aterat | Return of the Queen

Entry tags:

Return of the Queen

Who;Illyana + You
What; Network + Log of her return
Where;
When;Night on May 2nd
Warnings; Talk of death

I. Network

I found Athony. Turns out he has his own pocket dimension. Aspect of death and all that. Looks like they've at least mastered using the portals to go from here to there. Good for them.

Anyone visited the Academy while I've been gone. Been told recently that we could all do with a few lessons.

II. Wandering the streets

After what had happened before Illyana probably should have learned her lesson. Too bad she'd never been that great of a student. Sure, she picked up on things unusually fast, but she'd always been too headstrong to make a perfect student. Besides, she'd just gotten back and she wasn't really sure if she actually wanted to see anyone. Her head was a jumbled mess of memories of death from her home.

Memories of a small child slowly wasting away from a virus her own brother gave her. The memory felt more like watching a movie, as though it weren't actually her own memory. I hope to act like it does, if nothing else.

Was that all she was doing here? Acting like a real girl? For the first time she felt the full pang of missing her brother. She wished he was here. Big simple Piotr who only ever saw his little sister as the Snowflake she once was. She missed him, just like she missed Kitty and every one of the New Mutants. Tears welled up in her eyes, tears that she'd insist mainly came from frustration.

A portal appeared around her feet and engulfed her body only for her to remain exactly where she was.

"How dare you," she muttered as she wiped the tears away from her face. A series of curses in Russian escaped her lips and she pulled the hood of her jacket up.

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"You touched the good part of my soul." The only good part she had left really. Then again, that part would have also shown him...oh. "You saw Belasco." It really hadn't fully registered until now that he would have seen the red demon and his promises of power. He would have seen how he'd tried to appeal to the child, tried to corrupt her, and how he'd coveted everything about her and her precious innocence. He might have been able to see her fear and her loneliness, her desperation, and that ultimately the corruption had worked. She'd turned to dark arts and despite her age she'd killed her two teachers there. Of course, he'd forced her hand there, but there was still shame in the situation.

She looked down and wrapped her arms around herself. "Or maybe you two are just naïve."

"It's very good, and very much a part of you, love." He gave her shoulders another squeeze but didn't let go. He also knew she didn't enjoy showing this level of vulnerability, and the significance of her trusting him with it was not lost on him. He also knew this woman was capable of protecting herself against likely any physical and most psychic threats that could ever try to harm her, but emotional damage wasn't so easily avoided and she desperately needed a friend who didn't see her as a monster.

Even if that friend's sole purpose was to believe in the woman she was until Illyana was able to believe in her herself. Jagger wanted more than that, he knew that now, and he'd stay as long as she'd have him. "I also know that he is too, and everything he made you to be, but I also know you've taken it and made it your own. If that makes me naive, I'm alright with that."

Jagger didn't touch others. That was not lost even on Illyana despite her confusion over everything that was going on here. This wasn't for her. Exchanges like this were what she watched others have, but never herself. It'd never been something she'd wanted and that was the truth. Some people might insist that they'd never wanted to date and that they'd never wanted to feel and they'd be lying. Their insistence would be nothing more than self-denial. That wasn't the case for her though. She'd really never wanted anything like that before. She'd never felt a longing for it when she saw others with their partners. Frankly, she found the distraction to be nothing more than an annoyance. Growing up in a demon dimension will do that.

Now though. Now she'd had more than a year of relative normalcy. Perhaps not true normalcy, but it was closer than anything she'd had before. She'd talked to people about their feelings and about social interactions and she'd started to learn. Sometimes she even felt like she actually was a real girl and not just someone doing their best to pretend they were one. In the wake of all that feelings had stirred inside of her. Feelings that completely and utterly confused her.

Or at least they had. The more she'd spoken with Mono and others around the more she'd begun to understand what they were. Was this what Kitty had felt like with her brother? Now she found herself wishing that her brother were actually here for her to speak with.

"You make me feel so ...confused. I wish Piotr was here."

