scryer and sank into it, wondering briefly whether his fascination was really curiosity, or escapism, or a bizarre form of self-flagellation, watching a timeline he'd ruined.

**********

The first thing he saw was a wedding. A joyous occasion, though it made him uneasy to realize that depending on when Nate Grey hit the timeline, if he did, Scott's first wife was probably actually alive again. But they couldn't have known that. Even Illyana seemed oblivious.

Cable and Stryfe -- or Nathan and Christopher -- both attended the wedding, assaulting one another during neither the ceremony nor the reception. This is not to say the situation lacked tension. It was strongly suspected that neither had wanted to risk the other being there and himself not.

Stryfe was either nosier or less abashed about being so than Cable had been in his own timeline. He was less than delighted about finding out that Jean and Scott had apparently been deserted by their own psyches at the start of their honeymoon. Cable privately and a bit reluctantly found this understandable, and watched as a sort of uneasy competition escalated matters until his alternate wound up hovering over the unconscious pair, across from Stryfe, as the two men exchanged suspicious and rather defiant looks.

Apparently this was too much for the newlyweds when they did wake, for instead of trying to conceal the knowledge that they'd been the ones to raise Nathan, they practically tackled the two "boys" with tearful explanations. Their sons, naturally, were first confused and then astonished.

"Nate --"

"Nathan. Not Nate."

"Nate," Jean persisted, "we were -- we were the Daysprings, Slym and Redd, I know you said you didn't remember, but we were."

"I know."

All three of the others stopped and stared at him. "You what?"

"I know." Nathan fidgeted slightly. "I didn't know this was when, but I figured it out a little while back.... It clicked, when Warren mentioned your nicknames."

Stryfe glared briefly.

Scott looked at them both for a moment, very seriously. "We didn't want to leave. Either one of you. If we could have stayed...."

Nathan looked down and muttered quietly, "I know. I -- I didn't really think you did."

"What," Stryfe asked, very, very carefully, "are you all talking about?"

"You don't remember?"

"Apparently not."

"We got pulled forward in time to raise Nathan --" Jean began.

"That part I got."

"If you keep interrupting how are we supposed to tell you?" Scott inquired, not unsympathetically.

"Show me?"

They did. Stryfe flinched, shown that he'd been left behind or taken by Apocalypse before they could get him free -- it was too confused to tell -- but at the last, finally, he believed that they'd had no way to look for him without a terribly high likelihood of getting themselves and Nathan all killed. He was almost glad, though, that Rachel had vanished entirely into the timestream a week ago so that he couldn't ask her about it. Which made no sense, as for her it hadn't yet happened, so she could hardly have told him anything.

The end, where the Dayspring Unit had interfered with Apocalypse's last attempt at taking a host, left him almost dumbfounded. "That was you," he said softly. "I can't believe --" He stopped, as if realizing something only just then, and stared at Nathan. "That was you?"

"Apparently," Nathan replied, a bit cautiously. "What was?"

"You blocked him out of my mind."

"I did?" Nathan thought about it for a moment, trying to make the memories settle into place. "I did. You really appreciated it, obviously."

"I didn't remember," Stryfe said, very quietly.

He knew better than to try to apologize.

**********

Nate Grey, being the flamboyant sort he was, came to the attention of the X-Men and various associates, not to mention enemies, fairly quickly. Cable and Stryfe both, in a futile attempt to avoid confusion, insisted on calling him "kid." This annoyed Nate severely and didn't really seem to clarify anything.

Holocaust was located shortly thereafter. Actually, Holocaust did an excellent meteorite imitation shortly thereafter, having failed to end up on Avalon for the exceedingly natural reason that Avalon, in that timeline, was still Greymalkin, and Cable was less inclined than the Acolytes to fish belligerent frozen psychopaths out of space.

This was probably wise of Cable, given that fishing Holocaust out of the vacuum and thawing him had an alarming tendency to result in Avalon falling apart and crashing out of space, not necessarily in that order.

Upon regaining consciousness, Holocaust embarked on a long tirade which boiled down to "I am the son and heir of Apocalypse and you will all die for your impertinence in restraining me," only much louder.

Stryfe muttered that the post wasn't all it was cracked up to be, knocked the man out mid-rant (much to the relief of everyone's ears, as they had neglected to soundproof the room in which they had confined him at Nate's insistence), and proceeded to mystify those who could still hear by remarking thoughtfully that he'd wondered what Holocaust was up to and this explained a great deal. Perhaps it did to him, but no one else was much enlightened.

Madelyne, needless to say, was even more of a surprise. Life was complicated. Then again, that was nothing out of the ordinary.

**********

"Nathan?" Illyana's voice and hand on his shoulder brought him alert in the morning, or what passed for morning.

"Something the matter?"

"No, we just have this probably nonsensical habit of going somewhere as long as we find ourselves in the middle of nowhere."

"Couldn't you just stay in Limbo? As far as I remember there's some kind of structure there."

Illyana winced. "We could, but it's not an option I really want to explore. You got your snake?"

Stryfe groaned elaborately from off to the side. "Just what I always want to hear first thing in the morning. An inquiry as to whether one member of the party has his snake with him."

Nathan produced his snake and examined its mouth. The teeth were healing nicely. "What I can't quite figure out, Stryfe, is why you find it so alarming. It's just a snake. A little one, too."

Stryfe sighed. "You'll excuse me if I have my doubts about anything that thinks you are edible."

"I'd think you'd be pleased with it."

"I've had traveling companions eaten before."

Probably here, too. Nathan cringed internally and thumbed his snake again.

Stryfe gave him an odd look, then shrugged and stared at the horizon, such as it was. "For the record," he commented, "I meant before I started time traveling."

