|
  |
New York is full of people, millions of them. Nothing like the height of the population it will reach, and certainly small compared to other places in other timelines. Finding a redhead here ought to be less of a needle in a haystack, but it can take time.
Or, you know, he can call her up on the com link they share. Greymalkin might have something to do with it. A rooftop makes for a reasonably good place to meet given her talent for finding her way to the highest rooftops, casting herself at the perils of gravity and the wind. Parkour is very much Hope's art, as good for getaways as keeping in fine shape. She performs a backflip over a cement block, grabbing a wooden rod from a holster on her leg. Raising her arms to a guard as she comes down on her feet, it's all for an enemy no fiercer than her own shadow. But this is how one trains, relentlessly performing aerial leaps or rolls and growing faster on the draw, for that might be the only advantage she has when she isn't faster than the fall of sand through the hourglass. The latest leap finds her correcting her accuracy, lips drawn tight in a frown. Corrections are mentally calculating up. If that was a mortal, if that was a trained thug, if that was an alien, if that…
At least with her hair braided back tightly, someone can finally see her face. Not common that happens. She tucks a loose strand behind her ear and tosses the stick to the ground, snapping it back up when it rebounds.
*
Normally, Cable can't find anyone on the planet he feels like; but it just so happens that Hope does carry one of his patented mysterious-use communicators, which allows him to home in on such with little difficulty. It doesn't take particularly complex calculations to home in on her in her lone training… before behind the messiah there comes a strong, temporal CRACK. It sounds of technology, and of a level only the likes of Mojo or the alien threat have.
In a swift motion, Cable slithers forward and brings down his left arm in a rather brutal strike towards Hope. An interposed stick would do nothing but shatter beneath the cybernetic onslaught; although his daughter might have honed her instincts and body to the limits of a human being, her father is capable of speeds far beyond even the greatest athlete. Through ambush, preferably before she can even recognize the blip of his mutancy, his ruthless goal is…
To clamp his hand atop her head and ruffle up her hair fiercely through any attempt to disguise. "Hope." he grunts out, wearing a more mundane outfit of blacks and greys, unarmored but with his own dark green cloak whirled about to help hide the outline of his abnormally large form. "You still sparring rats and shadows?"
*
Normalcy is overrated. They lack adequate communication devices here, so how else is a man supposed to find his charge when in a den of depravity called 20th century New York? What else is a person to do, otherwise, but phone home by whatever means are available? The limits of technology are truly aggravating and hellish; nonetheless, make the best of the situation.
The temporal crack is the giveaway. Once knowing the sound and the sensation, it can never be anything else. Considering recent events have flung her through the cosmos to realms owned by slugs, she predictably starts to react on muscle memory and buried, innate response. One moment, empty space, the next, someone grabbing for her. In her defense, she brings down the rod in a firm crack on the arm trying to clutch at her, her knee going up opposite to hit what likely would be flesh on another person. And the merest adjustment for height and size mean that she is halfway to running over Nathan, preparing to turn. True, he holds the brunt of strength against her on any given day — mirroring that hasn't been second nature the way accelerating is, and he might be somewhat concerned by the speed with which she moves.
Ruffle her hair he might, leaving loose locks, but a sharp rotation short of a broken neck puts her back to his chest, arm raised at an angle either to elbow him in the solar plexus or reach past her shoulder to pat his other arm. Maybe to grab that cloak, given she wears one so often. "Well, I couldn't take any more of those stupid hot dog wrappers thrown around everywhere in the park. I thought you told me food here was safe. Or manufactured."
*
Speed is a relative thing, to someone with reflexes and reactions on spar with your common speedster. Hope's weapon impacts a metal arm, cracking heavily without doing anything to stop his attempted ruffle. His free hand snaps out to try and catch her other arm before it can maneuver for an assault or hassle, with the damnable smoothness and attempted ease of a parent trying to scold a child for fiddling in a cookie jar. In terms of martial prowess and sheer physical ability, she'll never be able to compare to him with his augmentations, although that's not liable to make her stop trying. Impossible goals always create hard work, right?
"Safe enough." he agrees. "I've more or less familiarized myself with things here. …planet's in a mess, both temporally and… well, things just aren't the way they should be. Course, doomed timeline or not, I wager we're stuck here for awhile. Might as well get cozy."
*
One day, there will be a weakness. It will probably involve oil and a disarming question. "But that hardly explains all the plastic wrappers everywhere. Why would they put food in such things only to eat it later? It makes no sense." Her frustrated sound does not make for an easy time of adjusting, always, though she may well be pinned in place. Not that it quite prevents her from being a rather slippery fish under augmented fingers, twisting and curving for an advantage. The one she could deploy with the greatest ease isn't; going after someone's eyes isn't terribly fair or friendly. "Temporal lockdown? Sounds about right. Other displaced — not many of them — can't seem to escape or get their coordinates either."
A supple twist of her torso might bring them around to eye to eye, and probably not. Impossibility means nothing when it comes to Cable. Taller, heavier, yes, but who else can she test a rotational pivot and inversion on? Scolding indeed, those bright green eyes turn upon him through the lashed tail of her braid. "Cozy. Where, then, are you shacking up if that is the case? Does this mean I have to actually find a job? Because I don't know what the heck I'm supposed to do here when women are stuck on pedestals and told to clean the kitchen all day long."
