Iceman

Tanya Redfield

Sherry Redfield 

Marrow

"I wanted ya to see this is..." she said, and a match's head could be heard striking against a nearby object. Fire that illuminated the dank, wet sewer tunnels, was soon to follow that cackling strike, and then much was visible to the eye.

In particular, were two shadows. One small and plain, the other large and deformed as if a tree, appeared on the tunnel walls, and it looked as if those very shadows were swaying to a dead rhythm.

A rhythm which was ominous to the coming tides...

"Why?" the girl's young and trembling voice finally dared to ask as she up from the sewage that swished in thick chunks and masses grossly around her feet.

Her eyes were adjusting with the aid of the light presented, and she looked up and around as deep through the tunnels as she could until the fiery, indignant dancing light ended and the deaf shadows once again began.

"'Cuz this was where you were conceived," her captor answered quite simply, pausing as she thought back to the mention event horizon. She snickered cleverly and continued with a breath, "This was where the other monster in me was conceived."

"But I'm not a monster!" the youth was quick to cry in defiance, and her breathing began to speed up with her. As if slamming into one of the tunnel's sturdy, brick walls, her breathing halted as what followed was another beat of silence from her captor.

It was a silence not unlike the one that came before. Awkward... yet, almost peaceful if only it would remain and the threat that was gripping her was forever gone. However, that wasn't the case here, nor would it ever be. It would end the following moment.

"You will be..." she finally said as she lifted the match to the side of her face and cocked her head to the side meekly. The flame at the end of the match flickered off her cracked and scarred pink skin, and Marrow smiled almost gently. "You will be."

It was then, after seeing that broken and terrified expression on Sherry Redfield's young, tainted face, that her mother blew out the match's flame and the darkness returned.

The darkness parted in their immediate area as two glowing orbs of moisture appeared, and a flashlight suddenly sparked to life.

"Talk about luck, huh?" Iceman snorted a sort of chuckle as he started to slosh through the bacteria enriched waste. His eyes were glowing that same bluish aura of moisture that partially lit up the desolate void of darkness through the dank tunnels.

In actuality, it was just a side affect from using his powers to detect heat signatures through a visual spectrum, much like that of infrared vision.

"Drake," Rogue started abruptly in a patronizing tone, and she shined the flashlight in her hand at his face as if to get her attention. It worked, and he looked towards her with a raised brow. "We're rummagin' through sewerage here, sugah."

"Err... well... yeah," Bobby Drake sort of shrugged and turned his attention back to the near endless corridor ways ahead of them. "The sewage part sucks. But I meant that Prosh was monitoring the situation at the time."

"Weren't ya the one who was afraid of gettin' infertile from all this teleportin'?" Rosemarie Charleston retorted as she swayed the flashlight in hand into various corners of the tunnel.

"Eh, whaddya gonna do, huh?" Bobby asked rhetorically, and through his infrared vision, incidentally caught an unsettling sight of two rats mating not far off down the tunnel. He shook his head, and continued, "Not like I'm ever gonna be a daddy anyway."

"Agreed," Rogue nodded and said in a mock-stern voice, trying to breach his hull of self-pity with her own critical sense of sarcasm. "A woman would hafta be legally insane to go through somethin' like that with the likes of you."

"Point taken," Bobby said with a groan, and he scratched the back of his head as they walked. Since when did he become such a pity-seeker?

"Shame, though," Rogue continued to say meekly, though she paused a moment as her eyes continued to wonder over the sewage drains running along the tunnel walls. She looked back to Bobby and smiled warmly, "You'd make a great daddy someday, popsicle."

"Was that a proposal?" Bobby asked, in an upbeat and playful tone.

"Oh yeah," Rogue stifled a laugh and ended up coughing. She rolled her eyes, and though flattered, kept up her front of sarcasm. "You wish, Bobb-o..."

"Naahhh. Not really," Bobby interjected suavely, sounding almost proud in what he was about to say. "I think I'm gonna just cut it off with the women scene, and... and maybe return Northstar's call..."

"Oh mah Lord," Rogue blurted out, caught totally off guard by what he had said. "All those X-Men an' mutant imitation love sites out there, with those rumor mills..."