He couldn't be trying to be comforting. Could he? How annoying should that be, anyway? Nathan shook his head and gave up on answering when he abruptly felt ice-cold all over and a shiftline rippled in the air not twenty feet away, billows of snow just visible on the other side. Then it rushed them.

He didn't have time to fight it, or propose running, or do anything other than call a telepathic heads-up as a shift he suddenly knew didn't have snow at all bore down on them. He only hoped he'd be able to carve a path elsewhere -- powdery dry ice was not his idea of a pleasant environment in which to spend his last moments of life.

What he'd done or how, Nathan was never quite sure. He'd held onto the other two, somehow, but he hadn't been touching them. Still, he must have held to them, because after the eternity he spent wrestling with a choking silver curtain in more dimensions than he could reasonably count, and thrusting away from the deadly "snow," and other equally fatal universes, he found himself standing with both of them in what looked for all the world like a restaurant.

He would probably not have consciously appreciated it if the jukebox had been playing something other than "Time Won't Let Me," but since it was, he thought he would have. At any rate he distinctly and actively did not appreciate its choice.

When it finished and changed to "Do You Believe in Magic," the three all exchanged unnerved looks and, since they seemed to be in the way of people who wanted to dance, found a free table, and told the waiter who appeared literally out of nowhere that they needed a few minutes. The irony did not escape them. (Not that they were in a position to talk about appearing from nowhere, either, though they suspected, or at least hoped, that the waiter was a teleporter and had done this on purpose rather than being thrown into the situation as they had been. In the latter case, however, it would have been significantly less probable that he should arrive fully equipped with menus and aplomb.)

Cable spent some time searching anxiously for any effects the shiftline might have had other than their own arrival, but no one appeared to be dead or dismembered, though if anyone had vanished he wouldn't have been able to tell anyway. The most he found was an arcing line of powder on the floor near their point of arrival, a line that was vanishing before his eyes even as cold white vapor rose from it. Only carbon dioxide.

Only. It would have seemed much less innocuous had it surrounded them.

Someone giggled and squealed. "Cooooool! It's like a fog machine!" Could anyone really be that giddy?

He brushed past the dancers again and returned to the table, unexpectedly relieved to see that both the people he'd left there were still sitting at it. He still had his doubts about Stryfe, of course, but there... there was something to be said for not traveling all alone.

Stryfe, come to think of that, might have said it. Nathan winced internally at echoing a sentiment of Stryfe's, but consoled himself with the thought that this one seemed to have changed a lot. He found his clone staring intently at something that appeared to be halfway across the room and was visible only because fewer people moved around between the tables than on the dance floor.

"What are you looking at?"

"That blade." Stryfe was frowning slightly. Cable turned, followed his gaze as best he could, and caught sight of a short sword leaning against the leg of a table. A short sword with a very... interesting hilt. Familiar.

"Didn't you try to steal it once? Not planning to try again, are you?" he asked, with only a touch of malice, and slid into his seat. There was probably reason to stare.

Stryfe didn't appear to be offended. "One like it. I suppose I did get one like it, at that. What did you do with the real one?"

"The real what?" Illyana asked, sounding rather as if the conversation had taken a sudden leap over her head, and she was annoyed at it.

"Sword." Cable waved vaguely and unobtrusively in its general direction. "Hid it for a while, then gave it back, with a warning not to display it any time soon. What did you want it for?"

"To kill Apocalypse."

Oh. Nathan blinked. Stryfe had been going to use that on Apocalypse? "A plain sword?" He couldn't help sounding a little skeptical.

"That wasn't all I planned to use. It was supposed," Stryfe replied a bit grouchily, "to be symbolic." He studied his hands for a moment, then looked up and made a very decent recovery when the waiter popped into existence beside them again to ask if they were ready to order. "Ah... milk, please."

"Milk?"

"Milk." Stryfe was very firm about this, as the waiter seemed, for some reason, not to believe him.

"It's..." The waiter fidgeted slightly and looked unhappy. "The latest milk's started to turn, I'm afraid. You won't want it."

"That's fine. If you prefer, you can boil it first, if it's smelled off for more than a day or so."

Nathan tried not to smile at the waiter's obvious discomfiture. He couldn't even remember when his digestive tract hadn't been inured to slightly sour milk -- though he had to assume he'd been at least a year or two old, since it wasn't considered nearly as important in this century. Lactose intolerance had apparently been mostly bred out of humanity somehow by his time, no matter where you went on the globe. Funny. Somehow he couldn't quite see that as having been Apocalypse's doing, at least not on purpose. Too... trivial. They wound up with cinnamon-sprinkled boiled custard and falafel as well. Illyana, presumably because she found it amusing when the two old soldiers she was with had opted for sour milk, asked for vodka. No one challenged her.

He remembered suddenly that there had been something more than a little odd about Illyana after she regained her knowledge of Limbo, as seen in the scryer. She'd looked older -- not just from the burden, either. She'd appeared to age a little more rapidly at first, though not too obviously, as she went back and forth between Earth and Limbo. When she had started to look -- after a few months -- old enough to belong in X-Force, the process had slowed again.. or perhaps stopped entirely, leaving her indefinitely in that charmed and sometimes aggravating gray area where she could seem a childlike teenager at one moment and a world-weary but still lovely queen the next.

Sometimes her sapphire eyes had still laughed.

All right, enough of that. He was getting as sentimental as... as.... He didn't want to finish that sentence. "Symbolic of what?" he inquired, poking at his meal with a fork. "That a weapon made in his honor... in his image... could kill him?"

"Something like that, I suppose." Stryfe looked up at him, then glanced back to his own plate. "I may have gotten the effect I was after, at least... well, in part."

"But you didn't HAVE it."