He didn't, that was true, but in the year he'd known her, he'd come to realize something about her kept his own abilities from reading her. He'd never tried to force them through, and the lessons she'd been giving him had taught him more about control than he'd ever accomplished on his own. They allowed him to find the control within him for a sense no one else had, helped him to envision opening and closing it, something like an internal eye, and he was working on trying to focus that eye better, when it was open. He did that alone, but she'd given him the tools he'd needed to explore the idea. He was grateful to her for that.

He wasn't a particularly needy guy, he'd never really watched other couples and dreamed of being able to be that close to someone else, save for one time, with a girl who'd never really believed him when he'd told her touching was a bad idea, and who hadn't been able to handle what his abilities had shown him about her when they'd gotten too close. After that, he'd kept women at a distance, because that had hurt far more deeply than he'd realized at the time, and it was something beyond his control. He counted himself lucky his libido didn't idle on high, or else his lot in life might be a lot tougher to bear.

He had to enjoy the person to really want anything to do with them physically, and keeping people at two arms' length tended to keep that from happening. It's why he'd resisted his initial attraction to Illyana so much, it'd felt dangerous, though not for any of the reasons she likely thought it should, and now here he was, having let her in and committed to whatever it was this was becoming, damn the consequences, because that was how he worked. He couldn't complain, really. At least, with Illyana Rasputin, Queen and Sorcerer Supreme of Limbo, things weren't likely to get boring.

"I'm sorry, love." He eased his embrace slightly, not wanting to overwhelm her. "What's confusing? Maybe I can help."

"Piotr had Kitty and...others. Kitty had," she tilted her head and the tiniest of smiles flickered on her face. "Several Peter's." There was always a reason to tease her best friend about her bad luck in romance. Besides, Kitty had been a bit...what was the word? Boy crazy. She'd been a bit boy crazy. "Amara had...Empath and Roberto." Though those weren't really relationships anyone should look to as examples. None of the ones she'd seen around her were great examples of relationships.

"They were all more trouble than they were worth. It was nothing but twisted drama." And she'd never thought it was worth her time. She hesitated and put a hand to her chest awkwardly. "It made them easy to manipulate." There was no emotion in her voice when she stated that, no regret and certainly no second guessing. Nothing would ever make her regret how she'd played with Amara's feelings for Empath and Roberto's feelings for her. In the end, she had helped him save her despite having previously been fairly set on allowing her to die. "I told him what would happen to her in the future so he could save her. I still...I don't know why. It felt so...strange."

No, that's not true. Now she understood why. They had been her friends. Perhaps they weren't any longer, she wasn't sure how that all would turn out. It seemed like the idea of losing any of them had stirred emotions in her that she couldn't just ignore. Like now. She'd done well ignoring her growing feelings for him, but now it seemed to all be coming to a head.

"I have never wanted that." Not with anyone. "Or...I have never thought about it." She wanted to teleport away right now, to retreat to Limbo and just stay there, hidden away from things like emotions and feelings. But she couldn't. Instead she had to face this situation and it sucked.

"But I feel strange with you. Jittery." She looks over at him. "Like I felt on the eve of grand battles in Limbo between my forces and pathetic rebels."

At first he'd had a bit trouble deciphering what she'd meant by 'had', but it became clear as she explained. For a long while, he believed relationships were more trouble than they were worth as well. Lord knew Charlie had the same problems, men or women, he was always surrounded by drama. Charlie used to tell him it made him feel more alive, connected to people when he'd never really had anyone growing up, but it'd always seemed like an excuse when there were so many more important things to focus on.

He smiled at her confusion, but in a knowing way. He may not have much experience with actual relationships, but he'd worked with a lot of different people, and absorbing the memories soaked into objects gave you a perspective on peoples' motivations it was difficult to glean without that intimacy. It was one of the reasons he kept people at a distance. Those emotions were intense and volatile by their very nature, but they also made you stronger, capable of things you'd never be able to do without them. It was the dual-bladed nature of community.

