Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Welcome to Xmen Revolution. We hope you enjoy your visit.


You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free.


Join our community!


If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features:

Username:   Password:
Add Reply
All The Brave Soldiers Who Cannot Grow Older...; [tag hulkling]
Topic Started: Jun 16 2013, 03:40 AM (366 Views)
Martinique Jason
Unregistered

May 30th
Afternoon
Apres Recruit Training


There were a few things that felt very, very different from 'before' - different enough that her life was certainly a book that had closed a chapter and opened another. It had a definitive beginning and end and this was another beginning. Martinique Jason - they kept calling her Martinique Wyngarde, but that wasn't exactly who she was, was it? Her father had embraced her, but not fully, and she didn't want to embrace the family name until he assured her that it was the right thing to do. So, she corrected the agents when she could and tried her best to stress that she'd rather go by her codename - Fantasticheria - so there would be no question as to her family name. A new chapter might call for a new name, but not Wyngarde. Not yet.

She moved through the areas she could - it wasn't that she was locked down, like she had been before. No, Martinique could go anywhere any other person with her security level could go. She was finding out, however, that even the janitors seemed to have higher clearance levels than she. Each door was carded and some were carded and coded otherwise, like with finger prints and voice control and ... things she didn't understand. Before all this, she had been a model, not a scientist. She didn't have to know much, really, just what others had in their mind so that she could enhance their vision or thoughts at the moment. Martinique knew that Neena was smart, but until now - now that she was trying to understand the things that Neena knew in an instant - she didn't know how smart.

Investigating was getting her absolutely nowhere and she hated to feel like a rat in a cage. So, she did her best to pay attention and achieve in the 'classes' they had her take. She was with other recruits - most of which she could tell didn't have much in the way of super-human powers - but all had a better grasp on everything going on than did she. It was one of these lessons that had just passed - Martinique always sat in the front, taking notes and trying to grasp the situation - and she was gathering her notes and supplies with a sigh. To be honest, she found that learning with a null cuff on was much easier than keeping her powers going, and so she wore one since the second day of 'classes' and kept it on, until she was dismissed. It kept her from knowing too much about her 'classmates', which was fine with her, and meant that if she was the last to leave, they didn't really get to know anything about her, either.

In a way, she was afraid of being recognized. See, things change greatly when you've written yourself into a corner and have to come out alive.

Now she was outside of the room and leaning against a wall, her hand to her head, the null cuff still on. She hadn't expected this to be work. Technically, she hadn't done a day of work in her life. It was frustrating and though she saw the point, she didn't think that it was making her a better soldier.
Quote Post Goto Top
 
Ted Kaplan-Altman
Member Avatar
Mutant Skrull Physiology
Unlike Martinique, Ted made a point of sitting in the back row of his training sessions. He wondered sometimes whether the other trainees, and their instructors, thought that meant he was slacking.

He wasn't; not even a little. He paid attention and took notes and did well on the formal tests they threw at him from time to time; more importantly, he wanted to learn as much as he could. He knew a lot of the trainees thought the formal academic stuff was a waste of time and just wanted to get through it; knew they were impatient to get out into the field, where they imagined it would all be about skill and natural ability and thinking on their feet. And, sure, there was no substitute for any of that. But Ted had been in the field. He'd fought with Sentinels and Purifiers and hostile mutants and parasitic alien life-forms who'd turned out to be long-lost cousins. Plus he'd trained in the X-Men's Danger Room, learned tactics and combat skills from some of the best survivors in the world, and he knew how often some obscure half-remembered seemingly irrelevant "academic" fact could mean the difference between life and death, not just for him but for the people he was supposed to protect.

So, no, he wasn't slacking. The reason he sat in the back row was because he sometimes learned as much from watching his fellow trainees as he did from their instructors. And ever since the Area 51 mission, he'd been paying particular attention to their newest recruit: Martinique Wyngarde, aka Martinique Jason, aka Fantasticheria.