"Didn't think any of them held true to life, eh?" Bobby hunched his brows and made kissy faces at Rogue, then winked. Rogue shoved him, and even though without her superior strength, he toppled off-balance slightly with laughter.

The two continued trudging through the tunnel's sewage, both sharing their moment of quiet laughter. But as the realization of what they were doing had hit, Bobby suddenly frowned and sighed. They were wasting time.

"Oy," he groaned and looked to her, his tone downshifting from cocky to serious. "Hate to be moody guy here, but we really need to focus on the task at hand here."

"You're right," Rogue agreed, and put her flashlight between her armpit and ribs so that she could adjust her headset with both hands. "Omega's still backed up, but my uplink with Cerebro says that Marrow and Sherry are still down here in th' tunnels..."

"There's no telling what Marrow could be doing to her right now, or why she even brought her here..." Iceman trailed off, trying to weigh the possibilities.

"Too bad these tunnel walls are so dense," Rogue muttered and raised her gloved hand to the wall, tracing the outline of bricks with her finger.

A trace of some kind of brown substance appeared on her finger tip, and she brought it up to the light to examine awkwardly. She shook her head and said, "Otherwise, we may be able t' get a solid lead on their loca -- "

"Shhh!" Bobby shushed abruptly, interrupting what she was going to say. She went quiet, though a bit annoyed. "Hold up," he said as his hand raised as if to signal her attention. He tilted his head to the side and squinted his eyes, trying to get earshot of what he may or may not have her heard just in that brief second. "Did you hear that?"

"Ah did," Rogue said in a whisper and nodded. The sounds of hollow foot steps and distant whispers were not too far off, but were hard to pinpoint exactly. Together, they continued down the tunnel, and could hear the sounds grow louder.

"I think I know why the smart heroes are always the strong and silent type," Bobby commented in a low, sarcastic tone. Rogue hunched her brows his way in agreement, and in those few moments, they had arrived at a crossroads in the tunnels.

Rogue considered how if her catalogue of powers was still accessible, she could easily use Wolverine's advanced senses to pick up the faint sounds, or at the least, Marrow and Sherry's scents.

It was a moot point now though, and after a few seconds of listening carefully, both Rogue and Iceman knew which direction was best.

"This way," Bobby nodded his head towards the corridor to their right. Rogue nodded, and they both slowly made their way down it, sure to tip toe through the sewage as to not make too much noise by sloshing any of it around.

After only a few yards, the end of the tunnel they selected seem to come too quickly, however. Rogue caught sight of the brick wall from afar, and summoned her flashlight onto it. She knew what this meant.

The sounds and voices had grown closer in their venture, but this was one obstacle that may be a little too hard to get around without even just her Ms. Marvel powers.

"Dead end," Rogue said as she came to a stop, and put a gloved hand on her hip. Iceman walked past her, a crease forming over his brow as he examined it. Through his infrared vision, he could see that the brick wall was letting off an oddly bright heat signature.

"I don't think so..." Bobby said with a grin as he slid his open-palmed hand up to the wall, and pressed against it. To Rogue's surprise, his hand didn't really press against the barrier at all.

Instead, his hand had gone through it.

"Hologram," Bobby stated, looking over his shoulder to his partner on this mission. Rogue turned off her flashlight, and bit down on her bottom lip.

"An' bingo was her name-o."

There was a splash of raw sewage as Sherry Redfield's small body went down hard, and she couldn't help but whimper as that vile smell of the Morlock Tunnels sunk even deeper into her clothes and hair. Ahead of her there was a squeak that seemed to mimic her whimpers, followed by tiny, vacating splashes of that same sewage Sherry was in.

When she sat up, she shook and heaved from the wet cold. She looked down and tried to see through the darkness at her hands, but it was nearly impossible to see through the filth that covered her. and the darkness that accompanied the tunnels. She was sure her knees and hands had been skinned from the fall, though.

Sherry wanted to cry, but as much as she tried to, she was already emotionally exhausted from the days' events.