"I...uh...don't know if that's nerves or excitement, but I'm hoping for the latter." He chuckled nervously. "Are you...looking forward to it or nervous about the outcome?" She'd used the term 'pathetic'. Not sure how to feel about that.

"Excitement. Do you think I'd be nervous before battle?" she looked momentarily insulted by the very idea. The only battle she'd ever found herself nervous about was that very last one and it had taken quite a long time for her to figure out why. Strange how it had taken her coming to a place like this and talking to someone half her age to figure out that she'd just been worried the other New Mutants. In a strange way it made her miss them even more.

"Can...it be both?" Because she was fairly certain these things were both. "I look forward to seeing you." If he ever brought that up again she was going to banish him to the furthest pits in Limbo. Once she had access to it back that is. "But all I have seen is how badly things go the closer you get."

"I can understand that." It wasn't as though he had exhaustive experience to the contrary, or in agreement for that matter. What he knew about his father and mother certainly agreed with her assessment. "But I don't think it has to be that way, either. I've heard of people living perfectly happy lives together." Could he even name those people? Not really.

He swallowed, though, because he could also admit to feeling the same way. "Well...sure, love, it can be both." It was both. He was excited every time he saw her, and scared about how it might end, if it would even begin. "Maybe...we should just focus on that, then; enjoying seeing each other."

"Name one." She was going to call him on that bluff. "In my world they all make a mess of everything or one of them dies. Then they come back and make a mess of it." No matter what it always seemed to go back to making a mess out of everything. "It's always a headache." For everyone else to deal with.

"Is there something more than that you want?" The words came out before she even understood what she was asking. Truthfully, even after saying it she wasn't quite certain what she'd meant. Of course, she wasn't naïve enough to not know what more there was. She had plenty of examples of that, along with examples of one-sided relationships and the problems that alone could cause. The problem was she'd always been too different to be caught up in any of that. Limbo and the loss of her soul had always claimed far too much of her for her to have anything to give to anyone else.

He didn't have to think back very far to find an answer. "Lieutenant Davidson Nash and his wife, Patricia. He's in charge of Homicide at the central precinct in Detroit. He and his wife have been married for 25 years now, and they're like...one unit of a person. They're like something out of a faerie tale, really. Had dinner with them once. Their house of full of memories, and some of them are bad, but...I don't know. They're so compatible they seem to...all the bad brings them together, it doesn't push them apart." He realized, then, he only had the one example, but she'd only asked for one.

"I think the secret's finding someone who's worth the headaches, because they fill some part of you you didn't realize was empty. That's...really over the top, I know, but I think that's close to the mark." He didn't respond to her question immediately. Putting voice to the thoughts seemed to make them more real, somehow. "I don't...think I have an endgame in mind, Illyana, but I'm open to the idea of something more, yeah." And there it was, out there in the open, for her to pick up or to run away from. "What about you?"

"Human then?" she shook her head. "Humans don't count." Part of the reason behind her answer was that she was looking for a way to argue with him; to prove that there were no examples to be found. Another part of it was just that she didn't actually think humans counted. Humans had too few complications to be compared to her own people, at least in her mind. They had souls and didn't grow up in demonic dimensions. They understood emotions and they got to live faerie tale lives. There was a bit of bitterness that slipped into her tone with her insistence that humans didn't count.

"At least you know it's over the top." She let out a burst of a laugh and smirked at him. "I don't think you'd fill the parts of me that were missing." Of course she was just referencing her soul. "You know, I think I'm the monster from your faerie tale, not the one that gets a happy ending." What he voiced was not quite what she expected to hear and she froze for a moment like a deer caught in headlights. The smirk vanished into something much more innocent and obviously uncertain. "My...imps like you." Kitty would be laughing at her right now. she knew that with the utmost certainty.

"Human homicide detectives should. They make their careers hunting monsters, and believe me, humans are the worst monsters I've ever seen and I've met demons." He smiled at her, because he had an idea what she was doing; she was diverting the topic because it made her uncomfortable. He could sympathize with that.