He didn't really understand her status. Oh, he knew what it was officially, but he understood SHIELD internal politics just well enough to understand that official status around here was just the tip of the iceberg. She'd recovered from her injury-- from the injury Ted had given her, however unintentionally -- which he supposed was a good thing. And she wasn't a prisoner anymore, that much was clear, and Ted tried not to let that piss him off. Mostly, he was unsuccessful; he hadn't forgotten the way she'd screwed with his head as part of the Brotherhood mission, let alone the pile of bodies she'd accumulated in the process, and the idea that we were all just going to shrug that off and embrace her as an agent was... distasteful. Well, no, actually, it was infuriating. On the other hand, she was wearing a null-cuff... though as Ted understood it, that was voluntary on her part. Then again, 'voluntary' was a funny word around SHIELD, and didn't always mean what one might naively expect.So maybe she wasn't being embraced as freely as it might seem at first.

And anyway, he supposed it was hypocritical of him to get pissy about forgiving her when they'd accepted him, the child of alien invaders, with relatively open arms... and given that he was OK, or at least mostly OK, with how they were treating Mystique.... and given that in the meantime one of his former teachers had become an Illuminatus, Magneto had turned out not to be Magneto, his former headmaster had not only died but then come back from the dead as an enemy of, well, everybody... and Seb had gone rogue and started killing fellow agents... well, when he really thought about it Ted supposed expecting loyalties to go unchanged for years at a time was probably pretty naive of him, and SHIELD was just being pragmatic.

It was with that attitude in mind that Ted decided to stop when he left the room, and saw Martinique leaning against a nearby wall. However confusing the situation, she was a teammate now, and the professional thing to do was acknowledge that.

"Hey," he said, trying not to let his conflicting emotions show on his face. "I hear the medcenter gave you a clean bill of health. Glad I didn't kill you." No, that was a bit too unemotional, he decided. He considered making a joke out of it, like how much gladder he was that she hadn't killed him, but decided that was probably funnier in his head. "So, how're you settling in?"

Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Martinique Jason
Unregistered

She had probably seen him before. Probably recognized him at some point. Unconsciously, she might have chosen the front of the classroom so that she didnt have to look at him or she could forget he was even there. Maybe she had forgotten. Maybe Saharas ministrations had come to erase the memories of that day from her mind. Whatever the reason was, she didnt even register that the man who brought her here in the first place was in her class. But when he stopped in front of her and spoke, a lot of thoughts and feelings seemed to flood Martinique at once. The good thing was that she was wearing her null cuff his thoughts entering her mind would have been far too much to take. Her own thoughts were dizzying enough.

After a moment of pinching her eyes shut and trying to steady herself where she stood, Martinique looked a bit peaked, but was standing straight and offering a small smile to the man whod stopped to talk. One thing about reading others minds for the worse and not the better if you ever had to see them again, all of their fears and everything you used against them would come back to you. Perhaps it didnt come back to others, but it did with Martinique and she extended that it must happen to every telepath or illusionist. She did her best to push all that out of her mind before answering him.

Im quite glad you didnt kill me as well, Martinique first replied, offering a little chuckle to break the tension in the air. She wasnt sure that he wasnt going to just kill her at any point now, really. She should take off the null cuff. She should have her entire self ready for fight or flight. Feeling human was something she didnt like all that much, for what it was worth, and shed remember the feeling whenever she cursed her powers again. It was better to be with them than without. She knew that now.

With her thick Italian accent, she considered what he said next and then nodded. It was obvious that he was feeling her out trying to see what sort of person lay behind the crazed killers eyes. But she was trying to do the same, albeit failing due to her lack of practice in learning about others through anything other than telepathy. Well Its different, eh? I mean, its not my neat little flat in New York, is it? Or back home, Calabria. She pushed her lips into a smile and tried to make herself look a bit more grateful than she was. Really, she should be dead. It was thanks only to the fact that she was so far down on the Brotherhoods map that she could be converted by SHIELD and no one would bother coming to find her. If she were higher up, a rescue attempt would have been made and her quarters would no doubt be much more confining or she might even be dead. Who knows what SHIELD did with their quarry once it was in hand? It hadnt been covered in class yet, so Martinique didnt.

"I... I'm very sorry about all that."