Unnoticeable by the tunnels' only other occupant, her eyes were dry and bloodshot, and it was almost as if the tears wouldn't come anymore. In her mind, she knew the feeling just wasn't there anymore.

She was helpless, and she was almost completely about to accept that fact.

Almost.

"I think dinner's gettin' away, sweetie..." that cryptic voice came from the shadows once again. It was like each time the voice came, Sherry couldn't tell where it was coming from. But she had quickly learned to despise its presence.

"Fuck you!" the young girl cursed like she had heard so many other adults do so. She flailed her hands in the murky waters beneath her and stood up quickly.

A deafening silence would ensue, but Sherry tried her best to not let it stall her efforts in retaliation. Her eyes trailed the tunnel walls and the shadows, trying to locate the owner of that haunting voice.

"Even if I caught the stupid thing, I would never eat a rat!" Sherry cried out in disgust, hoping to antagonize as the rebellion built. "How demented are you?!"

Suddenly, Sherry tensed up and the dark tunnels all flashed by her in a blur. Marrow had come upon her from the shadows, ceasing her at the neck and forcing her face straight down towards the murky sewage.

Somewhere between it all, Sherry's eyelids had clamped down tightly over her eyes. Marrow made it a point to twist the girl's hair tightly, nearly pulling it from her scalp, and Sherry's eyes snapped open from the searing pain.

Inches away from her face, there was a rat impaled by one of Marrow's wretched bone daggers. The rat's mangled guts and blood drenched its twisted and convulsing hide, and Sherry could have swore it's beady eyes were staring right up at her.

Frightened and helpless. Something they both had in common.

A moist, hot breath came upon Sherry's ear as Marrow eased mouth down to the girl. Her deranged voice came upon her subtly, yet crippling.

"When I was about your age, and lived down here with all my little mutant family and friends..." Marrow began slowly and gently, before her face tightened and bunched up in rage, and she twisted the girl's hair back tightly. "We were lucky to get to eat somethin' like this!"

Sherry let out a wounded cry as Marrow drove her face back down towards the now dead rat. Some of her hair had came loose in Marrow's hand, but it was no matter to either of them at the moment.

"You won't be this pretty for long, being a disgusting mutant and all. Beggars can't be Choosers for long..." Marrow said adoringly, but through gritted teeth. "So be a good girl, and enjoy. What Mommy. Has got you. Fer dinner."

Marrow flashed a twisted, patronizing grin.

"You're not my mother," Sherry grumbled in heaves, and it felt like the ability to cry was coming back. More over, it was replacing her dying urge to rebel and resist against the insane woman's antics.

"You don't see the resemblance?" Marrow uttered sarcastically and bit down on her bottom lip, before she abruptly jerked the bone dagger from the dead rat and tossed it aside, and then forced Sherry's face against its blood smeared, bacteria infested body.

"I said EAT IT!" she screamed exhaustingly. Sherry was soon back in sobbing tears, and she could feel her upper lip twitching, and parting from her lower lip into the opening of her mouth. She was about to hesitantly comply... until it came.

The voice of her salvation.

"Loud enough for us, bonernose?" it had boomed throughout the tunnels. Marrow's head snapped in the familiar voice's direction, and sure enough there he was.

"Bobby!" Sherry cried out as she reared her mouth away from the rat. She wanted to turn her eyes to see him, but Marrow was still holding her face against the dead rat, as well as holding her body firm and in captive.

"Face it, babe," Iceman started as he and Rogue fully walked out from the shadows, cautious of Marrow's actions, yet ready to lay down whatever force was needed. "The jig... is up... Let Sherry go."

Marrow's breathing suddenly picked up as she too prepared for the coming fight. To his demands however, her voice merely replied, "Make me."

Her hand quickly shot down to the teleporting device strapped at her waist, but before she could activate it, a jagged slither of ice shot through the air at blinding speeds and ripped through it.

Marrow cried out as the slither penetrated her side as well as destroyed her first means of escape, but it had all but handicapped her. She ripped the slither from her side and lunged forward, taking Sherry up under her arm and starting off into a bolt down the corridors of the Morlock Tunnels.