"Your imps, huh?" He chuckled. He understood she was scared, between all she'd lost and what she'd seen other people lose, it stood to reason. "What's that count for?"

"Many demons were human once," she said with a shrug. "Belasco was." Had she told him that before? She couldn't recall and really it didn't matter. "I still think they don't count." Did her voice sound almost like she was pouting? Perhaps just a little bit. Despite all the maturity she'd gained alone in Limbo she still had missed out on a childhood and that came through occasionally.

"Depends on how much you like the idea of imps liking you." She gave him a tiny smirk. "When I can enter Limbo I can bring you to see the Ghatanothoa and see if it likes you."

He chuckled slightly. "Okay, fine. They don't count, but maybe there can be...exceptions to rules." That's how a lot of lore went, too, that demons were human once, at least some of them. It wasn't too surprising to learn that guy had been a human once. Twisted desires made for the deepest evils.

"Do...I want to know what a Ghatanothoa is?" Yes, he did, actually.

"I don't think the exception is going to be a human and a mutant sorceress." Strangely, she actually did sound a tiny bit sad over that thought. At least his question managed to create a distraction for her and she looked up with a wry smirk. With a wave of her hand a blue and white light brought magic to life around her. With the magic came an illusion of a behemothic creature with eyes tucked into tentacles that grasped towards him. It lifted it's head up as if it actually knew it was being summoned and then a flurry of thick octopus-like tentacles hungrily towards Jagger. As the tentacles moved through the air something viscous dripped down from them and for a moment one couldn't help but wonder if it was more than an illusion. The amorphous blob flickered in and out of vision until it eventually vanished completely leaving behind just a brief echo of one of it's red eyes.

"Ah, he saw you," she said with a chuckle. "Ghatanothoa. Legend says even a simple glimpse of it can turn a human into a mummy." She tilted her head. "How are you feeling?"

"And you've got a whole precedent on that one, do you?" He would have continued, about how the likelihood of her having encountered a relationship between a human psychic and a mutant sorceress, and how likely that was to have failed or succeeded, but with the appearance of whatever the hell that was, he cried out and raised his hands. Maybe she'd be impressed for a moment at the fact that he also pulled up a decent shield, just like she'd taught him, before blinking as the illusion disappeared.

"...f-fine. I'm fine." He looked over to her, lowering his arms and the shield as he did so. "What in the Lovecraftian fuck was that?"

"I know humans and mutants who have gotten together, it never ended well," she said with a shrug that was quickly interrupted by his panic at her illusion. His quick shield got a decent nod of approval from her before she burst into laughter.

"Doesn't seem like you are," she said while trying to control her snickering. she wasn't quite prepared for him to react so badly to something like that, but it sure was slightly amusing. More than slightly. "Ghatanothoa. As I said. A lesser relative of the Old Ones I destroyed."

"Completely, thoroughly fine." He had not nearly pissed himself at an illusion. She was not going to get him to admit it. Ever. He took a steadying breath.

"So, when you say 'The Old Ones', you mean...Cthulu, Azathoth, all that?" He looked momentarily terrified. "Jesus Christ, they aren't just stories?"

"Gibborim, N'Garai, they are many and have many names," she said with a shrug. "Did you think my mission was against some simple sect of demons?" That was vaguely insulting. "I was taken to Limbo originally to be used in a ritual to free them from their banishment from both planes of existence. Innocent souls are not needed to free most demons. Some of the Elder Ones of Limbo were from those stories, some were the children of them."

To prove her point she chanted a few demonic words and raised a hand summoning an illusion of the towering beings that had tormented every corner of her life. They were only seen from the torso up, too massive to even fully comprehend with a single finger being larger than a human body. Many had tentacles lashing about where their jaws should be, some looked as though they were nothing but tentacles, and some looked like they were amorphous masses of tentacles trying to take some sort of humanoid shape, and another looked like a giant purple man wearing armor that indicated he might have been an influence to an old people on Earth at some point. Each looked like something straight out of Lovecraft's worst nightmares and Illyana stood cold as she looked up at them.