*
"Couldn't tell you if there's a temporal lockdown or not… but. It might explain why we both ended up here." Coincidence is certainly a thing, although Cable's not about to overlook the fact two unconnected people both had the proverbial misfortune of falling into an outdated America near the same time. "Either way, pretty sure standard bets are off. If this is a doomed timeline, then any crazy villain can end up conquering everything. Fate's not on our side."
Eye to eye is relative when there's a foot of height, Cable releasing Hope without much fuss after the initial 'greeting' is complete. "I sleep on Graymalkin. Food's easy enough to come by. Although if you want to make ends meet, you can practice scrubbing down the station? I've got a mop and bucket up there." Smirk.
*
Put back onto her feet, Hope is left to stare up at the man who embodies the whole of a universe, the promise of a past denied to them, the warning of a future that must never come to pass. Their differences could be drawn in every sense: breadth of shoulders to the narrowness of waist, pale crop of hair to flaming sunset tresses. Winter and summer, monstrosity and maiden, draw the parallel one wishes. All the more when bent slightly forward from the waist and staring up at him, burning eyes of a tiger framed in bloody lashes.
Her open-palmed strike carries a fair bit of force behind it, and while it may have nothing on his natural toughness, there is one aspect no amount of cybernetics or brawn can totally ignore, presumably. She vibrates at a high key, and the transmission of those rapid oscillations humming right up. That's a trick with multiple uses. Apparently shaking up a person is one of them.
"No. I'm not going to scrub. I will take a key to the door, but no cleaning," she retorts. "I did enough of that. Two bloody years on that ship." Nose wrinkled, her tongue isn't stuck out. Girl has to mature a little. She shrugs her shoulders a little. "They keep going on about 'free' things here. Free this, free that, free lunch, free love."
*
Cable certainly embodies the world he grew up in. Sculpted for war, literally built cell by cell, piece by piece, twisting a tool of genocide for personal gain against all odds, battling fate as opposed to embracing it. Compared to Hope, whom in another life, another timeline, had the burden of such thrust upon her. Not an iota of genes or blood are shared between them, but that merely proves paternity is not something so simple. He's heavily thumped, causing the most muted of grunts and a heavy lean backwards, but much like a lion playing with cubs it's never very clear if he's actually affected or not. A hearty shudder like an unsolicited shiver up the spine and flex of muscle is her reward.
"You stay away from free love!" Cable states rather bluntly, pointing an accusing finger. "Thank god we're not a decade in the future…" Oh, that's a grimace alright. "But you complaining about living in this society's not why I came. Like any parent, you can come wash your clothes whenever you need to, but beyond that you're on your own." A dull twist of the head ends in a pop that sounds oddly non-organic. "There's the question of what to do while here. …If this isn't a real timeline, then setting up a perfect future's pointless. So is cleaning up the present. Outside preventing it's collapse, first and foremost… we need to find out where the 'prime' one is…"
*
That world may yet be coming. Nothing speaks to averting what must be. In the realms cosmic, certain facts are written hard on the genetics of the universe, inescapable no matter the dimension. Certain civilisations will rise. Others must fall. Heroes and villains step forth in the same likeness, despite the circumstances of birth or efforts to halt them. It may be said these form the foundation stones upon which the bridge of time is built, painstaking labours to avert its course a failure in the end. Mayhap her fate is foreordained as much as the war that will be his crucible, the crackle of celestial fire that tempers her and births him, perhaps for the express purpose. Stellar dynamos crackle to the hidden messages of fate, after all, whispering in the language of patient divinity.
Her jaw tightens and she lifts her head, daring him, a challenge as much as any redhead can be. "Why? Just sounds like they're handing out desserts. It's not like I am going to glut myself. What do you say all the time aside from duck and stay out of trouble and no don't touch that? Hmm. Hand me the spanner? No, everything in moderation." The curve of a smile burns behind the soldered smirk upon her features. "You can say that because you aren't female. You don't have people looking at you like a piece of produce or a doll or a… something." The future did not equip her with enough adjectives and nouns. "They underestimate me and that's nothing new, but seriously, people get bent out of shape in the worst ways when I try to assert myself. My friends don't, thankfully, but sometimes I catch even them. Like when I met the aliens, big deal. One was a talking tree. We got along great, though you'd think I blew up a moon the way some people took it. So then." Business. She can work with this, circling him like a cat sizing up whether she can take down a full-grown wildebeest or elephant. Probably not. But one has to learn nonetheless how to fell a giant.
"While we are here? We ought to accelerate some of the positives of the future, like getting over the racial and gender divide. That would help at least redirect energy to something worthwhile, like, oh, not annihilating themselves while aliens are floating around," she murmurs. "I don't know, though, because that's the way I was molded. Prime, hmm? Where do you think that is?"
