Madelyne stares at the tree a moment longer, expression distant and inscrutable, before shaking her head. "Let's head over."
Her door is impossible to miss; it's the one carved with flaming pentagrams and crowned with bone. Her nostalgic smile would probably unsettle many other people, but she doubts it will bother Edwin.
As she opens it she murmurs, "You know, I've had three of these, and this is the first time he got it right."
"It's beautiful." No, he's not joking. He touches the wood next to one of the carvings as he goes by, not wanting to chance the decorations being something actually magical. "I only ever stayed in one place before the barge, an old inn, so that's the room that mine was at first. It's a greenhouse now--that was Hunter's idea, when he saw how much I liked plants."
That startles a genuine smile out of her, earnest in a way that makes her look young. The Embassy has become a refuge, but she can tell how few people are comfortable there. (Alex tries his best, bless him, but he's as much a fish out of water as he ever was.)
Their limited tastes are hardly her problem, but having someone appreciate it is still refreshing.
His own warmth at the topic of Hunter Tepes is obvious. "Yeah! Yeah, he was. He... He was the best. He is the best."
Edwin smiles at the floor. "He never forced me into things, even when he could have. Even when some wardens might say he should have. He always made sure we were working together, that I knew I had choices and that they'd make a difference, even when I'd fucked up something big. He-- There was a lot that scared me, a lot, and he never got impatient about anything, always let me have time to think, worked hard to help me calm down when I was upset so we could talk about it. And at the end of it-- at the end of it, he got me and my brother, the John in my timeline, bodies that we could actually use, that were ours, and could hold everything we are. He used his deal for that."
She's listening with cautious optimism, brow furrowed as she considers what that could be like, how much it could have changed - could still change, if she just -
Then Edwin casually drops a bombshell, and she stares at him like he's just told her two plus two equals five, actually.
"He did. I didn't even ask him, he offered. My brother was going to use his to get me a body, if he needed to, if he got it before I got one, but Hunter just... wanted to give his to me."
That's about when he realizes there's a precedent there that he was not primed to follow.
He looks up finally, to see the expression on Madelyne's face.
"There are some people I... hurt, killed, whose lives I want to save. But that doesn't have to be this deal. If there's something you need, something the Admiral could help with... I'll give you the deal from our pairing too. I was lucky. I don't want to be the only one who is."
Her expression is, to put it lightly, viscerally stunned. That's not how it works, that's not how it ever works. Even when Jean shared her memories - well, she said it herself, giving them to Madelyne didn't mean taking them away from her. Illyana chose her to rule Limbo out of understanding, out of camaraderie, but she wanted to give it up.
Hunter gave Edwin his life back, and in exchange took nothing at all; in exchange he gave him an easier way to live it. And now Edwin wants to -
She's already shaking her head by time he finishes.
"I don't - look, contracts are something I can accept." Of course she doesn't realise, as she verbalises this, how many of her fundamental issues are bound up in it: that toxic, simmering blend of pride and despair. "I'll get them back myself. With a deal of my own, maybe, or some other way."
Madelyne opens her mouth for an obvious answer, because it feels so obvious. Then she shuts it, looks vaguely baffled, and stalls a bit by taking a seat at her desk and resting her chin in her hand. (It's the obvious choice for the file, and has the largest chairs. At the moment they're cushioned in light green, with high backs that flare into bat wings.)
"An exchange...makes sense. Blood for blood, power for power, I can trust that." She gestures at the wall behind her, which showcases both painted vistas of Limbo (and one, in a far corner, of Alaska) along with a few mounted horns and claws. "That's how Limbo functions - no matter who you are, you're bound by your word."
"This is the same, isn't it?" He sits, fusses the file into tidiness. "I'm giving you my word that you'll get a deal when you graduate. Malcolm always says the inmates are the ones doing the real work. So, you do the work and you get a deal."
It's hard to distrust him, but that just makes her anxious. Her hand drops to curl on the desk, and with a sharp shake of her head, "And then I'll owe you. Because that's how it works if you want to survive. If you think you can be the exception, you'll only be destroyed."
There's more than bitterness in her voice. Dread creeps around the edges, because she'll be damned if she watches that happen again and because - "I'll never be beholden to anyone, ever again, no matter how sincere they think they are. Reality always comes calling."
There's more than one thing playing in her mind as she says all of this, clashing in a dissonant chorus. Her voice and the man who betrayed her; her voice and the man who created her to be betrayed.
"For better or worse, in sickness and in health, 'til death do us part." "You used me!" "Child, that's why you were made."