"I used the fake." There was a short silence. "Well, what else was I supposed to do? He didn't know the difference. Unless he checked with someone after he teleported off with it stuck through his chest, he didn't know...." Stryfe trailed off and sighed. "I suppose," he said softly, "I achieved a fairly appropriate symbolism I wasn't looking for at all."

Illyana reached over and squeezed his hand under the table, and there was a longer silence before Cable said quietly, "The original blade was broken when I found it."

Stryfe gave him a long, thoughtful, and slightly surprised look before he turned away.

After enough surreptitious study of the rest of the room to determine that they were, overall, unlikely to notice someone gazing raptly into a small wire contraption and less likely to take advantage of the situation if they did, and the observation that neither Illyana nor Stryfe seemed inclined to quibble with his staying largely out of their conversation, Nathan was seriously thinking about watching a little more of their timeline when he felt a twinge at the edge of his mind. He spent an uneasy moment trying to identify it. Succeeding didn't make him feel much better.

He stood up, a little abruptly, and signaled the waiter. They'd already agreed on doing a little moving of assorted objects for the proprietor in lieu of trading anything they were carrying -- well, that and some extremely bizarre goblet Illyana offered the waiter as a tip. It was a lurid magenta and filled itself, for no readily apparent reason, with powdered graphite if you let it. Illyana had pointed out that she was sure the waiter had to have more use for the stuff than she had for a mountain of it in limbo. They hadn't actually seen the proprietor but had been assured that, in accordance with logic, that individual would just as soon have the materials for a new wall moved into position (not built; apparently it had to be just so) as be presented with more materials that would probably be useless in a restaurant. Unless they were carrying a wooden spoon of high quality, or a kitchen knife they'd be willing to part with? No, hadn't thought so. They'd spent an interesting half hour speculating in low tones -- louder would have been impolite -- on just how the restaurant kept itself supplied with food.

Stryfe frowned up at him. Illyana's statement didn't change, but she asked softly, "Something the matter?"

"We have to go." He didn't bother trying to sound calm, but he did keep his voice down to a level nobody away from the table was likely to catch. "There are shifts on their way."

Stryfe glanced towards the approaching waiter and switched to telepathy. #And?#

#There are several, converging. It's not... natural.# As if anything of this was natural! #They're all aimed at me.#

Illyana was included; he could feel her at the edge of Stryfe's mind, and she raised an eyebrow at that statement. So did Stryfe. The two looked strange, in concert that way. #I think my presence attracts them, at least when I'm in one place so long. I shouldn't have spent this much time here --#

#Don't start THAT again.# His clone's thought was dry and a little irritated, and Nathan found himself slightly miffed. He broke away as soon as Stryfe turned towards the waiter; he didn't like being in mental contact with the man.

Apparently he had communicated some sense of the urgency, though, he thought with wry amusement. Silver discs swallowed the rocks and deposited them again in neat order so rapidly that neither he nor Stryfe had time to do a thing. Powers could of course activate quick as thought, for all three of them, but Illyana had darted ahead through openings in the crowd that wouldn't have admitted either of the two men without shoving.

They left without teleporting, however; Nathan was hoping to draw the shifts away, as they would probably just continue on course if he simply vanished. Not that they seemed to have done too much to the restaurant so far.... He stopped to look over his shoulder as they stepped outside, and froze. He must have made some noise in his throat, because he sensed Stryfe and Illyana both stop and turn less than two steps beyond him.

The sign over the door read neatly, with a half-sun between the words, "Nur Deli."

"No." He shook his head suddenly, a little violently, and glanced at Stryfe, who had spoken at the same time. Ordinarily he would have been irritated, but didn't think of it just then.

"Can't be."

"Right." Nathan looked at the sign again. "It can't."

"Not every occurrence of the name --"

"We were leaving." He turned resolutely back around and started walking, then stopped to glance over his shoulder again. It still said the same thing.

Stryfe nodded in slightly too enthusiastic agreement and turned away from the building as well. "Yes. We were."

They kept going and didn't look back again. Cable half expected Illyana to giggle, after a look he caught from her at the start, but she didn't. She did, every so often, smile mysteriously as they walked. Stryfe glared at her on these occasions. Nathan very carefully did not.

**********

It was always annoying, Cable reflected as he pitched into space, when a shiftline coincided with the edge of a cliff.

Not that he fell far. He started to catch himself almost immediately, though he was still moving slightly when he hit the translucent yellow floor. It was not the base of the cliff, although that also, come to think of it, had appeared both yellow and vaguely translucent in his brief unobstructed glimpse of it. He bent his knees automatically at the impact, though it still jarred his ankles, and straightened slowly before turning slightly to his left to eye Stryfe, who was presumably the source of the obstruction, which was now sedately continuing the descent. Stryfe shrugged. Illyana was peering interestedly over the edge.

It would, Nathan told himself firmly after they had landed gently and without mishap on ground of some cloudy gold-tinted crystal, be... immature... to complain about the elevator service, or even point out that he could have caught himself perfectly well.

The entire trek from -- he suppressed an urge to shudder -- Nur Deli had been remarkable primarily for its uneventfulness. He had announced that he was going to be going pretty much in circles for a while and judge, from what he could feel when, whether he'd gotten the shiftlines sufficiently distracted from the little cluster of lives he'd accidentally almost lured them to.

He'd been a little brusque about it, almost defiant. He could recognize this in retrospect and admit that it had been because he had expected them either to shrug and part ways, or to assume he was trying to tell them what to do, and argue or ask who he thought he was. Or perhaps question his sanity; he wasn't sure he'd blame them for that.

It would hardly be fair, given his own doubts on the matter....

It had taken him by complete surprise when Illyana had looked up into his eyes and nodded solemnly with the comment, "I thought you would. I can get you out if things get too wild," and Stryfe had smiled faintly -- smirked, maybe -- and said nothing... and both had gone along as if there had been no question.

