We Can Explain...

We Can Explain...Chapter Forty Three (Epilogue) NC-17
Disclaimers Apply


A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE (tm), Prophetic Muse, Hamster Witch and Uberbeta...*whew * It's over! InterNutter, TC, Maxwell Pink and Dracena are loverly and sparkley for archving/hosting. :) ProPhile: still among the living? Readers/Reviewers: Yes, I know, I know... *sigh * But it will be better next go, I promise on the heads of the ducks and armadillos. So, thanks muchly for sticking this one out. Michael (not ProPhile, the other one. ;) ) gets tons of thanks for coming up with the "systems" of different mutants and the background info on the core idea of the next story (arc...thing...). So *glomps * to him for that! See A/N at the end of this story for the gist of the next one...*shifty eyes *



"I did not intend for it to come to this..."
Kitty, her arms showing bruises trailing from the back of her shoulders already, barely two hours after her initial encounter with Mystique snorted in derision. "I don't think you knew what you intended," she muttered darkly. The witnessing students had been shunted to the Danger Room with Sean and Forge to run sim after sim until the Professor had deemed it "safe" for them to rejoin the rest of the Institute so the house proper was eerily quiet as the small group sat in the upstairs study. She ignored Kurt's murmured entreaty for silence and turned narrowed eyes on Logan and the Professor. "I want to think she's lying to me," she began but stopped herselfessiessing her lips together in silence.
Logan sighed. "Half Pint, you have to understand...it wasn't supposed to come out like this."
"Then how the Hell was it supposed to come out?" Jubilee snarled. Her fingers flexed at her sides in barely restrained temper. "Kitty doesn't lie. She told us what happened..." Her glare was trained solely on Mystique, standing behind the Professor, isolated despite the near presence of Emma and Logan. Sabretooth skulked near the bay window, trying his best to be invisible. "She told us what she said..."
"Nothing more than the truth," Mystique said simply, no trace of rancor in her voice.
"Please," Professor Xavier put in quietly. He glanced at the blue-skinned woman and withheld a tired sigh. Addressing the students, he began in a firmer voice, "I realize it was a mistake to do this without informing you first. I realize that now, that is, but you must also realize that you are still students. You are in no place to make the decisions I must make concerning not just your welfare but the good of all potential students here... Even the good of those who might never come into contact with us but are still are...brothers in arms, as it were."
Kitty could not hold her tongue. "Who are you to decide what's good for total strangers? Who the Hell are you to decide what's good for any of us?" She stood only to find herself jerked back down by Amara.
The Nova Roman's hand was hot on Kitty's wrist, leaving bright pink marks everywhere she touched. "He's our protector," she said tersely. "He is our guardian."
Every eye in the room turned in surprise to look at Amara. "You're...defending him? Defending THEM?" Jubilee demanded. "How could you? You heard what Kitty told us...we were experimented on!"
"To be fair," Amara said as if bored, "it was not successful. It was a failed situation. We wasted a week that we would have otherwise spent here. So what? We are no worse for wear except for being very tired..."
"I don't believe you," Jubilee began, her voice shaking. She was on the verge of violence, the only thing keeping her from lunging at Amara being Rogue's grip on the back of her jeans.
Amara rose to her feet, her bearing every inch imperial. "He made a decision to help the greater good. It might not have been the decision we would have made in his place but it was a..." she paused as if searching for the correct phrase, "a command decision." She turned to face the Professor and added, "I'm sure it was not your intent to have us threatened and put into fear and panic, but it was your intent to have us help others." She tilted her head to one side and added in mild accents, "Though I wish you would have told us first."
Todd finally shook himself loose from his inner debate over whether to remain silent or speak out and addressed the adults at the front of the room. "I still have no fucking clue what happened. Mags would've at least given a hint, ya know? I thought you were better than him." His accusing glare served to make the Professor blink and very nearly avoid his eyes. "We were shanghaied, fucked with and left to find out own way back here... and you knew." He shook his head in vague disgust. "What the fuck was that all about?"