Then, the most quiet and distant, her voice alone: "Where does it say that you have to be a mutant to believe what the X-Men stand for, to fight by their side?"
She doesn't mean to share any of that, but the door she opened in the common room was never actually closed.
It feels like a test, like his first real test as a warden. There's a conflicted mishmash panic of What would Hunter/John/Jedao/Arthur do? Then another voice, quiet but firm: No, what do I want to do?
Edwin takes a deep breath and nods. "Okay. But it's yours if you change your mind."
Hearing that gentler maelstrom makes her blood run cold and her nails dig into her desk, because she knows what it means - he heard her, he -
He's not calling her out on any of it. Just giving her another choice.
Madelyne closes her eyes, releases the breath building up before it explodes in her chest, and nods. "All right."
When she opens her eyes, they're locked onto her file. There's nothing in it she wants to hear, she's sure, but it's all something she knows. Something solid instead of treading uncharted waters. "So. Once upon a time..."
It starts where she thinks it will: in Nathaniel Essex's laboratory.
He opens up the file with a deep preparatory breath, then remembers one other thing.
"If there's anything you want to say more about, or you think the Admiral didn't cover things fairly, or anything, tell me and we can stop and talk about it. And-- I know you said you wanted to do it all at once, but it's okay if we start and that changes. If it's not true any more, we can stop."
He tentatively reaches out, doesn't touch her, but puts his fingertips very close to her hand. A friendly presence on offer.
Her postures eases as he speaks, though it never quite reaches 'relaxed'; she's so used to ripping her power back with bruised and bloody hands, and having it simply offered is deeply disconcerting.
Still, she lets her fingertips skim that last scrap of distance, accepts at least a fleeting touch as she meets his eyes and nods.
"It will - " Her grimace is bleak and weary and frustrated. "It'll start in Nebraska, probably. I don't remember any of that, but I suppose no one remembers being - born." Made is so easy to fall back on, but then Sinister never actually gave her life. "...Tell me if it says anything about what the Phoenix did first?"
It doesn't; just that it finds her, and grants her something vaster and stranger than a soul.
"Do you want me to read it out loud?" He's already skimmed part of the first page, and he's already decided that if Nathan "Mister Sinister" Essex ever shows up on the barge he's teleporting the guy down to zero and punching him into a cell.
She immediately grimaces at the thought, which - says a lot by itself, probably.
"A summary is fine. Woke up, got memories suppressed or altered or implanted, started being a pilot?" Her voice softens on that last word, just a little. Joy and pride that was never quite tainted, not entirely.
She had time to live something of a life, before meeting Scott. However hollow it feels now, it did happen, and she was damn good at her job; the file will note her skill and dedication, and a man she risked her life to pull from the smoking wreckage of a crash - the same flavour of catastrophe that seemed to haunt her nightmares.
"I bet the enclosure can make a plane for you to fly. It's not as good as the real thing, maybe, but it's something?"
He flashes a tentative smile and keeps reading, pausing every so often to sum up what he's just gone over as he gets deeper into it all. The marriage, the Loki-given temporary powers, the child, the Marauders. And the more he reads about Scott Summers the more he wants to punch the guy into a cell next to Sinister. By the time he gets to the part about the nightmare where Scott and Jean walk away with Madelyne's son while she's a faceless mannequin abandoned and tricked into choosing to become a demon--
"I think. I think I need a break."
He is trying very hard not to be furious with pretty much everyone but Madelyne. She can probably feel it, through that door she opened that he hasn't shut, the way there's a psychic storm gathering around him.
"...I - maybe." Not the same responsibility, the same trust, but - sitting in the cockpit again would be nice. Soaring over the countryside, even if it wasn't truly brimming with life. "I could teach you, if you want." She's not sure when he'd need to know how to fly a cargo plane, but the Barge puts you through all kinds of bullshit, and she has no idea what his native reality is like.
She keeps her composure through the downward spiral of her life, though a loose page or wisp of hair will flutter here and there - the lonely birth of her son, the attack by the Marauders that ripped him from her arms, the dream that doomed her.
Feeling someone else's righteous anger is almost like an anchor, one she's never quite felt the shape of.
"Yeah, I did too." It's flat and dry, but not truly hostile. She hasn't slammed that door, after all.
He does it slowly, tentatively, so he won't startle her and she can indicate if it's unwelcome--that's the sense she'll get first, the impression of psychic request. If and only if he feels consent, he'll wrap her in the protective warmth of a young god only half aware of its own power, a firm metaphysical hug, a shield.