It was possible that there hadn't, for them, he supposed. Neither one had mentioned any particular goal to their travels except to be moving, unless he counted the mention of playing fairy godmother to assorted of his own alternates.

Nathan turned back for a moment and stared up the way they'd come, and admitted silently to himself that he hadn't been looking forward to the separation and found the realization very disturbing. For one thing, in a general sense, he couldn't afford to get too attached to anyone under the circumstances. It would ordinarily be only natural, though, and he might have been able to deal better with the fact itself if not for the deeply ruffling addition that one of them was... well... Stryfe.

He distracted himself by studying the faceted, rippling shimmer of other realities that flickered back and forth along a boundary that moved faintly as if with wind. There wasn't any. It stretched high above the place where uneven stone and straggling plants -- mostly dead -- stopped peeking through; he couldn't see the top, and wondered suddenly whether there was a top. Could someone theoretically make it over a shiftline? (Could the cow jump over the moon? Wait, somewhere in the shifts was probably one who'd managed it. Really, really deep atmosphere or... something....) What would be on the other side then? Did the question even have meaning? He'd never really thought of the possibility before, but surely the shiftlines, the fractures in reality -- he did shudder this time -- didn't radiate out from Earth through the rest of the universe?

Please, no. Not that. As if one planet weren't bad enough, let him not have destroyed the rest of the universe as well.

He nearly jumped out of his skin at a light touch to his upper arm, and broke off the reflexive counterattack when his conscious mind caught up abruptly with events and determined that there was no attack to counter in the first place.

Brought back to himself with something of a jerk, Nathan realized he was standing perilously close to the shift boundary, almost in the area around it where -- depending on the properties of the particular shiftline -- it was easily possible for a sort of instability in the facets of the fracture to cut someone in two (or more), that he had been craning his neck back to search for a top that probably didn't exist and at any rate would have been obscured by the clouds, and that he had been completely ignoring Stryfe and Illyana. That was probably not smart. The latter was still moving when he dragged his gaze far enough down to see her; he guessed she had touched his arm and then dodged hastily out of reach. He was glad he hadn't hit her, anyway.

On top of and resulting from his excursion into the edges of oblivion, his muscles were all knotted with tension and he was trembling, partly from that and partly with cold -- and he had a cramp in his neck. Ow.

On the bright side, he thought morosely as he stepped back into a hypothetically safer area, the clouds were a normal color, or something like one. At least, he thought they were, though the sky was definitely... off. The clouds seemed to range from blinding snowy white in the brightest part of the sky to a stormy charcoal near (appropriately enough) the shiftline. Come to think of it, it only made sense for atmosphere exchange to take place, though he'd been lucky enough so far that really toxic vapors had usually seemed to be confined. Usually.

Lucky.

He stared into the glowing amethyst sky regardless of his protesting neck muscles, and tried to let the brightest sun he'd seen in days burn away the tears.

It wasn't working. He decided it wasn't going to work in time to do him any good about the time he telepathically overheard Illyana speculating with some concern on whether she was going to have to smack him this time, so he shook his head and blinked a lot and dashed the rest of the tears away from his eyes as best he could with the back of his hand. Squinting probably wasn't going to do him much good, given that Stryfe probably knew exactly how well his eyes adjusted to bright light, but he kept up the pretense for about half a minute anyway and settled in to wait for snide comments.

Stryfe didn't say anything. Cable wasn't entirely sure whether Illyana had kicked the man in the ankle or not. Nor did he ask.

**********

The next shift landed them all in the hospital.

That would have been funnier if it had only been by injuring them. In the case of serious injury, finding a hospital that could treat them would have been nigh-unbelievable good fortune. Granted, Nathan was perfectly competent in first aid and assumed Stryfe was, and something Stryfe had mentioned hinted that Illyana had some interesting talents in that area, especially in Limbo. Illyana had made deprecating noises and, when she decided Nathan wasn't taking her seriously enough, had stopped dead in front of him and explained very, very intensely that while she'd always do her best, her medical abilities with magic were nothing to count on too heavily. Still, injury would almost have been preferable to what struck them instead, especially if it came with help.

This was not a hospital for injuries. It was a hospital for sickness, and the stench of it struck Cable's nose and mind at the same time. Hygiene was the best, presumably, that could be managed; there was a sharpness in the air that spoke of antiseptics and everything in sight was sparkling clean where it could be. Still, the smell wasn't pleasant. He could identify too many components of it.

The despair was worse. Everyone here expected not only death but imminent disaster on a larger scale than the individual, and those who still scurried back and forth with purpose knew they were fighting a losing battle, and did it anyway. Cable took a bleak moment to wonder how this was different from any other time or place in the shifts, perhaps even from most of the course of history.

He shook it off. Their purpose was to ease suffering, and they counted it worthwhile. But it was still a dreary place, and he knew the reason; he'd caught the name of the disease they fought.

This place was devoted to Legacy. Perhaps it hadn't always been, but at some point, presumably in its original universe, it had opened itself to such victims -- and who could blame more for flocking there, or other patients for fleeing (or, in the more sedate and official form of fleeing, having themselves transferred) to some other location that wasn't developing a high concentration of mutants who -- contagious or not -- were expecting to lose control of their powers?

Logically enough, that was soon its entire purpose. It was just as logical, if a little strange, that all the doctors, nurses, and other staff were not mutants.

Humbling. Very much humbling, Nathan thought, for anyone who had ever listened to all the cries of rage and fear and resentment and propaganda long enough and hard enough to start thinking perhaps it was true that all non-mutant humans hated all mutants and the sides must align against each other. He knew better -- but even he had wondered sometimes. It was very easy to.