*
"You're not old enough to take some things in moderation." Cable states, very firmly. "Remember the… huh. Wait." He suddenly stops, crossing his arms and drumming his fingers on his bicep. "I never gave you the sex talk, since we were living alone in some barren wasteland fleeing from Bishop. Uh. Okay." He takes a deep, stabilizing breath. "Well, when a man loves a woman, he's succumbing to the delusion of chemical biology. Like all drugs, eventually you grow tolerant. Sure, you can try to mix it up, squeeze out another dose, but it's doomed to fail, and in spectacular fashion. Sometimes in the midst of all this, you have a kid. Any questions?"
Of course, the whole issue with gender and race relations just makes Cable… make quite a face. He'd rather not touch on that. There's no good way to change the world, beyond what happened already in the majority history across the cosmos. Gradual. It'll get better. 'Suck it up', he doesn't actually bother saying. No particular reaction to Hope maneuvering follows, arms remaining crossed before his barrel chest.
"That's too slow. And unstable. If we wanted to make a better world, we'd try to nip the Mutant racism thing at the bud. That boulder is just about to roll down the hill, but it hasn't yet. …If I had an easy answer to that, I'd be doing it already, but." Well, there's little need to explain the sheer gravitas of grief caused by the Powered vs Unpowered question, let alone in a world where being male, female, or even ethnic causes no shortage of issues already…
"I don't know. Uh. I'd estimate it's somewhere in the… 2010's… middish, probably? So not 50-odd years in the past, for damn sure."
*
"I'm not old enough? For what, cancer? An excess of staying awake, or music in a big fancy concert hall?" Hope challenges him there without even pausing, stepping into that one altogether fearlessly, aware he might bat her down and he might not be exactly fast enough to capture her. Unto that good night doth the raging fury of a redhead go, only to discover the discomfort thrown forth upon her by the immovable force of wise adulthood. "Procreation is the failure of chemicals that produce a kid? Like, you suddenly shake something up wrong and bam! Small person?"
Medieval screws in the Inquisition might have been considerably less effective than subjecting a teenager to asking parents of certain facts. Or questioning those absolute truths. "I think something is missing in that. So you're saying have no artificial attachments because all attachments are artificial and the whole tolerance thing is … something? Throw me a line, that doesn't tell me anything."
It's a balancing act of matters, and her lips flatten as the topic turns from free love to freedom of the species, or lacks thereof. A pained frown curves her lips. "Oh no. No, the racism think wakes him up like four times out of five. Even if they don't remember his name, it's the whole thousand voices crying out in the darkness."
*
"No, procreation is the result of the chemical lie that is love doing what it's meant to do, cause excessive amounts of sex." Cable offers matter of factly, keeping some kind of lazy interest on Hope. If she had a baseball bat she really couldn't do much to him just standing there, although he never trained her to defend herself beyond mundane threats without her powers anyway. "I don't really care if you run around having sex, it's plenty fun. But if you get knocked up, I'll disown you. And if I find out you're stupid enough to fall in love…" A slow shake of the head. There's a disturbing lack of joking to that tone, for both examples…
"Either way, we should really find someone with access to dimensions and time streams to talk to. You know anyone like that? If I wandered around a bit, I could get a sense where we are, in the great self-devouring cosmic snake that is the multiverse…"
*
Considering those powers remained a hidden force for any number of years, he might be surprised how flexible she is to moving without them. Much of the time, it happens. Her laughter plays over the wind. "What? You believe the chemical lie that winds around us in loyalty and something stronger than blood is easily broken? Like that?" A snap of her fingers makes a sharp, short retort. "So if that's love then what stops people who are related from doing all kinds of things?" Her brows rise slightly, a graceful arc painted the higher as thoughts are considered, scenery chewed in detail. "Let me get this straight, go have lots of sex because it's fun. Recognize it's a biological impulse without any actual emotional connection, that's a falsity based on biological imperative. I get shaken up too much and somehow there becomes a hormone imbalance and then I get pregnant. Then you disown me."
Blink. Blink. Very cautious blink, and she tips her head. "Is this something to do with why your dad got rid of us? Like, it was bad to care? It's not like people are falling at my feet in love, or else we wouldn't be chased around by a fucking madman with a big gun, last I checked." Dominoes lined up in careful lines start to topple with the slightest breath, the butterfly wingbeat before the tempest stirred on the antipodeal side. "Are you saying you don't love me, Nathan?"
The Ouroboros formed by Jormungandr might be hiding his face under his tail in that slipstream. She doesn't confront him so much as stare at Cable with those unreadable, unfathomable eyes that belong to someone centuries old, not so young.
*
"…" Cable makes a face, scratching underneath his chin. For all that Hope knows about her father, he has said very little about his past, who he is as a person, where he came from. What it was really like growing up and battling Apocalypse. Much could be inferred, such as how eerily good he was surviving and maneuvering within an utter wasteland. Yet there's always been something, some clue, some hint that there's a deeper, painful secret that she's not been privy to. It seems relevant to the conversation, as the myriad subtle nuances he generally has when pressured about that life is coming to the surface now.
"I suppose… to be more clear, lust isn't love. Physical attraction is physical attraction. Everyone has useless things in common. There's a difference between that and… what love really is…" He somewhat trails off, scratching the back of his head. This isn't the direction he wanted to go, darnit. Hope's turning things around on him pretty well.