"LET ME GO!!" Sherry had screeched as that small bit of defiance that had been left formed into a wild rage as hope had finally arrived. She kicked and flung her arms about, but Marrow's grip on her wouldn't loosen.

"C'mon!" Bobby snapped as him and Rogue took off after the two in hot pursuit. His fists suddenly started to glow a brilliant shade of icy blue, and in a fraction of a second, the tunnels' walls were being coated in a thick layer of ice.

The same ice had sparked with a sort of life as Iceman and Rogue chased after Marrow and Sherry in fierce pumps of their legs and arms. At first, the ice coating the walls had crept along the outer edges of the tunnels, moving slowly but surely. But then it had suddenly shot past the pursuing Iceman and Rogue, and it was moving after Marrow with such tremendous speed. 

Bobby knew there was no room for his ice sled, and that they both may not be able to catch up with Marrow's pace, but that hadn't meant his options were limited.

Marrow caught a glimpse of the ice as it followed her from the walls on both sides of her and Sherry, coating every inch and picking up more and more speed. Suddenly the ice made its way further up and was ahead of them, and with a mental command from Iceman himself, the ice had lunged out before the fleeing Marrow.

It was creating a wall, albeit much slower then it had pursued, and that would be where the plan would ultimately fall short.

The instincts of the longtime mutant terrorist and once X-Man had taken over, and just before the barricade of ice could completely seal them off from the other side of the tunnel, Marrow leapt in the air with Sherry in tow through the middle gap and was tumbling on the concrete ground on the other side just as it closed.

"Damnit!" Bobby had cursed from afar back, and his partner in this mission, Rogue, hadn't much to say beyond the same measure. On the other side of the ice barricade, Marrow was continuing to escape, getting much further ahead to her destination...

As Iceman and Rogue caught up to the barricade, Bobby ripped his hands away from his body and the walls of ice he had formed parted from each other sharply. The ice had seemingly shattered upon his command, and in the distance, Iceman and Rogue could see Marrow hauling Sherry away just in the distance.

"We can still catch up," Rogue heaved, and Bobby nodded to her. He swallowed hard, taking in a solid gasp of air, and then they pressed on.

"We're here!" Marrow chirped as she came around a corridor's corner with Sherry under her arm. She snickered to herself in relief, and continued under the threshold of what appeared to be a devastingly different tunnel then the ones they had been in.

Through all the horror and desperation to be reached by Bobby, Sherry was suddenly bedazzled by the tunnel. Along it's vast walls were what looked like computers. Monitors and constructs of metal, tied together by multicolored wires and tubes.

Inside the tunnel, there were chairs and consoles, tables and instruments made of technology only seen in sci-fi movies. Though the lights in the tunnel were dim, they were much brighter and florescent then the few outside of it.

Most noticeably, there were four large tubes with dark, green fluids running in them and bulky shapes centered within them, placed just before the entrance into the tunnel. Two of the constructs were on each wall, and at the far end of the room, there was one more, placed at the head of the room.

Its light and the fluids flowing about within in it were dimmer then the others. It was inactive, as far as the naked eye could see.

Marrow dropped Sherry from under her arm to the concrete floor of the tunnel. It was solid and relatively sterile. Unlike the ones outside, no sewage or liquids was there. Holding onto the young girl's hand, Marrow made her way deeper into the bowels of the tunnel and tossed the broken teleportation device from her side onto a lab table.

She turned around and waited. It would only be a matter of time before her persuers had caught up, and she was right in believing so.

"Go ahead," Marrow urged Sherry, wrangling her by her arm. Sherry looked up to her, uncertain, in which Marrow responded with, "Call for 'em."

Pausing for a moment, Sherry considered what Marrow had planned. Was she simply taunting her? Or did she have something planned for Bobby and the other X-Man he was with? Should she make the gamble and just do it?

When Marrow pulled a bonedagger from her back with a sickening crunch and held it up to Sherry's neck, the decision was almost immediately made for her.

"BOBBY!!!" Sherry screamed at the top of her lungs. Sure enough, they had both heard her call and were in the corridor within moments. Before doing saying or doing anything else, Iceman and Rogue had froze in their tracks, their eyes grew wide in surprise.