She brought her hand down and with it the partial illusion disappeared.

"Most stories have some truth to them."

To his credit, Jagger did not look away as she conjured the illusions, forcing himself to share some small part of her history. He'd underestimated more than he cared to admit, and yes, it had been the idea of demons to him, but until this moment, demons had been some supreme definition of bad. That had changed, and he felt a little dislocated once the illusions were banished.

A small, gibbering part of his brain insisted those things couldn't be real, but he shoved it down under the rational, the realistic that guided him to sorting through the visions he was bombarded with most days. They were real, because they weren't something an imagination could cook up.

"I had no idea what you could have meant, and I'm sorry I was mistaken." She truly was a marvel, even if she didn't realize it, to have faced such foes and still remained, at least partially, herself, even if she didn't see it. "But shit, love, warn a bloke next time."

"Where's the fun in that?" she asked with a shrug. "I never got a warning." That was probably a tiny bit childish of her, but really she couldn't help but be a bit frustrated. She'd never gotten a warning for anything she'd seen in Limbo or since, so why should anyone else? It wasn't as though Belasco had warned her about what his Master's had looked like. He'd just taken her soul bit by bit to open their portal back up.

"Ah, how nice it is to finally know I am really free from them." No matter what the cost had ended up being, it was worth it. The satisfaction of seeing their expressions before they realized they were finally being written out of existence was pure magic. "You know, one of the future's I went to we went to war with them on Earth."

"I realize that, love, and I'm sorry for all the evils you've had to endure, but you're better than the people who did these things to you." His expression was pointed but not cruel, more meant to drive home a point than to be a dick about it.

He shook his head at her remark. "And no, I didn't. That must have been..." He trailed off for a moment before shaking his head. "I don't think I can picture it, honestly."

That sounded dangerously close to a lecture and all that managed to get from her was a quick glare cast his way. "Good. I hope you never do something like it." She paused for a moment as her expression softened. "They all died." There was no elaboration on who she was referencing with the word they and she moved on quickly enough. "I nearly did too. But I was able to teleport back in time. That's when I knew I had to stop them." Originally it had been about herself, as so many things were. She had wanted vengeance for everything that had been taken away from her and she'd wanted her soul back. She'd wanted to be whole.

But after seeing that future? It became more than that. So much more. It was strange that it had taken coming here for her to fully realize what her real feelings and motivations about that situation had been. Had it been people like him and Mono that had helped her to realize those things?

"Strange." she shook her head. "I think I would like to rest." It had been quite an ordeal after all since she'd gotten back. Would you...like to go back with me?" She intended to teleport herself there and she might actually feel a bit bad about just leaving him behind.

It was a lot to process, her seeing a failed future destroyed by Elder gods only to teleport back through time in order to stop it. It was noble, in a way, even if the motivations were selfish, and, well, heroic, even if she didn't see it that way.

He was distracted from his thoughts by her question, though, and he paused. Had...she just invited him back to her place? He was pretty sure she had, and he felt bad for his mind wandering there immediately even if he couldn't help it.

He nodded. "Uh, sure, love. I'll come back with you."

The white stepping discs appeared quickly around them both teleporting them nearly instantaneously to her place here. The light smell of sulfur lingered when they arrived in an apartment that was pretty much exactly what someone would expect from her. Nearly everything was black (even the walls) with a small splash of maroon here and there. There were small tea candles everywhere and a giant pentagram had been etched into the floor near the sofa. There were occult books scattered haphazardly around the entire place along with random parchments with symbols that looked more like random scribbles than anything important.

She went over to the couch and flopped down, clearly a lot more exhausted than she'd realized. "Make yourself at home if you want to stay." Did any implications about all of this occur to her at all? No. Not at all.

Return of the Queen

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