"Fine… you want my opinion? Love and trust are pretty much the same thing. Both are dangerous, and both are a hell of a liability. I've…" He stops dead, and for a brief moment, the almost impossibly rare instance of distant emotional pain. "Love. Families. It's a weakness. An avoidable weakness enemies will exploit. Ruthlessly. …the greater good, Hope. The long term. That's… that's always got to be number one. Emotions can't cloud judgement… no matter what. You understand?"
*
The redheaded girl ceases to stalk, coming to a stop before the man she calls many things, not all of them fit for polite conversation in 1964. Most of them not so, in fact, for the ladies of the age would be clutching their pearls and gasping for air at the mere thought of their entanglements. Nonetheless, she doesn't quite put her hands on the curve of her waist above her hips, anticipating a showdown of a sort that might end up with the need to float or move, fast. And if there is one thing she holds advantage over most people on, it's speed.
"You seem to miss something in that equation. I get I may be younger than you." How much isn't clear. Her aging has always been troubled by the temporal knots and shifts in their lives, least of which is the cosmic energy that sometimes engages weirdly with them both. She purses her lips, edging around the hardship of a subject that seems to be scouring him raw, more than usual, showing the cobalt gleam of steel under the careworn soot patina. "Yes, trust comes hard and takes time. No one can force it into bloom and grow, we agree there. When you trust someone, you make vulnerabilities plain, things another person could exploit if it goes wrong. Neither you or I can really predict the future, so who knows how that turns out. And you better be careful about whom you open up to. I have that much."
Chewing on her inner lip for a moment, she still holds his gaze as long as he meets hers. "Every living organism wants to survive. We try to make the world better, and sometimes that means hard choices. Burying Hope." The namesake. Not herself. "Running. Going where we have to be, not where we always want to be. But that little component, 'we?' Us? Being a lone saviour stripped of emotions, prone to judgment, is a harsh, cold existence. Is it worth it to see humanity survive another century when reduced to little better than a robot, an automaton, a holo? I would rather be me, and have you, with all the flaws and a risk of danger to go with it, than stand alone and isolated from everything 'round me in a future empty of meaning and value. What is the purpose, if not determined by something other than a platonic, idealised virtue or because the mission requires it, and the mission is held together only because you've been fighting so long, there's no other point? Something tells me there has to be a deeper purpose than that." She plucks her t-shirt out of her jeans where the hem seems to have caught, a quick snag. "Yes, I can be ruthless. But you know, Stryfe? Bishop? They encourage it. I gotta wonder why."
*
That's definitely been hard to figure out. The Hope that Cable knew was young. Naive. Still two or three years from becoming a woman. And beyond that, still innocent. Still pure. Locking eyes with the one staring back at him, physically older, mentally perhaps much more, it becomes apparent then how different she is. At the moment, the elder Summers isn't sure how he feels about that. All he knows is that it's not at all what he wanted her to become.
"Right. I taught you about trust." Cable agrees, somewhat carefully, rather sure things are going elsewhere down this road. When things turn towards that, a long sigh thrums out of Cable, turning to glance over the city skylines contemplatively. "You're right. One person isn't enough. …Not as I am now. Not with my current level of power. I realize that. I need allies… people I can trust. People like you. Do I love you? What do you consider love? Tell me that."
After a few moments, "But we've gotten rather detracted from what I was trying to say. I'm saying have fun with Tommy, but you're better off sticking to just 'fun'. If you want some advice from someone with a long trek on those roads, take that from your old man. Do with it what you will. Maybe some lessons need to be learned… but what happened to me isn't likely to happen to you." A few moments after, "Preferably, ever."
*
Purity means not crossing paths with a near immortal murderer, or being flung across the stars. Innocence when knowing how to wire a yard with SEMTEX at seven is not precisely the yardstick most would hold her up to. Sometimes the imperfections form the sum of the purity in a person, topped off by a measure of idealism cobbled out of the pastiche everyone gathers walking through life.
"You're an idiot." She declares that with utter finality, three words nailed down, the jilted tongue of no angel measuring them out liberally. Nothing of anger conveyed in her tone gives them force. Instead she speaks with youth's certainty, invulnerability coupled to the untarnished certainty of it. "I know you love me. You risked your life over and over when you never had to. No one required you to take care of me, and there were plenty of times when you could have gone elsewhere to pursue this vast great dream, probably feeling a little regret, sure. No obligation, though. Something held us, holds us, brings us back over and over again to the same plaes and points. I'd say the universe has a sense of humour but that implies the universe is alive and I'm not really thrilled by that notion." Shoulders shrug at this confession, rolling with it. So much of her existence requires that. "Even with all the power in the world, it isn't enough to make up for being alone. And if I have any say in it, you won't be alone." He looks away from her and what is she to do? Pull him back, somehow, from cities full of shrouded memories and poignant horrors.