"Whoa," Rogue muttered as she looked around, then glared towards Bobby.

"Are we where I think we are?" Bobby asked, returning to her the same look. Rogue didn't have a response to give, and the question wasn't neccesarily that important... or so they thought.

They both shot their focus onto Marrow and Sherry after their initial moment of surprise. Marrow had stopped running, and was now standing there with Sherry at her side, a warped grin painted from ear to ear as she simply stared at them.

"Gotcha," Marrow hunched her brows maliciously at the two, drawing back and then flinging the bonedagger in hand at Rogue's head.

Moving agilely, the skunkhead ducked down and to the side, allowing the dagger to go sailing over her. It seemed like a bad aim at the moment, but when her emerald eyes trailed up to those of Iceman's, she realized she had been mistaken.

Sticking out of the console behind them, and sparking with aggravated bits of electricity, was the bonedagger Marrow had thrown. With a quiet groan, the containment tubes on both sides of the two released their fluids and slid open.

"What th' -- ?!" Rogue started to say, but cut herself off in horror as four disfigured and ill-colored, oversized and mutated, Morlocks vacated the tubes and were seemingly drawn to Iceman and Rogue.

"Even after death, ol' McCoy still manages to be a threat, eh?" Marrow laughed sickeningly. Sherry struggled to break from the woman's grasp, but Marrow pulled her back and held it firmly in place.

"No, no, no!!" Sherry had gasped and cried as the four Morlocks converged on Bobby and Rogue. It had a been trap like she had thought.

"A little over elaborate of a trap for just one little girl, don'tcha think, Marrow?!" Iceman quipped as one of the Morlocks came upon him quick, and he blasted the deformity back with a powerful beam of ice.

Bobby went to turn towards the next Morlock who was attacking, but it had been too late. The lumbering creature wrapped him in a bear hug from behind, and the more Bobby struggled, the tighter the Morlock's grip got.

Before him, the Morlock he had blasted was already recovering, it's pupil-less eyes fixated on him the entire time.

"Rogue!" Iceman called out with a gasp as he felt his breath suddenly slip out of him. He strained and turned his head to his partner, but the other two Morlocks were holding her down. He could still see her even with them over her, but she too was already incapacitated.

"Mind... ungh.... givin' me a hand... sugah?" Rogue uttered from underneath the mass of one of them as she managed to pull off her glove. She could have absorbed their powers if she wanted to, but with the state they were in, she didn't know what it would do to her.

Bobby would be her only choice, and she reached out to him with a groan, but then suddenly a jagged pain errupted down her shoulder and she let out a sharp battle cry. "AGHH!!"

One of the Morlocks had suddenly bit down on her, and she closed her eyes down tight as she felt a bit of her flesh and muscle rip away from her shoulder. Another shrilling burst of laughing came from Marrow as she watched from a distance.

"See, babe?" Marrow said through gritted teeth as she jerked and weaved Sherry side to side, the little girl barely being able to watch on in disgust. "Us Morlocks learn to appreciate whatever we can get our hands on to eat."

Bobby's eyes widdened in horror as he watched the creature start to chew on the flesh he had ripped from Rogue, and then the second Morlock on her went to bite her arm. Bobby strained and fought harder against the strength of the Morlock holding him, and with a little bit of luck he was able to get one of his arms loose.

"Rogue!" he called out to her again, and he flung his hand back to grab ahold of his holder's face. With a flash, a sheet of ice covered the monstrosity's face, and he recoiled back in pain, letting Iceman fall down to the ground on his back.

"Aww shit..." he muttered as he reached down to his back, but his eyes quickly shifted to Rogue as she bit down on her lip hard and pushed back the near overwhelming pain. She couldn't break free from her attackers.

Not yet, anyway.

"I'm out!" Bobby yelled to her as he moved up to his feet, and Rogue's arm shot up past one of the Morlock's head.Bobby reached out to grab ahold of her so she could absorb some of his powers to use, but the first Morlock that had attacked him was up again, and lifted Iceman up off his feet.

Bobby was already moving frantically through his attacker's grip, and when he got high enough, he clapsed his hand over the Morlock's face, and another explosion of ice from his palm sent the creature reeling back into the ground.