It was also very unhealthy to start believing that everyone automatically "feared and hated" you. At least in combination. Believing any given person or group might be out to kill you was prudence, of course, if you put yourself in the kind of situations Nathan did, but it wasn't quite the same.

His mind was yanked abruptly off this philosophical train of thought as someone came into the narrow stretch of empty hallway in which they had materialized -- he hastily grabbed hold of the shift and shoved -- and was pleasantly surprised when it disappeared and left the building's structure essentially intact.

"Y-y-y-you?!" He didn't recognize the woman, but it appeared that in her own timeline she'd had enough contact with Xavier's lot to recognize Illyana -- and Stryfe. Enough to distinguish him from Stryfe, and focus on the latter, her mind mingling dawning terror with wild thoughts of hopeless vengeance.

This didn't surprise Nathan. It caught Stryfe off guard and bewildered, which puzzled Nathan until he remembered that this Stryfe, or Christopher, hadn't released the virus, and in any event lacked Cable's own peculiar and frequently disturbing awareness of every given shift he wandered into. Then, too, if he wasn't actively scanning... well, it wasn't as if they'd seen any of the patients yet. This wasn't one of the halls they'd had to put beds in. Too narrow.

The woman's eyes fixed on Illyana with still more alarm than Stryfe had been incurring. "You have to get out.... If you aren't sick yet, you have to go."

Cable assumed Stryfe was scanning by this point, but flicked a telepathic summary at him anyway. #Legacy. Your 'pox' -- this place is dedicated to its victims. Every last patient.# He found someone's eyes to look through and projected an image of someone in the last stages -- emaciation, purple blisters and boils, rattling breath, and all. No visible effect on the powers, probably not an active one.

It was at this point that he realized Stryfe had gone pale.

"Illyana," his clone said in a strained voice, "she's right. Get out."

"What?!"

"Illyana, now. Teleport. Please. I'll -- I'll explain later."

A stepping disc -- no, two discs -- appeared, one under Illyana and Stryfe and another under Nathan's own feet, a little ways off.

Stryfe shook his head, stepping back. "I have to stay."

Cable blinked at him. That was a surprise; what was he doing?

The pools of light winked out and Illyana folded her arms. "Then explain first."

In apparent desperation, Stryfe grabbed her arm and thrust her towards Cable. "Ask him. He can explain."

"You explain!"

"In my timeline and a lot of others," Cable interjected, deciding this had gone on long enough and that he didn't really need to see Stryfe and Illyana start fighting in a narrow corridor -- even if he wasn't sure what Stryfe was up to, other than getting Illyana away from potential contagion, which he couldn't exactly object to, "Stryfe not only didn't go back from the moon with the X-Men, he released a disease targeting mutants. Very nasty -- like a horrible version of influenza, only with purple lesions and a lot of DNA damage -- loss of control of powers and general disintegration of most systems by the end. Your alternates tend to die in the early stages. I'd suggest you go straight to Limbo and if you have any kind of spells that could work against non-magical diseases, do them."

Illyana looked up at Nathan very hard for a few excessively long seconds, then looked once at Stryfe, nodded to herself, and disappeared into a disc. Good. He looked up again as Stryfe turned towards the now very bewildered doctor, took a deep breath, and began, "I can help. At least I can try -- do you have any sort of laboratory here?"

She nodded, obviously trying not to shrink away from him, and her gaze shot past Stryfe to Cable, who hesitated, then shrugged and nodded as well. It made no sense, but he didn't think this one was likely to cause anything worse. #Stryfe, what are you doing?#

#What does it look like I'm doing?# Stryfe snapped back.

#Going to brew up some more mischief?# Unkind, given the anguish that hinted at lying just beneath Stryfe's words. #Or did you design a cure along with the virus?#

#I didn't design the virus. I modified it. I did design the counteragent. If I can find the supplies....#

Nathan hesitated. He didn't know exactly what supplies would be needed, but he'd be willing to wager a lot that the hospital, clinging to a fragile cohesion with its resources most likely stretched to the utmost and probably a little beyond, did not have them. On the other hand... they probably still existed someplace. #Can you communicate with Illyana if she's in Limbo? And can she scry for specific things? Or I might be able to look.#

Stryfe didn't stop walking, but did turn and stare at Cable over his shoulder for a moment before turning a corner. #That... would help, thank you. Yes, I can get in touch with her from here.#

Cable spent the next few hours being occasionally teleported back and forth for consultations. Apparently the scrying pool required very specific instructions on occasion, and Stryfe was too preoccupied to evaluate every item it presented for consideration by looking through Illyana's eyes. Cable was somewhat curious about the rate at which the work seemed to be progressing -- he was almost certain some of the procedures should have had to sit for significantly longer.

It turned out that Stryfe was rushing them along telekinetically wherever he could. Of course. No wonder the man was distracted.

Once everything seemed to be assembled, Nathan was essentially turned loose in the hospital to do whatever he could find to do -- as long as he didn't interfere with the doctors or nurses, or upset the patients, naturally.

He settled down in a quiet corner of the floor, displacing a large aloe plant slightly, and speculated on whether aloe would do anything for the purple boils while with another part of his mind he debated the wisdom of trying to sleep in this place. Probably not a good idea. Well, maybe if he reinforced his shields enough first.

Come to think of it, he hadn't used Illyana's portable timeline-scrying contraption for a while. He suggested something regarding Limbo, and the obliging milky swirls picked up his senses and spun into the middle of....

**********

A battle. This was not how any of them would have wished their next meeting with Tolliver -- Tyler -- to go, and Stryfe knew it even with Cable and Domino both deliberately not speaking to him.

Actually, if Tolliver had been merely who they all had thought him for so long, none of them would have particularly cared -- well, Stryfe wouldn't; he got the impression that Cable and Domino would both have wanted his head on a plate, and other body parts on separate dishes. Or perhaps disintegrated, as an acceptable alternative.