"Do you get what I'm saying? That I do love you. Whatever fate has stuck me with, there is nothing worse than being made to live out some divine prophecy, separated, alone. Hurting. I don't have the answers or the remedies to whatever hurt you," she lifts her hand, reaching out to the side unchallenged by the virus, though gods know how much power flows through them both — her at his highest potential, him at whatever balance lies there at a given hour. "I can only patch up what I see, or try to give you what I'm named for. Maybe you will speak of what wounded you so badly. Maybe you can forget in me. But whatever it is, I am here."
*
Cable arrives from RP Nexus.
*
Cable has arrived.
*
Oh, Cable tried. He truly did. For long, long years. Not to be a father figure. Not to change who she was. But that's just not possible, when so much time is spent with the only person a young girl has ever known. So many dreams, so many desires, and like many things he puts all his effort into, it doesn't come out the way he dreamed. Perhaps his worst, most personal frustration has always been that one, consistent problem. "Pardon?" he answers when called an idiot, turning back with an expression somewhat similar to confused irritation. "Don't give me that crap. You know why I did what I did. You were Hope. You were going to fix everything. The destined, fated child. I knew my role in that, and I tried to do it the best I could… everyone tried to stop me. Even people I considered friends and allies. I did what had to be done. And I'd do it again."
He turns then, looking intently in Hope's direction. "Things are different here. I said this before. You're still powerful, still a conduit. But the burden of that fate's gone. At least, the one another timeline inscribed. Maybe you were brought here to stop the fall of Mutancy in the first place, while it's still early. I don't know. I really don't. …but that doesn't explain what brought me here."
And then, something of a cold expression. "But if it was me or the world. Pulling the trigger, or some madman like Thanos or Darkseid destroying Earth. You'd pull it. Wouldn't you?"
*
One step in. He has so much size on her, does Nathan Summers, brooding and daunting to even those not of mortal make. She will certainly quail before the likes of a Hulk or likely the highest Asgardians, and wasn't the whole point of subjecting her to every possible permutation of ruin and danger to temper those feelings? Hope, though, has a different relationship to him than a green giant or a would-be god. Familiarity breeds fearlessness rather than contempt. "Come what may," she answers him, as if the permutations could possibly be clear on what she means. "The burden is there. Step out of one timeline into the next, that abrogates me of nothing. I wish it did. I'm not convinced that something makes me exempt wherever we go. As for you, stop and think for a second. Your role isn't fulfilled either, and you were tempered as a blade for a war yet to come, or a shield against a collision course."
So many questions. Her shoulders tick back and she raises her chin. Lines radiate against her furrowed brow. "You know the worst part of being messiah? No one ever says what side they land on. Usually you think it would be humanity's, but what if humanity isn't worth it and the other side is? I have to think about that a lot. Who. What. Why. Would I put the proverbial blade, if I could, to Apocalypse's throat? Thanos? Stryfe? Could I put you down? You wouldn't be you destroying the world, so I suppose that answers that. Nathan, you are not the slayer of worlds. You are not the destroyer of vast legions. You could be, but you aren't. And if you were, it's a moot point because your identity would be gone. Though if a shard of you remained, I would throw everything I had to bring it out, resurrect it, and beat back whatever was there. What he did does not define you. You are not alone that way."
*
"I was tempered for a war I nearly finished." Cable suddenly snaps back, going somewhat on the defensive. "The whole reason I'm here right now is I was stupid enough to hurl myself after Apocalypse in his last-ditch effort to flee the timestream!" He then goes somewhat quiet. Wait, he shouldn't say that sort of thing, probably. Being an abberant dimensional figure from a potentially dying reality is not generally viewed positively. Well, maybe she'll overlook it. "Ugh… I'm not even sure how we got to this topic. Listen. Let's just… back up a little, alright?"
*
Her eyebrows arch as the lance goes straight through the beating heart, skewering Hope to pieces in a instant. There may be a moment when she yields, the rest of her purpose crystallizing around a nameless force in resisting. Flawed being she is, the redhead is unlikely to overlook certain things. Some, yes, but the rest are likely.
"Then maybe you knew your answer all along." It's all she can say, quiet as a sort. Quality control, then, to weed out the darker ideas taking seed and slain in a season lasting a mere second. She rubs her hand up and down over her opposite arm, cupping her palm across her shoulder, and dragging down. "Sure. Then what do you want to say?" What else is there to say, in the face of a tabula rasa, the slate gone blank? The cold of it seeps into her skin, a dull ache that warrants a shiver as the rest of her entirely human flesh responds.
*
"…" Well, all of this really went to hell for Cable. He can see it in Hope's face, able to read the minutia of her expression in a way likely few others can. His own eyes drop to the roof, unable to maintaint contact, in a rare exhibition that likely confirms many thoughts she has. Slowly he turns back towards the broad city, a heavy burst of wind rustling amongst the pair, sending his cloak billowing against the solemn monument of his broad back as shadows lengthen in the growing flush of a crimson sunset. "Nothing important." he finally decides, going quiet.