"No one here will treat you that way, and if they try I'll--" He stops himself. Death threats are not a thing he does any more. "I'll scare the fucking shit out of them and throw them into the nets."
She shies away from the mental contact, at first, sullenly instinctive. But he isn't pushing, and he feels like - like the hearth that was Jean's soul, before it was snuffed out.
So, after a beat of strained hesitation where he doesn't push her, she closes her eyes and lets herself sink into it.
Still, she murmurs low and sharp, "Careful. I'll always encourage bloodshed on my behalf."
"I won't make them bleed a lot," he says, with pointed innocence. After a second he adds, "I'd like learning to fly. It's something my brother hasn't done yet, I think."
"Papercuts only, I can work with that." Despite herself, that darkly playful smirk broadens into something warmer as she nods.
"It's a lot to focus on all at once, it took - " The smile drops abruptly. Mostly to herself, she mutters, "Stupid."
And then, when she meets his eyes again, "I didn't really learn, did I. All that knowledge was pre-implanted."
She never tried to figure out which flight was actually her first. Which cargo she was actually responsible for, which people she actually ferried safely.
He studies her face, trying to sort through his thoughts as carefully as possible before he says anything. He doesn't want to mess this up, he doesn't want to upset her or hurt her or say something that will make her not want to talk to him.
"Why..." A pause, to see if he's phrasing it properly in his own head, which doesn't mean that it's phrased right, but he's trying. "If you love the memories, why can't they be yours, no matter who put them there? Someone else isn't the one who has them. They don't own those memories. They're yours now."
Her expression had gone flat again, but as he speaks the edges begin to soften; she can't help but think of other memories that weren't quite hers, that she was so desperate to reclaim, that she was given instead.
But there is a difference, and her gaze drops as she pulls her hands back and crosses her arms, trying to articulate it.
"He still designed them. He still chose them to make me the - the perfect bait. He chose what and who I would love." Her nails dig into her arms, hard enough to draw blood if not for the mystically resilient fabric of her sleeves.
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Madelyne stares at the tree a moment longer, expression distant and inscrutable, before shaking her head. "Let's head over."
Her door is impossible to miss; it's the one carved with flaming pentagrams and crowned with bone. Her nostalgic smile would probably unsettle many other people, but she doubts it will bother Edwin.
As she opens it she murmurs, "You know, I've had three of these, and this is the first time he got it right."
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Their limited tastes are hardly her problem, but having someone appreciate it is still refreshing.
"Hunter - that was your warden, right?"
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Edwin smiles at the floor. "He never forced me into things, even when he could have. Even when some wardens might say he should have. He always made sure we were working together, that I knew I had choices and that they'd make a difference, even when I'd fucked up something big. He-- There was a lot that scared me, a lot, and he never got impatient about anything, always let me have time to think, worked hard to help me calm down when I was upset so we could talk about it. And at the end of it-- at the end of it, he got me and my brother, the John in my timeline, bodies that we could actually use, that were ours, and could hold everything we are. He used his deal for that."
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Then Edwin casually drops a bombshell, and she stares at him like he's just told her two plus two equals five, actually.
"He just - gave you his deal?"
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"He did. I didn't even ask him, he offered. My brother was going to use his to get me a body, if he needed to, if he got it before I got one, but Hunter just... wanted to give his to me."
That's about when he realizes there's a precedent there that he was not primed to follow.
He looks up finally, to see the expression on Madelyne's face.
"There are some people I... hurt, killed, whose lives I want to save. But that doesn't have to be this deal. If there's something you need, something the Admiral could help with... I'll give you the deal from our pairing too. I was lucky. I don't want to be the only one who is."
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Hunter gave Edwin his life back, and in exchange took nothing at all; in exchange he gave him an easier way to live it. And now Edwin wants to -
She's already shaking her head by time he finishes.
"I don't - look, contracts are something I can accept." Of course she doesn't realise, as she verbalises this, how many of her fundamental issues are bound up in it: that toxic, simmering blend of pride and despair. "I'll get them back myself. With a deal of my own, maybe, or some other way."
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"Why?"
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"An exchange...makes sense. Blood for blood, power for power, I can trust that." She gestures at the wall behind her, which showcases both painted vistas of Limbo (and one, in a far corner, of Alaska) along with a few mounted horns and claws. "That's how Limbo functions - no matter who you are, you're bound by your word."
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There's more than bitterness in her voice. Dread creeps around the edges, because she'll be damned if she watches that happen again and because - "I'll never be beholden to anyone, ever again, no matter how sincere they think they are. Reality always comes calling."