The revelation that he had been Tyler was what made it difficult. For Stryfe this new information largely made it embarrassing -- he hadn't realized in all those years of dealing with him as Tolliver? For Nathan it was far more emotional. A bit surprising in its intensity, given he'd brought himself to shoot the boy before. Stryfe told himself he did not feel guilty about what he'd done to Tyler -- it had been a war, after all -- but he hadn't been comfortable with his efforts at revenge on Nathan for some time, particularly ever since he'd learned of his template's role in saving him from Apocalypse in at least that one way.

Most likely, however, they could all agree that it would have been preferable had Tyler not somehow leagued himself with a denizen of Limbo -- Illyana suspected Belasco, but whoever it was, he or she had the sense to stay out of the direct action, either that or the inability to get into it -- with plans to reenact and this time complete the sacrifice atop the Empire State Building.

With Stryfe as a secondary victim and the undermining of Illyana's authority a minor side effect, of course.

Yes, this was definitely off the list of ideal or even semi-satisfactory meetings.

On what could, with an effort of the imagination, be called the bright side, he and Nathan were both dodging around on the roof, powers sapped by some mechanism he'd been completely unable to identify, instead of helpless in the grip of rebel demons, which was where Tyler thought they were supposed to be. Nathan was frantically pleading with his son to stop this and think, and at the very least to watch out for his supposed allies, since they were notoriously unreliable....

They had fought their way to something like even terms and then stalled, perhaps due to determination on the part of Tyler and the demons, perhaps due to fatigue on their own, and then almost surely out of weariness were losing again when Illyana arrived and the world suddenly went silver-sharp and then dank. No one slowed an iota, but Tyler's allies began to be systematically dispatched and carried off by Illyana's servants, and before long there were only the four humans still present, with Illyana nearest Tyler.

Stryfe watched Illyana's statement as she stared into Tyler's wild eyes, saw her heft the Soulsword in her hand as if thinking -- and knew what she planned half an instant before she drew her lips thin and swung the blade.

Cable lunged forward with the movement, and that slight expectation was the only thing that gave Stryfe enough of an edge to tackle him. Cable twisted underneath him, trying to get free, and arched his back to look despairingly up as the Soulsword swept in a wide slash through Tyler's chest and the boy went down, Illyana following him with an armored knee on his unmarked sternum and altering her grip on the hilt in preparation to stab.

"How dare you -- unh! Get off me, Stryfe, that's -- she's --" Cable lurched sideways and almost got free. Stryfe felt his powers starting to return and used what small amount he had available to shove his "brother" back to the ground, or what was currently passing for ground.

"If I have to sit on you until she's finished," Stryfe growled, "I will."

"She's killing him! Let. Me. UP!!!!"

Stryfe managed in the course of the writhings to plant a knee firmly in Nathan's back, buying himself a few seconds to look up to where Illyana, with an statement of great concentration, held the Soulsword's blade stirring slightly within Tyler's brow. "You'll -- ugh -- thank me for this in a few minutes. I think." Cable spat curses at him and kicked upwards as best he could. "Of course you won't," Stryfe muttered. "What was I thinking? This is you."

He started when a hand touched his shoulder, and again when he realized it belonged to an extremely chastened looking Tyler. Illyana, sword and armor gone and with an statement of deep exhaustion on her face, peered at him from a little farther off than Tyler and nodded, and Stryfe carefully eased himself off Cable and went over to the young sorceress while Tyler knelt by Nathan.

"Father, I --" Never say you're sorry, right? "I understand now. I'm -- I mean --"

"I know. Oh, Bright Lady, it's you again, now --"

**********

Nathan dragged his mind out of the other timeline as a telltale stinging in his eyes threatened to draw him into his alternate's tears. So that timeline had healed Tyler, as well....

Exhausted himself by the vicarious struggle, he slipped without really noticing into a deep sleep there in the corner. When he woke several hours later and started trying to alleviate sundry cramps and aches from the odd position, he knew he had had some very weird dreams, but couldn't remember them at all.

A soft, nervous laugh from a few feet away brought him fully to his feet, surreptitiously still working his right shoulder. A rather exhausted-looking boy -- fourteen, maybe, but the blue patch stuck to his shoulder marked him, according to the identification system resorted to here, as a nurse responsible for one of the halls -- looked slightly embarrassed to have made the sound. "Sorry, sir. It just looked like an odd place to fall asleep."

Cable looked the boy over critically. Thin, wiry, physique... very sharp nose, rather the dominant feature of his face... dark circles under the eyes... and a general air of bemusement. "Don't apologize. Ah... is there anything I can do to help?" he asked gruffly. He'd just been lying around all this time -- granted, he'd sort of been shuffled aside several hours ago, but surely he could have found something more useful to do than --

"Staying out of the way for the past few hours was probably the best thing, to be honest," the boy told him with another slight laugh and a reassuring tone. "It's been a little hectic; we put most of the newest staff off duty until most of the initial running around was done."

"Hectic. Not the shifts, I hope --?" He hoped it was the Legacy cure working, actually, but it was probably a little too soon for that, wasn't it? Scanning for any hint of the disturbance, however, Nathan realized that while it was too soon for it to have completed its work, the start of it was indeed the reason for things being "hectic." There had been no available preservation facilities for the finished product, so they had effected a massive reorganization in order to speed up delivery.

The boy was saying as much. "The treatment has to be either used or chilled pretty much immediately, so while Stryfe was putting it together -- now that sounds strange -- we rearranged everyone and got ready to distribute it as quick as we could." He shook his head. "Really never occurred to us any version of him might help."

"I know the feeling."