*
"It is important." Impudence is forever the curse of a redhead, and the braid swinging over her shoulder Hope has little patience for. She seizes the elastic, tugging until it slides off the foxpoint tail, caught on her palm. A quick shove into her pocket leaves those bloody locks blowing free from the unraveling plait. "Don't turn away from me. We both know perfectly well some risks can only fall on us, and that is never going to change that we're a team." Words serve many purposes, beacons in the dark or slaying bolts that hit an artery. Until launched, she has no idea if Nathan interprets her purpose correctly. "It matters to you. Don't downplay that, and I am going to listen, it's just… I don't know what I'm supposed to say, this isn't something anyone ever explained!"
Biting her lip, she gives a savage gesture to a city standing gilded in the sunlight of spring, her other arm crossed protectively over her chest. His size and armour forever stands as an odd kind of bulk, but with no more than jeans and a t-shirt, she has nothing to give her an equivalent bulk. The air vibrates around her in sympathy with the emotional rush seething at cross-purposes, a torrent tossing handfuls of gravel in perplexing currents, landing harmlessly. "Show me what you are seeing, thinking? Don't shut me out, I'm… You don't have to doubt me. I am not trying to be a thorn in your side. Talking past one another is not that hard to stop." A breath. The tone of her voice changes, the notion of it something entirely different. "Nathan."
*
"…" After a few moments, a slow and broad shrug leaves Cable, a seismic ripple of heavily sculpted muscles infused with biotics and cybernetic metal. "I'm not the Nathan who raised you." he states, although with some assumption that this is not entirely surprising. Both of them are aware of the Multiverse, after all. Countless timelines, countless iterations of reality. With neither born in this particular backwards nation, the idea they would come from the same place, same time, is fairly laughable and naive at best. "Worse than that. I believe I am a Nathan from a failure. One where I didn't… decide to go back in time. To undo Apocalypse. One where I stayed, refusing to give up. Fighting him to the bitter end. …That's not how things happen. Not the way… it's supposed to happen. When I chased him…" His hand comes up, gripping the side of his head with a grimace. "I saw myself. Countless ones. Countless worlds. Countless realities… I can't even give you a sense of what time was like during that. But you, Hope. I saw you, too. Every moment of you being raised." A long sigh leaves the titan at that. "Of course my emotions are different… I was watching a movie… I wasn't living it. But I'm notIThe person who raised you isn't me. I just can't… decieve you…" Another burst of wind, this gust more fierce, almost aggressive in the attempt to bear down an icy bite. "What I am… I know that the Cable Prime would destroy. I'm some goddamn temporal parasite. I guess I'm just accepting it, because maybe all I did was latch on to another failed reality…"
*
The stones skitter away in concentric rings, the rooftop dust flung in a bracketed spasm. What power is his may be diminished; in the displaced vigilante of a future age, it's there in the absolute present, and a twisted shard of pure telekinetic force wavers between Hope's splayed fingers. Teasing its edges like a cat's cradle offers some kind of subconscious satisfaction before collapsing the manifested impression. What banishing the mirrored force takes, she will never tell him, but her shoulders drop an inch or two. Cheeks puff out to allow a lengthy stream of air to escape through her rounded lips.
Unaccountably, she laughs. The hard, edged laugh of a survivor who stares into the face of certain destruction amassed on the horizon and gives the only expression left aside from despair.
"We stand on the fulcra of destiny and choice. The moments on which the future balances. Anything can happen." She shakes her head slightly, feeling out the shape of the truth. "After everything, everything, we come like this. I suppose there is a measurable chance we would have met another time. Here we are. And my father… isn't here. Can't be here without causing a paradox. You supplanted the place in the timeline. Then what. You have been a bystander to my existence, what then? What am I to you?"
*
There's a mild blink of surprise from Cable. He's not entirely sure what he expected from Hope, one of the rare incidents where within his decidedly thorough series of knowledge on her, he wasn't able to draw a conclusion. Glancing backwards, he just appraises her then. "What are you to me?" he repeats, turning back away once more. "That depends on who you're asking. Me? Or my memories of you?"
*
Head tipped slightly to the side, Hope's emerald gaze is intense enough to nail a man to the ground if it had tangible force. Though, in her case, it just might if piqued sufficiently. "Yes, Nathan. You, not some involuntary spatiotemporal echo or a reflexive answer you think that would impress me. You." A pause follows, and she says, "You already watched me rip apart a building and a few levels of the street for you so I think my position on the whole thing is pretty clear."
*
"Me." Cable repeats, as if the question is unusual. Perhaps it is. He has been working in this timeline as someone he's not. It is hard, often, to remember who he /is./ Not what he became, absorbing so many memories and timelines he was driven to the brink of madness, and had to isolate himself for months to psionically purge away the majority of it. "I think you're a person I'd have been very proud of to have raised." he settles. "But also, you've got a unique opportunity here. To put down the mantle of 'Messiah' and just live. Although you're right. This is a backwards non-progressive time in history I'm personally ashamed of. Still, there's worse places to be. I can tell you the right stocks to invest in, if you want to grow up rich?"
*
Taking stock of him matters more than really laughing at a bad joke. Her jaw works slightly and Hope doesn't even address the business of Messiah. They've already discussed that a few times, and where has it led them but a divide? Sometimes taking a risk entails putting herself in danger's target, and the crosshairs are leveled now. Walking up to Nathan, she extends her hand until it presses against his back, square between his shoulder blades if he still remains turned from her.
