. Prologue .
Destiny was sitting on the edge of forever, face glinting like sharply cut diamonds in the crystal glimmer of the Timestream. Beyond her loomed the Starlight Citadel, home of Roma, the Guardian of Time and Goddess of the Northern Skies. It was a sight that was not unfamiliar to Joseph – for even though he had passed through into this room on very rare occasions, invariably the scene was always the same.
Destiny, sitting, staring out onto that great immutable flow of Time, eyes shining with awe and hunger at that great crystalline city up ahead.
But now her eyes were dim, and her gaze was far-away. And as Joseph looked at her sitting there, he wondered whether she was woman at all – whether she was woman, or destiny. Her face was cold and bright as sunlight glinting off snow.
“Destiny?”
His voice was soft, reverent. He had never joined the Savants out of choice – that had always been decided by Astra, his ‘mother’, the one who had cloned him from the cells of Magneto and who had used him in her own cruel game. But his role had been more than just that of Astra’s pawn – it had also been that of Destiny’s pawn – her Chronotrigger, the one who would set every event of her whim or fancy into motion. And yet, he had never been able to find it in him to hate the old woman. On the few occasions that he had met her face to face, he had instantly been drawn to her – even now that same feeling tugged at him like a quiet insistence. He did not know how to describe it. Only that he loved her, and that he pitied her, and that he feared her greatly.
“Joseph.”
Her own voice held a note of irony, a note of finality. It was not the voice of an old woman, nor was it the voice of one in her prime. Her tone was light, lilting as the shimmering beams of refracted light that played across her forehead.
“You wanted to see me?” he spoke, looking in her direction expectantly. It was a while since he had last been in her presence; usually his orders were passed onto him by either Mystique or Astra. Now, as he stood beside her, she seemed more ethereal and less human – not that she had ever seemed entirely human throughout the duration of their acquaintance. Of course, he had always known she was one of the immortal X-Ternals. But were the X-Ternals ever meant to shine as bright as she did?
“Yes,” she answered his question softly. Her eyes flicked up to his face, deft, furtive. A slight smile creased her lips, but she said nothing.
“What is it that you wish me to do?” he queried softly.
She seemed to sigh. Would that you could do what I wish, her expression seemed to say. But then she smiled, and it almost seemed to be with genuine warmth.
“I want for you to do nothing,” she replied simply, “but to sit with me awhile.”
He obeyed, sitting in an empty chair by the window opposite her. She watched his movements silently, eyes narrowed, assessing. From the angle he looked at her now, he could hardly see her features at all for the brightness.
“You came back to us,” she stated simply. There was kindness in her voice and something more; an undercurrent, voiceless yet eloquent.
“Xavier’s Institute held nothing more for me,” he answered quietly, looking away. Now he wondered whether it had held anything for him in the first place.
“You care for Rogue,” she stated once more.
“Perhaps,” he answered enigmatically. He wasn’t sure whether his feelings for Rogue meant anything anymore. He knew as much about his feelings now as he knew about himself and his purpose. Some days he even wondered whether ‘Joseph’ was real or not. And if Joseph wasn’t real, was his love for Rogue real at all?
“Perhaps?” There was almost an element of amusement in the old woman’s voice.
“She believed I was something that I didn’t want to be,” he returned in a low voice.
“One of us?” came the soft reply. He looked up into the brightness.
“You don’t understand, Destiny. When I met her, for the first time in my life I had…feelings. Feelings I thought I wasn’t meant to have, because from the very first second of my existence I was made to be a pawn in everyone else’s game. For the first time I realized that I was human, that I wasn’t just your puppet, or Astra’s puppet, or Magneto’s puppet.” He paused, suddenly hesitant. How on earth had he dared to speak in such a way to her? But if he had offended her she said nothing. He could see no evidence of her expression. He could only continue. “That is why I left the Savants. But when Rogue started…seeing things…I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t bear to see her become…”
“An extension of me?”
Again, that old note of wry humour. He glanced up at her sharply.
“You?”
“Didn’t she ever tell you? The girl carries more shame than is necessary. But that has always been her way.” She gazed at him, and he thought he saw the blueness of her eyes once more. “She imprinted me. I knew she would, of course. I let her do it. All that I have went into her. But the imprint went deeper than I had thought. My powers of foresight belong to her now – they are no longer mine. That is why I sent Morph the task of retrieving the surviving Diaries. But the key – the all important, vital ending to this – they lie within her, Joseph.”
Joseph stared at her in sudden horror. He had never thought…had never known…Yet he should have known, should have guessed… Bile and anger rose in his throat, but he could not turn on this woman, this woman that had shaped so much of him, that had cared for him, that had named him…
“You imprinted her so that she would become you?” he half whispered, aghast at the notion.
Destiny looked away. Outside the flow of the Timestream balked and glimmered, trembled momentarily and then flowed onward again smoothly.
“I no longer remember why,” she muttered, as if half to herself. “So much of the past remains as unclear to me as the future…”
Joseph glared at her, neither hearing nor heeding a word that she said. Destiny’s face shone like stars, but she seemed old, and tired and purposeless. And suddenly he saw it – that none of them knew what this was all for, not even Destiny herself; that the life she had given him was a lie.
“I came back to you,” he murmured, “because I thought this was where I belonged. That I had been born into this, into your Fate. Even Rogue believed that I was nothing more than the sum of the parts you made. But you don’t know, do you? You don’t truly know how this all ends, or even how we’re going to get there. Only Rogue knows. And you used her.”
“No – I never used her,” Destiny replied softly. “I only did what I knew was going to happen. That she should have touched me at that precise moment was inescapable. This is the way things should be, Joseph. This is what we were all made for.”
“No, I won’t believe it!” he screamed. “Rogue never was, never is, never will be…” he paused, hardly able to breath – the words caught in his throat, cold and insidious, pawing at the back of his mind: who are you, what are you for, if she made you and she doesn't even know why?
Joseph choked, his eyes suddenly smarting both from tears and the light. No questions, no answers, no purpose. He turned.
“She’ll never be you,” he finished on a breath.
After Joseph had left, Destiny sat by the window and thought of a person named Irene Adler. That was a memory that seemed so far away and so irrelevant that she was almost bemused by it. What did it mean? For Irene Adler no longer existed, and neither did Destiny – for now Destiny had no sight, no sight at all. She was blind to the present, blind to the past and blind to the future. And the only way she could see at all was to become one with the Timestream once more.
Only one memory came clearly to her, a memory that seemed a lifetime ago.
Holding onto her darling Rogue’s hand, and giving herself over to the inevitable, the darkness that so quickly became light.
Only now, now when Destiny sat there so blind to the universe and all that it contained, did she realize that she could no longer remember why she had given her powers to Rogue.
*