"You would, wouldn't you? Oh -- my name's Will, by the way; we gave up on name tags a while back. Should I call you Cable?"

"That or Nathan."

Will nodded. "Nathan then."

Cable looked at him keenly. "You masterminded that 'rearrangement,' didn't you?"

The boy shrugged. "I wouldn't call it masterminding." He wouldn't, but the memories Cable was seeing all said that was essentially the case. "It was the logical way to do things; I did guide the process a little." The kid's "guiding" skills were enviable, then. The normal result of trying to reorganize that many people and routines in the course of three hours, even if you didn't have to figure out the target system on the fly, was probably total chaos.

"Stry -- er -- Christopher, I should say, is still making the rounds of some of the last few patients to be treated. I understand you're immune -- if you still want to do something, you could visit with some of them if you like. There's this one kid who'll talk your ear off about snakes if you'll listen --"

Cable finally found it in himself to crack a smile as he reached metal fingers into the pouch where his small pet nestled. "Think she'd like to meet one?"

"When she first woke up here, she cried for hours because the guy who found her hadn't brought the nest of pit vipers she'd holed up with. She'll be thrilled."

**********

Nathan was kneeling beside the girl's bed and half leaning on it, the little serpent tangled in his fingers and the child's much smaller ones (It was purring. Strange snake.), when a shadow fell over him and he looked up to see Stryfe coming through the door of what was currently one of very few private rooms in the hospital and had, in the original floorplan, been some sort of closet.
 
"You," he observed to his clone, "look horrible." He did, too. Walking across the tiny expanse of floor to the bed looked to be taking an enormous amount of concentration, and Cable had experienced the sensation of relying almost purely on determination to prevent all his muscles from quietly allowing him to fold into a collapsed mess on the floor a few too many times to fail to recognize it from the outside. Granted, it was an unexpected enough phenomenon in Stryfe to give him a little trouble, but then, Stryfe tried to hide most of the same signs Nathan himself did, and he wasn't that good an actor.

"Thank you." Cable assumed that had been intended as sarcasm, though the voice didn't carry enough energy to be anything but flat. Stryfe blinked at him and appeared to make a deliberate effort to focus. "Should you be letting that snake close to her?" He stumbled a bit in the course of lowering himself to kneel on the opposite side of the bed from Cable, and hit the floor a little harder than he'd probably intended.

The girl looked at him indignantly and chirped weakly, "That's my power. I'm a snake-charmer."

"She is, too," Cable corroborated with a half-smirk. "You may be glad to know I think I'm going to leave it with her."

"And maybe when I get better I can go find the tree you got it from!" Enormous brown eyes turned on Cable and sparkled at him.

"I don't know if that would be such a good idea...." Then again, she'd be lost in the shifts eventually; at least she'd have something to look for. Who knew, maybe her power could help her find snakes. At least she would have something to look for.

"As long as we're on the subject...." Stryfe interjected, lifting one hand to let it fall carefully on the girl's forehead and bringing the other to her throat, wincing slightly as one finger touched the purplish sore streaking her neck. "You'd best be asleep for this, I think."

As the child's eyes drooped shut and Stryfe's half-closed as well, Cable frowned across the bed. "Now what are you doing? I thought you mixed up something to cure them; shouldn't you be giving her something?"

"There was only so much I could make at one time, given what was available here," Stryfe sounded abstracted, or maybe half asleep, and wore an statement of deep concentration. "Not enough, by several patients. It will take longer to make the second, and for the first several days they will be vulnerable to reinfection. The rest --" He broke off, sweat beginning to be visible on his face. "I can't talk right now. Look if you must."

"If you let your --" Cable stopped as well, the request for Stryfe to let his shields down dying on his tongue as he realized Stryfe wasn't shielding. At all. The mental noise had to be deafening, but he seemed to be ignoring it... or else his perception was dulled as well.

A little investigation yielded the information that there had, in fact, been a shortfall by twenty-six patients, and when the antivirus had run out, Stryfe had begun stripping the virus out of the rest by molecular-level telekinesis. Well, if Nate Grey had been able to do transmutation, this wasn't really that astonishing.

Cable estimated that even armed with the knowledge of exactly how to go about it, he'd personally have been dead within the first few patients if he had tried this stunt. About the time he started pulling energy away from the techno-organic virus, or even just ignoring it.

He never would have expected Stryfe, even with his greater available power, to go this far. He wasn't shielding because, quite simply, he didn't have the energy to spare. Nathan thought being able to hear everyone in the entire hospital would outweigh whatever psi-energy or advantage of concentration was gained by not shielding, but this was not the time to start an argument.

So. Stryfe was almost completely drained, and spending the last of his energy -- possibly enough to burn him out or kill him, though with his skill level that was unlikely given the controlled rate of expenditure and the lack of any unnatural amplification -- to clear the last remnants of a virus his own alternate had unleashed out of a little girl's body.

Maybe I really SHOULD start calling him Christopher instead. He uncomfortably extended a bubble from his own shields around Stryfe's mind. He didn't like the contact, but this one was obviously rather preferable to the one from his own timeline, and he'd survived having that one stuck in his brain.

Unwilling to risk intruding himself on the delicate process enough to help, for fear of disturbing it, Nathan only watched until a thin trickle of blood started from Stryfe's nose. Other than biting briefly at his upper lip, he didn't seem to notice. Cable caught it before it could drip on the bed, then carefully found the abused capillaries with his own telekinesis and sealed them off. Definitely a symptom of overexertion.

He didn't think he'd ever seen Stryfe overexert his powers before. He'd wondered if he could. It puzzled some people how power that could (supposedly) crush a star could be taxed by something so simple as a virus -- but those people didn't know or didn't consider either the amount of energy tied up in atoms and chemical bonds, or the strain and energy-drain of locating and manipulating on such a small scale and with so mind-bogglingly many targets, without doing more damage than you repaired. It added up.