"Being rich matters for nothing. I want something, I suppose I could make it or take it." There is some quiet measured mischief in that, though occasionally stealing really fails to register on her morality scale. At least the targets aren't terribly problematic. He failed to give her that construct, or his prime self did. "Just live. Think you could do that under the same circumstances? Are you going to stop being the soldier, the assassin of Apocalypse, and set up house with some woman or run a mercenary company on the side and stop worrying? Name how many days you've spent in the same bed since you got here."
*
That back is strong, upright, resolute, confident. Even with all he said, that core of his being, that irrevocable will and survival, might be greater than memory. "All of them. I sleep on Graymalkin." is offered towards Hope, although with the tone of a joke himself. He understands what she meant, after all, even if the literal response hardly confirms it. "I'm dying, Hope." This is added almost casually. "I may have dragged it out, turned it to my advantage, made it a strength, but I can't stop it. A year. Two, perhaps. And in this reality, where the greatest scientific minds are not as keen as the Askani I came from, there's no chance of that changing."
*
The core of a person speaks volumes about their personality. Whether receptive or cold, strong or supple, she can infer a fair bit by a touch. Her fingers splay out wide as though to breach the distance between them, thumb spread to her pinkie, spanning as much as she can under the cloak. "See, we never stayed in the same bed two days in row after the fall of the country and the lizard people. That's telling," she murmurs, wry in spite of all. "Clearly you are not Nathan Summers. Prepare to be flung off this rooftop."
Her thumb skims a lazy arc, dragged top to bottom. Dying. Dying and death. Everyone is dying, but telling him that means nothing. "Two years to the virus. So are you going to jump to get away or pray that the brilliant minds among the stars are coming to us? See, here's the rub. One of my friends changes reality by thinking about it. And to hear tell, his mother and father are even better at it than he is." No pride there, just a fact. Her hand leaves his back and she circles around to face him, looking up, holding her ground against his shadow. "See, having contacts sometimes does something. Maybe that professor can do something. You told me another time it couldn't be stopped. And it was. So many copies of you went in between but…"
*
"We didn't have a space station at the time, or things'd probably have been easier." Nathan offers, matter of factly. "Most often, it crashes, then I pull it up and make a city, then it explodes. That hasn't happened here. Color me lucky." On the topic of his potential death, there's not much of a reaction to anything said by Hope. "That wormhole-spouting brat couldn't hope to help me at all. He barely understands what he's even doing. My problem's a little more inundated than that. And reality magic's not a kind mistress. Few errant words, and you can shatter even the Prime. Sure, if I was the main Cable, something'd come up to save me. But I'm not. Who knows? Lot can happen in a couple years, right?"
*
"He's one of a few, and smarter than you think. Experience has limited substitutes, but I know enough to know when someone is tagged important. Some of it isn't magic, that's the thing. I used it myself, once, against another time traveler. You know, he really didn't care much for that." She brushes away her crimson hair painted over her brow and lashing her cheekbones, a living, seething mass of luminosity toyed with by a feline breeze that knows no sense of personal space. Arguably neither can they.
A poke goes to the chest, that much said. "You sound fatalistic enough. Stop it. I don't have my father here, and he wouldn't tolerate it if he were. Mind you I don't think he or you would threaten to wash your mouth out with soap for voicing those dark thoughts, but…" Another flash of a smirk. Ball's in his court.
*
"I know he's intelligent. I was there for Mojo's bullshit. But there's smart, and there's intelligent. Don't make the assumption they are the same thing. One lets you make rational choices with facts. One lets you make rational choices with life." Cable mumbles, still scratching idly at the growing stubble of his cheek. Should really get back to caring for that more regularly. "Anyway. There's someone I'd like to meet. Maybe you know him. If the timeline is fucked up 50 years in the past, he might be around, too. The Grand Sorceror Supreme?"
*
"There are no sorcerers supreme sixty years in the future or six hundred or two hundred and twenty six. Not in the timelines I went to or cross-referenced, just so you know." No doubt that has to be entirely satisfying to hear. Hope shrugs her shoulders. "That's not his title, he knows me, and I think he's coming by for dinner some time next week. I can mention it. But — and this is a really big ask, so it's clear — don't lie to him. Really. It never goes well. Fucking up, fucking, he has a sixth sense for that sort of thing. You can have your secrets and your privacy screen up, but false truths go over badly for that sort of man with a power I don't think I can touch."
Her hand falls away and then she withdraws back to the edge of the rooftop, sitting down and slinging her legs over the side, something to comfortable. It's easy there to stare out over the city.
*
"…huh." Cable states, sounding genuinely surprised. Both at the fact that he's actually here, and that he seems to have been also displaced to the current era. "I've never met him and don't know anything about him. Just that he exists. And… something similar to his title. But hey. I'm a time guardian. He's some sort of magic guardian. Makes sense to finally touch base." Does it mean anything that he'd be here? Probably not. Even cosmic beings populate dead timelines, and in many cases succeed beyond their wildest dreams at their terrible schemes. "I never lie." he accuses Hope, simply. "Sometimes I just don't say everything. There's a difference. Anyway, send him my way… if you, uh. Have dinner with him… …why are you having dinner with him, again?"
