It's All In Your Head: Part Seven
by sevenall
Silver cutlery clattered against fine china. The hum of voices rose and fell. The banquet at the Inner Circle had been going on for an hour. It irritated Elizabeth that Brian acted shy. She frowned at him over the table when no one else was looking, he kicked her shin in response. How childish. How unsophisticated he seemed in this company. She turned to her dinner partner instead and conversed with him to the best of her ability.They had finished talking about art and music and were starting in on recent movies when Brian abruptly rose, not even excusing himself and left the table.
"Excuse me for a moment", she said with her sweetest smile and hurried after him. She caught up with him at the door.
"Where do you think you're going?" she whispered fiercely.
"Home".
He took his coat from a waiter even as he spoke.
"You can't. If you leave, I'll have to leave too".
"Right".
"The dancing hasn't even begun", she pleaded with him. "Brian, this is my first ball. Can't we stay just another hour, please?"
"I don't fit in here".
"Of course you do!"
"See you at the hotel, sis".
And he was gone. She stood there in the foyer, her evening suddenly soiled, the happy feeling gone, the magic lost.The ball seemed to be just a rather tiresome party.When she met her own eyes in the mirror, she saw a teenager dressed up in someone else's finery. Awkward. Gawky. Even her white velvet gown seemed shabby.
<He was right. We don't fit in here>.
The waiter, a short, squat man with friendly eyes said:
"Don't worry, little lady, he will come back".
She tried to smile.
"I guess he will".
**The disorientation had been extreme. The disturbance caused was immense. There might be ways to turn the situation to the entity's advantage, but at the moment debris was blocking vital connections and food supply. Off-spring were starving to death. The entity felt their pain as its own. Received the distress signals, registered the vain attempts to lower metabolism and at last, silence and a dead end.**
"Of course you feel disoriented", Hank had said, in his tone of voice especially designed to calm down hysteric patients.
"It's only natural", he had assured her, when she had accused him of leaving her in the foyer.
"Don't worry", he had said when he shot some local anaesthetic into her arm opened it up in two quick cuts to put in a small device.
She had stared, horrified, at the reddish muscles and the white tendons twitching like frog's legs, while Hank prattled on about self-sufficiency, reliability and improved feed-back circuits.
"...it will give you efficient pain control and keep you from having another seizure. While the sensor is built on the simple principle of a morphine pump, the molecule is modified for your special needs and very complex. Its chemical structure is in fact of great general interest and I intend to publish my results as soon as..."
"Really", she had said with heavy sarcasm. "I'm going to my room, Pollyanna".
Jean intercepted her already in the hall.
"The Professor wants to see you in his office".
"I'm going to Carleton university tomorrow to lead a seminar about mutants and society.I thought we needed to talk before I left", Xavier announced.
Elizabeth shrugged.
"First of all, I want to acknowledge the fact that life is not fair".
"I know", she said.
"We have, despite thorough examinations found no trace of the entity that may possess you. One possibility is that you suffer from epilepsy. The evidence is, at best, ambiguous. Even with the small-focus scan of Warren's memories, I can't be certain".
"The danger is real. What's in your head is still there".
She had to smile her nasty smile.
"Do you know what I think? I think it's all in your head, not mine", she said.
He took it without flinching.
"Think whatever you want. You're off the team. You can move around the house as you like, if Jean tails you. You may not use your telepathy. You may not leave the house unless I explicitly say so.I don't want you in the vicinity of Blackbird or Danger Room. You will not have access to firearms and no one can carry firearms around you. There's more to this, Scott will tell you the details, but the point is that if you take one step out of line, we'll lock you up. I don't want to do that, but I will, if it ever becomes necessary. Understood?"
"Yes", Elizabeth said.
There was a pause, in which Xavier pretended to hesitate.
"There is of course", he said, "another solution".
He pulled out a drawer and put a thick strip of metal on his desk. "The design is Genoshan, but Forge has worked on it. Modified it for you. It's a power dampener".
"He has a history of building such things", Elizabeth said.
Xavier avoided her eyes as he handed her the collar. It was surprisingly light.
"I'll be honest with you. The lock is coded. The power dampener won't come off until I take it off. There's also an inbuilt locator".
It looked like a necklace. A choker. Well, that was what it was.
"You have no reason to trust me or believe in me. Fortunately, you don't have to believe in me to believe in the dream. Coexistence".
She still looked at the thing. A small piece of death.
"Think about it", Xavier said.
This time there were no roses in her room. Just Warren and darkness. Elizabeth wanted so much to forgive him, wanted to look at him with gentle eyes and seek comfort in his arms. But the nasty sneer wouldn't leave her face and the loving words wouldn't come out.
"What are you doing here?" she demanded.
"I must tell you. The Professor scanned me".
He was upset, pale and sweating.
"So I've heard".
"He had to. Betsy, you don't understand".
In his face was guilt, fear and shame, but beneath it all, there was confidence that she would take him back. She looked at him without mercy and she saw Brian, a younger, less hotheaded Brian, with all his precious needs and wants. Sister or lover. It didn't matter. Her addiction had fitted his. Perfectly.
Warren was still talking. "...so I don't know how I feel. I'm so confused. I need some time to think. It isn't only the recent events, it's all this past stuff with Candy and Jean..."
His precious needs and wants, indeed
"Jean?"
The cold voice, the nasty smile. <Kwannon's smile.>
"I'm not in love with her. It's just that I look at her and she's like any normal woman. And when I look at you...I mean, you are technically an alien".
He pronounced the word carefully. Elizabeth could sense his determination to be rid of her, though he probably wasn't aware of it himself.
"Oh".
The voice dangerously low now.
"Hell".
Warren's shoulders slumped as he realised that he had gone too far.
"Of course, I am an alien. And a mutant". The smile showed him her teeth. "But when I lost my eyes, I did try to cope with it. And I've never told any of my lovers that they were freaks. Though some of them actually were".
He raised his hand as if to stop her cruel words or touch her, but let it fall.
"I guess it's over then", he said slowly.
"I guess it is", she answered.
They watched each other with a new wariness.
Warren broke the silence.
"Goodbye, Betsy", he said softly.
The wings rustled as they unfolded. He went out on the balcony, swung himself over the rail and was gone.
The metal was cold. She had held it against her cheek for some minutes, but it wouldn't get any warmer. Maybe heat would interfere with the sensitive circuits.
"Goodbye, Warren", she whispered.
Then she put the collar around her neck and snapped it shut.
**The cries of dying off-spring ceased abruptly.**