Stryfe finally halted -- Cable assumed he was through, and was at any rate fairly certain there was no way for him to get started again, so he'd better be -- and slumped exhaustedly over the cot. After a few seconds he shifted enough weight to one elbow that he could remove his hand from the girl's throat and push against the mattress, struggling back upright. Actually standing seemed a little beyond him for the moment, though.

"That --" a very slightly shaky finger indicated the purple blister "will have to heal on its own; I can't do any more. But it... will, now."

"Right." Nathan watched as Stryfe climbed wearily to his feet and started an exaggeratedly steady progress back towards the door. "Was she the last?" She had better have been the last. Unless he could learn how to do that himself....

"Yes."

Carefully leaving the now-friendly serpent curled into the hollow of the girl's collarbone, he started out of the room and caught up just in time for Stryfe to sway slightly and then crumple against his shoulder.

His first impulse was actually to dodge, but by the time it got through the roadblock of disbelief he was already being leaned on. Stryfe, he discovered, was still conscious and trying valiantly to push away and stand on his own. Nathan thought this was a good idea.

He wasn't sure it was a feasible one, however, and in order to end the whole leaning situation -- which neither one of them was particularly thrilled with -- as expediently as possible without actually dropping Stryfe, Nathan managed to push him around and prop him against the wall.

Much better, even if he kept a hand warily hovering near Stryfe's shoulder to make sure he didn't slide down the wall to the floor. Nathan studied the exhausted psi for a long moment before saying slowly, "You really are different, aren't you."

Stryfe lifted his gaze as if it had weights attached to it. "You noticed."

"You forced it on my attention." Very dry.

"Wonderful." Stryfe slumped a little lower against the wall and shut his eyes for a second, then started blinking rapidly and tried to push himself back up.

Nathan sighed and repropped him. "You can't walk, can you?"

"Of course I can." The ensuing effort was a little less than convincing, though Stryfe did make it to a fully vertical posture. Cable suspected, nevertheless, that the sidelong glances at the wall were an attempt to keep track of the proper direction of "vertical," which wasn't exactly promising.

"Of course."

Stryfe glowered at him, albeit not with the usual level of venom. "Give me a minute."

"We could just suggest Illyana teleport us out."

"I'd rather," Stryfe replied unwillingly, "not be in Limbo for... a little while longer. It's somewhere I'd prefer to be able to defend myself."

Nathan blinked. "Wouldn't Illyana look after you?" Or was he worried about her reaction to finding out about Legacy?

"Yes." It was almost a hiss. "But it's not a habit I would like to become necessary." Nathan prodded the other's mind lightly. Point of pride, he would guess... and pretty accurately, too. Stryfe apparently lacked the magic-resistance Belasco had identified in Cable himself, but tearing up the occasional demon or horde thereof didn't necessarily require it. Even if several of them DID tend to reassemble themselves.

"Rather have me do it?" he inquired lightly.

"Stab your eyes." Stryfe exerted himself and pushed away from the wall, eyeing it warily as he swayed on his feet for a moment.

"I don't think you've tried that in a while."

"What, standing up or stabbing your eyes?" Nathan was actually mildly impressed that Stryfe had summoned the energy and spirit for a joke. He would have expected him to use it for an attack if he made it that far. Not that an attack would be terribly prudent under the circumstances. Nice thought.

"The latter." He speculated briefly on trying to go elsewhere, but decided Stryfe would probably have to be half carried. It could wait. He couldn't think of anything they were really in a hurry for at the moment. "I... suppose this is probably the kind of thing that made you and my alternate start getting along, isn't it?"

Stryfe laughed, weakly, and leaned on the wall again. "I wouldn't go quite that far...."

"That far?"

"So far as to say we 'got along.'" He gave the wall a rueful glance before continuing. "We got to where we tolerated each other's existence and could fight on the same side, but that's about it."

"For us," Nathan pointed out, "that qualifies."

Another exhausted laugh. "There is that."

"Well, then."

They were both silent for a few minutes. Tolerated each other's existence. Fought on the same side. Nathan turned these ideas over in his mind and decided that... he could deal with that. No expectation that he like the man who'd killed his family, just that when they wound up as part of the same family in a time that had never heard of the war they'd fought, he quit fighting it.

Still hard. A little easier knowing this version had saved lives as well as taken them. A little easier knowing that he'd still kill the Stryfe from his own timeline, or any that resembled it more closely, given the opportunity.

A little easier with the startling realization that this Stryfe would probably want to help.

Still --

Cable looked out from his contemplations and blinked as Stryfe divorced himself again from the corridor wall and began a relatively steady, if plodding, progress. Nathan caught up with less effort than it took to slow down, and paced the other man for several steps. "So was that it? Random acts of heroism on your part finally brought him around?"

"Not really." Stryfe seemed a little uncertain, not so much about his answer as about how much of Cable's question was sarcasm. Not a lot, in reality, but he didn't bother to explain that. There was the tiniest bite to the addition, "Nor was that what changed my mind about him."

Nathan refused to be baited. So he hadn't always been particularly heroic. Funny thought, almost, realizing that even if he'd been something of a maverick -- like Logan, maybe -- Stryfe had probably at least for a while been seen as significantly more cooperative by the X-Men. Oath, Stryfe had BEEN an X-Man. He wondered if his own alternate had kept on avoiding that designation.... "What did then?"

Not completely willing, even despite the scryer, to dip into that particular mind enough to read what Stryfe might be thinking, Cable had almost decided that he wasn't going to get a response when Stryfe spoke up, his voice still tired and now matter of fact and level but a little bit thoughtful as well. "Family," he said softly. "We wanted the same people alive and well."

Well, then.

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