Logan did not even bother with the usual warnings about language. Instead, he nodded at some inner signal from the Professor and left the room, Emma trailing. Professor Xavier straightened and fixed them all with a direct, imposing gaze. "I am human. I made a mistake. I apologize profusely and know that is not enough for fracturing the bond of trust and...safety...that I had tried so hard to foster with each of you." He rolled around the desk and moved closer to the front line of students, stopping just short of Kitty. "I'm aware of how difficult it is to rebuild a trust once broken but I want you to know I will endeavor to do my best..."
"Stop it," Kurt burst out suddenly, surprising everyone. "Just...stop." He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose for a long moment, gathering his thoughts into some form of coherence. "I cannot even begin to understand what happened to use much less your reasoning behind it, but I want to believe you did this for the best." He shook his head, finally opening his eyes. "But I just can't. I'm sorry, but I don't understand at all."
It was Sabretooth that broke the tension. In his low, thick voice, he began slowly, not changing his position near the window. Looking out into the darkening evening, he said, "Mystique was not entirely truthful with you, Kitty." Said girl twitched slightly, discomfited that the man even knew her name, but she did not speak. "Professor Xavier did give permission for some things, but not for what happened. It was..." He turned and looked at the Professor, a strange expression on his face, like old pain remembered. "It was out of his hands. He could not control what happened to you once it began." He looked away from them again, strangely calm in the face of all these adversaries, and let out a long, rumbling sigh. "We were all tricked. What was truthful was that we were the bait, we were chosen to lure you in, to bring you closer to the heart of the matter. What was not truthful was that your...guardians...put you in direct danger. You were to be observed. We just did not tell him how."
A muffled sniffle sounded from Jubilee's corner, her face pressed against Rogue's shoulder as she tried not to cry out of betrayal. Remy asked stiffly, "If this were some kinda mistake, what was the 'riginal intent?"
Logan chose that moment to re-enter, Emma following him along with two men, only one an absolute stranger. Kitty gasped softly in surprise, the name escaping her lips before she could stop it. "Doctor Raimi!"1
The thin, nervous-looking smilsmiled tightly and nodded recognition. "I'm sorry it took so long to get here, Professor, but I had to wait for Doctor Beck2." He nodded again, this time in the direction of his companion. "It took us longer than expected to find Phobos and Demos."
Kurt made a strangled sound low in his throat as realization struck him. "Pantheon..."
Doctor Beck sighed in agitation. "We prefer to call it by it's new name, thank you."
"Time and place," Raimi muttered. "This is neither!"
The other man rolled his eyes. "Fine, fine. The project which caused you some trouble last year was a small fraction of a larger whole," he went on, addressing the students rather than the elders. "Unfortunately, it was the most...visible and problematic fraction of said whole. We felt that, with the incident which occurred involving you, it was best to end that portion of the project and let the lab mutants live out their natural, or rather unnatural lives. This proved to be more of a problem than we realized."
Doctor Raimi spoke up, cutting off Doctor Beck. "Doctor Beck was in charge of the more socially acceptable portion of the Pantheon Project, as it was formerly known. The study of first and second gen mutants and their development over time."
"There's more to it than that," the other scientist put in. "It's a complicated project," he began.
"Get to the point, bub." Logan was tired-tired of avoiding the kids, tired of the confusion, and just plain tired. "Or I'll make one of my own."
"Idle threats," Doctor Beck sighed.
"ANYway," Doctor Raimi continued, "we had trouble...discontinuing...the pantheonic mutants."
"They wouldn't die," Kitty said simply.
"To be blunt, yes..." Doctor Raimi paused to fidget with his glasses before pressing onward. "When the incident involving the South American developments occurred, the powers that be, as it were, decided to change our focus. We decided more effort needed to be put into the study of existing mutants and how the powers develop, a concerted effort towards understanding mutant-kind."
Professor Xavier was carefully neutral in tone and expression as he spoke up. "They approached me shortly after the incident with an offer... Help them change the focus of the project, end the stigmatic focus of creating mutants and, frankly, playing God with genetic manipulation. Help end a monster run out of control. In turn, I would chair a significant portion of the research and be kept abreast of developments. Not long ago, the project reached a point where all of the lab studies and theories could not advance without actual observation. It was requested that I allow my students to be observed. Minimal access to your records was requested, names and identifying details erased in publication, and the opportunity to interact with you was also requested. I agreed, making every effort to ensure it was a safe, healthy interaction."