Iceman dropped to his feet and slapped his hand out to Rogue's bare hand, taking firm grip. As it happened, Rogue gasped and her eyes shot open once more. The second the two's skin touched, Rogue's body started transforming into the organic ice state Bobby was known for.

First her fingers, then her hand and forearm, and then down across her body. The pain from her wounds ceased, and the missing tissue was replaced by that organic ice that she was now temporarily made of.

"Ya'll can get... off... now!" Rogue squirmed, and ice exploded from her body and sent the two Morlocks flying off of her and into the tunnel walls.

Iceman himself was thrown back down onto his bottom, but no more worse for wear. When he looked up to Rogue and her chisled, frame made up of ice, he huffed an exhausted breath and smiled to her, "Nice one."

"Couldn't of done it without ya," Rogue retorted in a low tone, and her hand immediately went to the wound that had been on her shoulder. It was gone now.

"Sherry?" Bobby called out suddenly as his eyes went wide in realization. He turned around to where Marrow and her were, and he shuffled up to his feet. But they were both gone, and Bobby slammed his fists into the ground. "Damnit!"

If matters hadn't been worse, all of the Morlocks were already recovering. They had moved up to their feet and started to surround the two.

"Ah can handle 'em, Bobby," Rogue said as if reading his mind. Iceman hesitated as he saw them lumber towards them, but Rogue nodded and that was enough face value for Bobby. He took off into a run across the makeshift labratory to the other end, where it had lead out to another corridor as Rogue took a fighting stance, her fists glowing with an aura of freezing moisture.

"Don't. RUN. From. ME!" Marrow's voice echoed deep through the bowels of the Morlock Tunnels. During the fight, Sherry had broken away from her grasp and managed to take off running. When Marrow found that girl, she would make her sorry.

"And what are you gonna do if she does?" Iceman said cynically, appearing at the end of the tunnel just behind her. Marrow turned around sharply, and ripped two bonedaggers out from her lower back.

"She's mine, and I'm keepin' her, Drake," Marrow was quick to say. She twirled the two bonedaggers in hand and gripped them tightly. They were the last two she had until new ones grew back, which would have to be in a few days.

"What's your obsession with this girl?" Bobby snapped as he slowly started to approach his new opponent, his fists clenched and ready.

Marrow's grew narrow with the sound of his words, and he knew he had hit a sore spot by calling her on the obsession. For a moment, it was as if her mind had started to fade away from the situation at hand. Fade away back to those distant memories...

"-- We're down here to have fun with you misfits before we kill the whole lot of you..." Victor Creed's voice taunted her in a raspy whisper as he ravaged her young body that fateful day."...and fun it is we'll have."

"No! Please... unnhh... don't...!" she had cried over and over again. "...don't...!"

His toothy grin and yellow mane would replacing the faces of many of those she killed in battle. Unknowing and uncaring to what one day she would become, he would only leave her in shambles of what she was, having contributed to taking her soul away...

"They took her away from me!" Marrow screamed worse then bloody murder. She lunged at Iceman and slashed both of her daggers down at his body, but Bobby had been out of the way of her attack in an instant, dodging to her side.

She quickly came about face and slashed at his throat, but Bobby had pulled back out of reach, and then quickly closed the space between them with an uppercut to her chin. Before she could retaliate, he followed up with a left hook that sent her to the ground.

"Took who, Sarah?" He asked as Marrow hit the seweage covered corridor with a hard splash. She moved up to her hands and knees, still holding the bonedaggers between her palms and the ground.

"Sherry, you fuckin' twit," she spat. She heaved and then took a hard breath, and looked back up to him. He could see even in the dim light that her eyes were bloodshot. "Said she was pretty and looked normal, and that she could have a normal life..."

"But you didn't want that..." Iceman harshly finished her sentence. He found himself in disgust at the twisted obsession Marrow had formed since childhood.

"All the while I sat in a corner quietly, doin' nothin' while they took her to leave at some unsuspecting upworlder's doorstep..." Marrow continued, heaving. "But now I have the power to get her back, and to give her the life she should have had!"