There's more than one thing playing in her mind as she says all of this, clashing in a dissonant chorus. Her voice and the man who betrayed her; her voice and the man who created her to be betrayed.
"For better or worse, in sickness and in health, 'til death do us part."
"You used me!" "Child, that's why you were made."
Then, the most quiet and distant, her voice alone:
"Where does it say that you have to be a mutant to believe what the X-Men stand for, to fight by their side?"
She doesn't mean to share any of that, but the door she opened in the common room was never actually closed.
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Edwin takes a deep breath and nods. "Okay. But it's yours if you change your mind."
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He's not calling her out on any of it. Just giving her another choice.
Madelyne closes her eyes, releases the breath building up before it explodes in her chest, and nods. "All right."
When she opens her eyes, they're locked onto her file. There's nothing in it she wants to hear, she's sure, but it's all something she knows. Something solid instead of treading uncharted waters. "So. Once upon a time..."
It starts where she thinks it will: in Nathaniel Essex's laboratory.
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"If there's anything you want to say more about, or you think the Admiral didn't cover things fairly, or anything, tell me and we can stop and talk about it. And-- I know you said you wanted to do it all at once, but it's okay if we start and that changes. If it's not true any more, we can stop."
He tentatively reaches out, doesn't touch her, but puts his fingertips very close to her hand. A friendly presence on offer.
"It's your file. We'll read it how you want to."
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Still, she lets her fingertips skim that last scrap of distance, accepts at least a fleeting touch as she meets his eyes and nods.
"It will - " Her grimace is bleak and weary and frustrated. "It'll start in Nebraska, probably. I don't remember any of that, but I suppose no one remembers being - born." Made is so easy to fall back on, but then Sinister never actually gave her life. "...Tell me if it says anything about what the Phoenix did first?"
It doesn't; just that it finds her, and grants her something vaster and stranger than a soul.
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"A summary is fine. Woke up, got memories suppressed or altered or implanted, started being a pilot?" Her voice softens on that last word, just a little. Joy and pride that was never quite tainted, not entirely.
She had time to live something of a life, before meeting Scott. However hollow it feels now, it did happen, and she was damn good at her job; the file will note her skill and dedication, and a man she risked her life to pull from the smoking wreckage of a crash - the same flavour of catastrophe that seemed to haunt her nightmares.
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He flashes a tentative smile and keeps reading, pausing every so often to sum up what he's just gone over as he gets deeper into it all. The marriage, the Loki-given temporary powers, the child, the Marauders. And the more he reads about Scott Summers the more he wants to punch the guy into a cell next to Sinister. By the time he gets to the part about the nightmare where Scott and Jean walk away with Madelyne's son while she's a faceless mannequin abandoned and tricked into choosing to become a demon--
"I think. I think I need a break."
He is trying very hard not to be furious with pretty much everyone but Madelyne. She can probably feel it, through that door she opened that he hasn't shut, the way there's a psychic storm gathering around him.
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She keeps her composure through the downward spiral of her life, though a loose page or wisp of hair will flutter here and there - the lonely birth of her son, the attack by the Marauders that ripped him from her arms, the dream that doomed her.
Feeling someone else's righteous anger is almost like an anchor, one she's never quite felt the shape of.
"Yeah, I did too." It's flat and dry, but not truly hostile. She hasn't slammed that door, after all.
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"No one here will treat you that way, and if they try I'll--" He stops himself. Death threats are not a thing he does any more. "I'll scare the fucking shit out of them and throw them into the nets."
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So, after a beat of strained hesitation where he doesn't push her, she closes her eyes and lets herself sink into it.
Still, she murmurs low and sharp, "Careful. I'll always encourage bloodshed on my behalf."
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"It's a lot to focus on all at once, it took - " The smile drops abruptly. Mostly to herself, she mutters, "Stupid."
And then, when she meets his eyes again, "I didn't really learn, did I. All that knowledge was pre-implanted."
She never tried to figure out which flight was actually her first. Which cargo she was actually responsible for, which people she actually ferried safely.
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"Why..." A pause, to see if he's phrasing it properly in his own head, which doesn't mean that it's phrased right, but he's trying. "If you love the memories, why can't they be yours, no matter who put them there? Someone else isn't the one who has them. They don't own those memories. They're yours now."
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But there is a difference, and her gaze drops as she pulls her hands back and crosses her arms, trying to articulate it.
"He still designed them. He still chose them to make me the - the perfect bait. He chose what and who I would love." Her nails dig into her arms, hard enough to draw blood if not for the mystically resilient fabric of her sleeves.
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