"Fanfuckingtastic job, Chuck," Lance mumbled, his eyes on his shoes. The silence that had fallen over the students was a sickly sort, like the kind that comes when the death of a loved one is announced or the betrayal of a close friend becomes known. Disbelief tinged with grief.
Doctor Raimi cleared his throat gently, looking askance at Doctor Beck, who nodded, encouraging his continuation. "Things fell apart when one of our fellow researchers took matters into her own hands, as it were. She...felt that the continued survival of the original project was paramount and found a supporter in a Mister Eric Lehnscherr." He closed his eyes briefly as a ripple of recognition rippled through the room. "Unbeknownst to us when she offered to take charge of this portion of the revamped project, she had her own notions about how to complete it."
"The implants," Doctor Beck piped up, "were her own innovation, a sort of new generation of the powder involved in the creation of the mutants you encountered. The will to survive is strong even in the most basic of life forms and these lab-created entities are no exception. Consider the implants as a seed...though instead of growing within you, they were sapping your nutrients..."
"A parasite," Kitty said numbly. "Like moss..." Part of her marveled at how inane that sounded, that her brain was throwing out benign botanical facts while being faced with betrayal of the highest order.
"Similar," Doctor Beck replied with a hint of discomfort. "When the seed reached the stage at which it would need to...er...bloom, you would be disposed off, spent."
Doctor Raimi looked distinctly uncomfortable now, blanching at Doctor Beck's words. "By the time Doctor Daniel3's plan was discovered, we were unsure of how to remedy it."
Professor Xavier took up the reigns again. "I was contacted too late to head things off. All of my time last week was spent at the laboratory in Canada. Phobos and Demos were the last of the lab creations to survive. They destroyed their siblings, you might call them, to survive this long and Doctor Daniels found that an admirable trait and honed it, that ruthlessness. They also destroyed their lab home and Doctor Daniels as well, taking over the mission themselves."
"They felt they knew better as to what needed to be done," Doctor Raimi sighed. "Your Professor decided the only thing to be done was to contact the Brotherhood," he spared a glance at Sabretooth and Mystique, "for help."
"And I cannot begin to tell you how amusing that was to me at the time." She shrugged eloquently and boldly sat on the edge of the Professor's desk. "The Brotherhood's Bayville branch, as you well know, is suffering lately. No new recruits since Tarot and Roulette, wherever the Hell she ran off to, Magneto has diverted funds to more profitable projects and we are left in genteel poverty4."
Rogue snorted. "Lady, that ain't even close to genteel nothin'."
Mystique gritted her teeth and continued, studiously ignoring her former charges and instead focusing on Kitty and Kurt. "Professor Xavier made me, to use a well worn line, an offer I could not refuse. You might notice our new roof next time you're by the Boardinghouse." Her chin took on a defiantly proud tilt as if challenging anyone to mock their need.
Kitty swallowed hard and forced the words forth. "So you're telling me...us...that everything we went through, everything that happened, is because you weren't paying close enough attention, Professor?"
"It was not like that," Sabretooth said unexpectedly.
"You know what? I don't care." Kitty stood and smoothed her hands over her jeans to erase imaginary wrinkles and said in a brusque tone. "You've told me all I need to know. I don't care anymore. I'm going to bed." She phased through the floor summarily, her eyes closed against any entreating expressions.
Kurt stood and looked momentarily sheepish. "Excuse me, but... I have to..." He spread his hands in semi-helplessness, disappearing in a cloud of sulphrous smoke.
"Is that it?" Todd asked dully. "Are we finished here?"
"I would like for you to hear us out, let us explain further," the Professor began, but Rogue shot to her feet, her eyes snapping. "Rogue..."
"There's nothin' else for you to explain. We're just things to you, aren't we? No!" She clapped her hands over her ears in a childish rejection of any further words. "I'm leavin'. I can't sit here and listen to this any more!" She strode past the adults, not looking back as she flung the door open and let it slam behind her.