Marrow's foot shot out and slammed into Bobby's kneecap, sending him down to a kneel. She got up from her hands and drove a bonedagger down into his back, just barely missing one of his lungs.

Iceman wanted to cry out, but bit down the pain he knew she was looking for. Marrow twisted the dagger in his back, and then drop kicked him in the face. She pulled out the dagger and let him fall back onto his side into the sewage.

"Down here..." Marrow said meekly as she stood over Bobby's fallen form, both daggers still in hand. She lifted her foot out of the sewage and pressed her boot down onto his neck, preparing to crush his windpipe. "With me."

"Only one prob. with that plan..." Iceman muttered from underneath her booth as his hands started to grip her ankle. Marrow gave him a cockeyed glare, and then suddenly his own boot came up from underneath and slammed into her pelvic bone.

Marrow winced and doubled back off of her opponent, the attack and it's nature having been totally unexpected. Just before she could retaliate though, Bobby threw up both of his hands towards her and blasted her over thirty feet backwards with a beam of ice.

"She's going back to her real mom," Bobby said, swallowing hard just before she hit the sewage covered ground with a sickening crunch.

A shimmer of freezing moisture went down his body, and he transformed into his organic ice state as he started up with a groan. No major organs or even his spine had been pierced by her attack, but it still hurt like hell.

Going into this mission, he hadn't wanted to hurt Marrow. He tried his hardest to keep to just physical attacks, but now that was done. As he approached her, he clenched his fists again, but this time they errupted into a glowing aura of blue moisture.

Slowly, as he came upon her, he noticed something was wrong with her. She was starting to convulse, and on closer observation, he saw that she had fallen on her bonedaggers. They were both tearing at opposite angles through her chest.

"Oh, crap..." Bobby uttered as he knelt down to her, looking over her wounds. The sewage was already becoming tainted with her blood. "Marrow..."

Marrow looked up through half-closed eyes at Bobby, tired. Her breathing was starting to become jagged and hoarse, and it was starting to go dark. Bobby hesitated, but then reached his hand down to hers, taking it in his hand.

It was the only thing she could feel, and she was suddenly scared. Scared so much like the times she had been when she was younger. Scared like the time he came to her...

"Shhh, petite.... Shhh..." his voice had ushered her once again, like in all her past memories. At first she flinched and hesitated, but when she glanced up, she saw two glowing red pupils stand out from the new void surrounding her.

"Ev'thing's gonna be okay now," the warm and soothing voice continued as the man stroked her ragged hair. "No one's goin' to hurt you now, Sarah. It's over."

Never again did she want to experience what she had... Never again.

For a moment though, the heaving and shaking that had overcome her ceased. She would never understand why she did it, but Sarah sat herself up and lunged herself into him, and he wrapped his arms around her in kind, cradling her against his body.

"I know dis don't mean nothin' to you now, girl...." Remy LeBeau had told her, in-between quiet sobs himself. "But someday I want you to understand... I'm sorry."

She cried, and she cried, and she embraced the warmth he offered her for one last time. The man she would later come to hate so much was the man who would take away all the pain and sorrow life forced her to shoulder.

The glowing red pupils would disappear, and the darkness would ensue once and for all.

Sarah was gone.

"Bobby!" Sherry's voice called out, followed by the sounds of her little feet splashing through the sewage in the corridor. Bobby released Marrow's hand, and moved his hand up to her eyes, closing them for her. He then turned away from her lifeless body and began walking towards Sherry, not wanting her to get to close.

"If you had a dollar for every time you've said my name today..." he said to her with a gentle smile, and he kneeled down to hug her close to him. With a soft sigh, he said, "Err... well, you'd be able to buy a comic book and a slurpee at the least..."

"I was hiding just up the tunnel, watching the entire time..." Sherry started to say as she hugged him tightly, but couldn't help but look over his shoulder at Marrow's fallen form. "Is she...?" Bobby nodded to her slowly.

"Yeah. You're safe now, Sherry," he almost choked. Slowly he started to stroke her hair, and he breathed. "She was disturbed and nothing she said was true. But it's over now, and I'm taking you home to your mom now. Your real mom."

