InsaneJournal

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Crimson and Clover: an X-Men Femslash story (chapter 1)


This is chapter 1 of Crimson and Clover, a story I wrote for an X-Men messageboard some time back. It features an alternate future of my own design, and features Rachel Summers and X-23. If you guys like it, I'll post the rest chapter by chapter.



Setting Summary: It's twenty minutes into a future that never was. The world is bitterly divided between east and west, with the Neo-Soviet Sino-Russian People's Republic, and it's defacto leader Victor von Doom, threatening the Allied Democratic Atlantic powers and their champions, Project Utopia led by Reed Richards and the First Family, the Fantastic Four. The western world is bitterly divided between pro-human Novas, gifted after birth with amazing powers and also led by the Project and the various teams under it's umbrella, and the never-human Mutants. It is a dark time for mutants, their erstwhile leader and hoped-for peacemaker Charles Xavier assassinated and his movement militia, the X-Men, hunted and wanted by the government and it's Sentinel enforcers. Many believe a war is brewing, and in a secret, half-constructed facility once meant to serve as a college campus for mutants in a hoped-for better time, mutant leader and former Xavier foe Magneto has gathered a team of young mutants, leftovers and castaways from the X-Men, into a force for mutant protection. Their primary mission, so long as overt war remains only threat and not actuality, is to rescue and relocate targeted mutants on a smuggled government blacklist, and perform targeted covert operations designed to benefit mutantkind's strategic position in the feared-coming war. They say 2000 zero-zero, party over with, out of time... the year is 1999.

Cast:

Leadership / Base Personell:
Magneto - Command
Tessa (Sage) - 2IC, Operations
Dr Beth Kingston- Medical Officer, Councilor, Personell Liason

Transport crew:
Kitty Pryde (Shadowcat) - Pilot
Illyana Rasputin - Teleporter

Operations team:
Rachel Summers-Grey (Firebird)
X-23 / Xandra (Feral)
Angelica Jones (Firestar)
Rahne Sinclair (Wolvesbane)
Leyu Yashida (Sunpyre)

------

This was one of those days when she wondered why in the hell she had signed up for this gig.

Of course, she did that pretty much every day.

Today was no exception, as she sat in the cafeteria room that was way too large for the just over half-a-dozen people it now held. Like the rest of the facility, half-completed as it was, shrouded in perpetual shadow from the practice of lighting only used sections and sprawling with closed off and unfinished and just plain unused rooms, corridors, entire wings... it was a constant vivid reminder of grand dreams aborted and the makeshift existance that labored on in their wake. More than that, it was damned creepy. No one was comfortable here. Some hid it better than others, some adapted better than others, but none would deny that just being here was stressful. And for Rachel, it was worse. It reminded her of home. Like she needed any reminders. Like she could ever forget.

She hated it here. Of course, no one truly liked it. The cold, stark, too big and too dark and too empty environment of the complex took it's toll in the form of stress on everyone in it. Except maybe for -her-. The feral one. But who in the hell could know what she thought anyhow? She was even more inscrutable than her "father", a man Rachel could never stand. At least that bastard communicated. With him at least you knew where you stood. This one, by contrast, would go days without saying a word to anyone, coming and going as she pleased, doing as she pleased, like an animal. Which in a way she was. The worst was when she'd stare, like a damned cat. She did that too bloody often. In fact, she was doing it now. It gave Rachel the urge to mindflay the little bitch where she stood. If she thought she could get away with it, she just might.

Given the lack of a future in that particular option, she decided to just focus her attention elsewhere in the room and try to ignore the smaller woman's eyes on her. The japanese bitch was sitting alone, as usual, typical of her superior attitude. To hell with her. Rahne was sitting with the new girl, the one they'd rescued from the Hellfire Club. Just her luck that the only person she really wanted to spend time with would already have company. Still, she didn't really feel like making the effort to try to be friendly with her new companion, or put up any false fronts of comraderie. The other redhead was a stranger to her, and she wasn't in the mood to pretend like she cared to make it otherwise.

That of course left the happy couple. Smiling, talking, giggling, affectionate, like nothing was wrong in the world. Of course, to them there probably wasn't. Illyana was back from years of presumed death, trapped in Limbo and only recently discovered and rescued. Free to pursue her first love, reveling in their second chance. It made Rachel sick.

Kate --no, sorry, "Kitty" here-- was hers, dammit. They were soulmates. They had to be. The thought of seeing her again was the only thing that had driven Rachel in the dark days after... after. The knowledge that there was a way to go back, to make it into another world where the war never happened and her love would be alive and waiting for her, was the only thing that had kept her from ending it all in a one-way, blaze of glory attack on the enemy. Instead, like the fictional Kyle Reese, she fled an apocalyptic war across time itself to be with the one she loved.

Like his quest, hers was doomed by fate. In his case, he was destined to die after one night of passion with his love, fathering the hope of the future but losing any chance to have a life with it's mother. In hers, the woman of her life's affection was with someone else, their relationship never truly given a chance to get off the ground. Oh, and it looked like the war was starting up in this world too. The details were different, of course. As luck would have it, this wasn't her past. And it wasn't the peaceful promised land she had envisioned and aimed for, either. It was a different world than either of those two hoped-for possibilities, and it was looking like it would end just as grimly as her own. But this time she wouldn't have the comfort of her love to carry her through the worst times. This time, she was on her own.

At least she shouldn't have to damned well look at them, all glowing and shit. They could at least have the courtesy not to rub it in her face. And if they couldn't, she at least didn't have to stay here and subject herself to it. She was up and walking, food left half-eaten and abandoned, before she even had time to think twice about it. Let them stare, and let them talk. She just didn't give a damn.

She didn't even know really where she was going, not really. Just away. Somewhere she could be alone and left to brood in peace, where she wouldn't have to look at the eyes of her soulmate filled with love for someone else. Someplace she wouldn't have to endure the stares and hear the whispers in the minds of the others, gossipping about her in their thoughts. Just somewhere for some damned privacy. In a facility built to house hundreds with a population of all of ten, she should be able to find that at least.

Of course she wouldn't be even that lucky.

The feral bitch, of all damned people, was following her. Couldn't it at least have been Rahne, whom she might have actually considered opening up to? Or the japanese bitch or the new girl, who she could have told thank you for your concern but kindly fuck off? Or even Kitty and or Illyana herself, so she could have had a confrontation about it once and for all. No, it had to be the freaky silent one. The one who's thoughts she couldn't even read, the one that had never made a damned bit of sense to her.

This day just kept getting better.

-----

To be continued, if people want more.

Bonus: A preeetty X-23 pic swiped from the web.