Todd and Lance exchanged glances. "I dunno..." Lance shrugged. "I can kinda see it...but... damn it to Hell!" he exploded. "Why couldn't you just've told us? We'd have let 'em observe or whatever!"
"I'm sorry," the Professor said humbly. "I misjudged you in my own...arrogance."
Amara folded her hands over her abdomen in an odd mirror of statuary. "Just explain something to me...all of it...was it an illusion? I mean...how did we get to the house and how did Kurt and Kitty get to Tucson?"
Doctor Raimi smiled queasily. "All part of Phobos and Demos's doing. They have a sort of psychic power...a telepathy of sorts...they inspire fear and confusion and terror... they were working on you to make you disoriented as the implants drained what biological information they required to create new databases of DNA with which to create new mutants."
"Which is why you went into metabolic overdrive," Doctor Beck added. "The implants were affecting your bodily systems... They needed the extra hormone secretions, among other things, to complete their databases."
Amara nodded. "I see..." She faced the Professor with a steady gaze. "I understand why you did it. I'm not angry. It was nothing less than what I would have done to preserve my people, should I have ruled as rightful heir to the throne of Nova Roma."
The Professor merely sighed, not quite sure how to explain to her it was not exactly as she thought. Instead, he settled for a simple "Thank you."
Scott and Jean, looking mildly harried, Jean still yawning, burst through the recently slammed door. " Sorry," Scott panted. "She was hard to wake up. Did we miss anything?"

It was near midnight by the time the Professor shuffled off the doctors and returned to his study. The atmosphere of the Institute had changed for the worse and he knew it would take a long time to regain even a semblance of the trust that was once there. Mystique had given him her final report on the lab used by Phobos and Demos, the one Magneto had used not so long before with Ruth, and had demanded her final payment before departing. The doctors had promised to contact him soon with the date of the next research committee meeting before allowing Logan to drive them back to the city to catch their flight to Australia. The students had avoided everyone since the disastrous meeting in the study. He sighed and looked around the darkened room, the dim glow from the outside security lights picking out strange shadows in the slightly overcrowded study. One of the shadows moved, a hulking shape that had an odd grace about it as it approached Professor Xavier. "Is it well?" Sabretooth asked quietly, almost shyly.
"No," Professor Xavier sighed. "Not well at all."
"Mystique handled things...badly." He shrugged and took a final step which brought his face into a slice of the light seeping into the room. "I want to be gone before Logan returns. Our truce is not permanent."
"Understood. In fact, I believe his exact words were something to the effect of damaging your neural function by way of a rectal opening..." he smiled grimly at that, Sabretooth's rough chuckle allowing the truth of the matter. "I don't expect Mystique will give you your share of the payment."
"Don't want it." He stooped slightly to look at the older man directly. "I ain't got a lot to be proud of in my life and I'm not going to turn against the Brotherhood any time soon...but I'm not agreein' with this creating mutants thing." He flexed his hands convulsively, his eyes narrowing. "Last thing we need is more monsters out there."
"Victor..."
"Logan's back," he said suddenly, reeling towards the door. "Don't contact us again."
Professor Xavier sat alone in the dark for a very long time after that, wondering what he had wrought.

A/N *sigh * It's OVER. It is nothing like I intended at the start and sort of derailed mid story. So, to assuage any irked readers I'll let you know that this is something that is useful to the next story. "Sins of the Father" is going to deal with the Professor's involvement in the project as well as getting back to some of the original intent of the Foreververse AU. And yes, ProPhile, there will be smut!!! LOL. So, tomorrow-ish, look for the next story to start with 99 % less confusion than this one lol and let's consider this a failed experiment in existentialism. *blush * Thanks for sticking with me, y'all, and smack me if I ever do that again, LOL.


1 A cookie if you can see where this is going...
2 Hi, Michael! (no, not you, ProPhile. Sorry... ;) )
3 That's for you Morgan...know who it is, lol?
4 A phrase applied often in antebellum times to plantation owners and other formerly well-to-do's who lost their lot in the Civil War but tried to maintain a semblance of wealth despite being so broke they couldn't pay attention. It's a phrase still used to describe those living beyond their means in an attempt to maintain a façade of their former "glory."