"Good," Sherry sobbed, but she hadn't let go. She could only hug him and let him hold her as the tears came upon her again.

Brooklyn General Hospital.

As Cecilia Reyes walked out from the hospital's Board of Director's room, she let out a tired sigh and leaned into a nearby wall. Slowly she reached up and began rubbing away the tension she was feeling at her temples with her fingers, her eyes fixed on the tile hospital floor. She closed them for a moment, and then opened them.

The young Puerto Rican woman was in her mid to late twenties, but there was something in her eyes that told all those who encountered her that she had long skipped her youth. Skipped it in hopes for something more...

When she dropped her arms back down to her sides and looked up, she was startled. He was sitting there, directly across from her on one of the hallway's benches, and he had grinned crookedly and waved at her slightly.

"How'd it go in there?" Bobby asked as she started to approach him. She eyed him through her rimmed glasses, and took another breath.

"It went fine, Bobby," Cecilia said contentedly. She plopped herself down next to him, and paused before continuing, "They even went as far to say that I was an 'invaluable asset to the hospital and it's patients.' Probably just their way of covering their asses after that mutant registration act backfired."

"Yeah, probably," Bobby nodded in agreement. Suddenly, he snapped his fingers and snickered wildly. "Damn, though. There goes all my careful sabotaging of your doctoring career, I guess. Just right out the window."

"Shut up," was all Cecilia could muster out in retaliation.

"No, really. I was hoping this Saturday night would be free, but it looks like I'm going to have to spend it doing some more rigid scheming to ruin your life..." Bobby continued as he rolled his eyes sarcastically. "Of course... not like I have anything better to do."

"No, really," Cecilia mimicked his words. "I think you need to shut up, Drake," she shook her head and rubbed her temples. "I was just upset when I called you that morning, that's all. Last time I ran into you and your friends, things didn't exactly go well, and what can I say? History repeats itself when you're a mutant."

"Heh..." Bobby looked away from Cecilia at the tiled, hospital floor.

"And..." Cecilia cleared her throat, oblivious to the man's odd behavior. "I saw the news report on what happen with your friends..." she continued, glancing down to the floor.

Bobby turned his attention back to her, and she looked up into his eyes as she swallowed back the lump in her throat. She concluded her sentiment with quite simply, "I'm sorry."

An awkward silence fell between the two, and Bobby wasn't sure what to say. He could tell she was sincere in her condolences, but the thoughts and feelings he had behind Grizzly and Gibbon's deaths were still going to haunt him.

"...Think nothing of it," Bobby finally said with a heavy breath. He looked back to Cecilia, smiling at her tiredly as he too swallowed hard. He thjen stood up and started to walk away. "Keep your nose clean, doc," he called back to her, but didn't turn around to face.

She watched as he walked away down the hallway, disappearing on that mark as if he had found out all that he needed to know. Or maybe she had been pressing on a sore spot, and he was fleeing before it could get any sorer. He had quite possibly been scarred by the recent events in his life, after all.

There aren't many things in the world that could heal those kind of scars, and Cecilia Reyes knows this. Bobby Drake knows this, too. But more importantly he knew that as time went by, those scars would craft him into who he'll be remembered as, and who he was shaping out to be for the rest of his life.

He could only hope that wasn't a bad thing...

FROSTBYTE

Got any chilling comments regarding this ish? Hazaah!

Woohoo! Finally finished this bugger. "LOST SOUL DRIFTING" was pretty fun to write as I finally got to tie up some loose plot threads, add a little closure to a bulk of the supporting cast, and got to write the last appearance of the X-Men Omega team set before Brad Horton's X-CORP kicked off.

Everyone remember that new and big chapter I promised a long time ago? Hey-ey, it looks like it's coming in fast folks! Just got one more thread to tie up and then we'll be set to go. So keep reading if you weren't too sorely disappointed with this arc. *gasp!* I guarantee you guys it'll be some good fun, especially since I've been dying to work some of this stuff in for about a year now.

A writer can't anticipate doing something like this for that long and then just bust, can he? Err... maybe you shouldn't answer that...

Cory Wiegel
October 27th, 2003