*
"Because, Nathan, he comes over or I go over and the bunch of us act kind of normal, eating food. It's hard to pay for decent meals in this city without a proper job," finger quotes are employed by his redheaded ward. Messiah of all and none. She kicks her heel against the wall, staring down below. Hope smirks. "Because they probably want to make sure I haven't been shaken up like a badly built rocket every time time jumps. Good times, trying to save the world. Or mostly this patch of it because I happen to like my apartment, you know?" Her fingers are scoured against her cheekbones and slid down her chin, that moody effect wrapped around her like a cloak. Only so much to be absorbed in one sitting. The cold sends a frisson through her bones, and she arches to its claws.
*
There's a rather loud snort at Hope giving such a mundane answer to his question. The fact such is completely reasonable is neither here nor there to the giant man, really. Apparently, the idea of having a sufficient structure to find time for lazy dinners and quiet appreciation for life doesn't naturally exist within him. "Well. Either way. If we want results, we'd need a few like-minded people. Domino fell off the grid… I don't know people here as well as you. Think there might be a couple hiding somewhere…?"
*
A nod answers the request and the statement of Domino's non-existence, a wince colouring that for a moment. "I'm sorry. I know that you cared for her." Enough that Mojo picked up on it. Though the tone of Hope's voice changes in that, an echo of its usual brilliance, thinned and washed out to a neutral point. So too her expression carries little animation, eyes distant and cloudy when trained on the horizon line somewhere past the buildings blocking the way. Her arms cross in front of her knees, palms cupped over the bend, feet pointed down. Rocks skitter around her, drawn in whorls and agitated patterns.
*
"Hey now, like most of my relationships, that one was purely in my head. Far as I know, we didn't ever even share a beer here. Mojo probably knew that we tend to, uh. Hook up. Of course, she wouldn't have any way of knowing that, but I do." Which means the giant yellow blob was intentionally aggravating Cable about it, certainly a sensible course of action. At this point, he's not entirely sure what to do or say. So he makes to settle a large hand atop her head, and apply a generous number of hair-ruffles in lazy affection.
*
Hope closes her eyes, pinching her brow between thumb and index finger. "Then I am doubly sorry that a consolation was lost to you and projected on a hundred wavelengths through much of time and space. I really don't need that slug insinuating our love lives are tangled or complicated. Because that makes for dull viewing." Drawing a deep breath fills her lungs and swells her chest against the cotton of her shirt, the cold for a moment forgotten as she grips her knees the tighter. Then he flutters her heavy, loose hair, the reaction is near instantaneous. Tipping her head back, she says, "Not like you -comb- that."
*
"Don't give me too much credit. I don't have a love life to get entangled. That's why he had to reach across dimensions for a common thread to dangle at me. Was probably a bit less topical than you and Tommy. Dunno what you see in him, though. Isn't his schtick being awful fast?" He finishes by attempting to frizzle the hell out of those crimson locks, complete with a tactical whir of his pinpoint telekinetics, that would probably take an hour to fix with a mundane brush. "Long hair is a tactical failure on every level! It has no merit beyond attracting the opposite sex!"
*
"That's why you didn't give me a brush or a comb? To avoid attracting the opposite sex? To—" That is so unfair, ruining her hair, her fingers swatting at her bangs. Hope glares up at him. "You didn't want me attracted to anyone, fine, we had practically no humans around or no where we stayed because it was dangerous. Or your other self thought that way. What about you? I have no idea where you stand and how would I know what the hell normal people do with one another? I haven't been around them for more than two or three months in my life, however long that was or is." He can use pinpoint telekinesis; she can throw words.
*
"Short hair is smarter. Can't get grabbed, can't get in your face, easier to maintain, easier to hide. Although if you really have been around people as briefly as you claim, you jumped into the boyfriend camp awful fast… Well, all those years alone with what magazines you scrounged, can hardly blame some pent-up curiosity." Suddenly his fingers splay, a couple inches over Hope's hair. Like a strangely intimate wind, every long crimson hair would be swept back, and in only perhaps a half-dozen seconds, it would be settled almost perfectly groomed down her back. Beyond what any brush could accomplish, manipulated by the individual strand to perfect arrangement. "For what it's worth, I do like long hair. If you aren't evaluating it in a battle scenario."
*
Hope tilts her head slightly and huffs out a breath, the irritation floating through with a dark sense of banal amusement. "Easier to grab, quicker to wash, better for showing off the lines of the skull. I'm not shearing it down like yours, accept that." The faintest glimmer halos her pupils, a sheen of blue-white, bleeding along her grass-green irises in a starburst as she tilts her head this way and that, measured against where the rainfall goes. Psionic individualization of her hair strands is a talent, though one better performed by a certain Inhuman princess. "You don't get to know what I learned like that."
Darkness saturates the velvet and whiskey words on her tongue. "This isn't battle, is it?" What it is, she is beyond saying, arching her back until her vertebrae crack to release the pressure.
Beyond the precipice is freefall if she dares to look down.
*