She offered the quiet words after a moment of awkward silence between the two. Really, she didn't know what she could say - 'sorry' wasn't enough, certainly, but there wasn't anything else she could offer.
Quote Post Goto Top
 
Ted Kaplan-Altman
Member Avatar
Mutant Skrull Physiology
Although Ted was not the most observant guy on the planet, or even in his training cohort, the former mutant terrorist's fatigue was obvious even to him. He wondered what it signified. Had she been having difficulty sleeping? Was she using her abilities now, or trying to? With telepaths and illusionists it was impossible to take anything for granted... she seemed to be wearing a null-cuff, but there was no guarantee that she really was. Hell, there was no guarantee that she was actually there, or that he was actually talking to her. And none of that was in the least bit useful to him; he pretty much had to operate as though he really was talking to her and she really was wearing a null-cuff, because the alternatives were just silly.

Then again, he mused, it wasn't really all that different than it was for any of his fellow agents, if he thought about it. They were spies, or at least training to be; unreliable motives and self-presentation came with the territory. It was just more... tangible... in Martinique's case.

At least she took his comment about killing her as a joke, rather than being offended by it. He'd meant it as a joke, after all.

Well, mostly as a joke. On the other hand, he couldn't help but remember the pile of bodies she'd accumulated before he took her down. None of them had been friends of his, but they could have been, and it was hard to stand her joking with her knowing that.

Then again, Sebastien was a friend of his, and he'd killed... no, there was just no point in going over this again. His mind just kept going in circles. He and Sebastien were friends in his regular life, and enemies in his professional life, and he just didn't know how to reconcile those two facts. In fact, he was pretty sure that any attempt to reconcile them was just going to drive him insane, so he didn't try to reconcile them.

And, well, if he could do that with Sebastien, why not with Martinique? Or Tommy, or Wanda... the idea made his head spin, but that sort of ruthless compartmentalization seemed like the best way to move forward in his new line of work. It was, as far as he could tell, what SHIELD agents did. Friendships happened in one part of his life, and professional relationships in another, and evaluation for possible criminal or evil tendencies in a third, and he had to keep those parts of his mind separate even if they involved the same people.

"its not my neat little flat in New York, is it? Or back home, Calabria." "Yeah, I suppose," he replied noncommitally. "Calabria... that's in Italy, right?" An inane question; his grasp of world geography was not stellar but it was good enough for that much. He was just making awkward conversation to cover the stuff he wasn't sure it was all right to actually talk about.

"I... I'm very sorry about all that."

And there it was, front and center. He appreciated the forthrightness of it, in any case, especially coming from someone whose M.O. seemed rather the opposite of forthright, and he felt she was entitled to an equally honest reply. "Yeah. I'm sorry, too; those were good people you killed." The silence stretched awkwardly between them for a while, then Ted relented slightly and leaned against the wall next to her. "So. OK, I'll ask. I always wonder, actually... why the Brotherhood in the first place? What made you decide that going around killing everyone was the right way to get mutant:human relations on the right track?" Thinking about it a little, he decided there was a more important question, so he added "...and what made you change your mind?"
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Martinique Jason
Unregistered

Things in the world of powers were pretty difettoso - messed up werent they? Martinique didnt have to do much deciding in her life before New York deciding if she were good or bad, if she could or couldnt read someones mind or change their visions, if she could use her powers to enhance her own life or detract from others No one cared all that much to even check up on her morality until she arrived in the states. Perhaps it was something more than that something to do with her father and being a Wyngarde. He had been here much longer than she and had set himself up as some sort of well, seems that a lot of people wanted him locked up for one reason or another. They must have just assumed the same about Martinique because she shared his blood. But, it was different for her. It seems that he worked toward preserving and promoting this silly club he was a part of. For Martinique, all she wanted was to feel needed and powerful, like she did amongst regular people. Her father doted so much on her half sister, she couldnt even imagine what it might feel like to be respected and loved the way that Regan was. She had come to the conclusion that it was due to the fact that Regan was more powerful and learned in the field than Martinique and so Martinique had gone out in search of help help for more power.

That is exactly what led to her joining the Brotherhood. Yes, she was approached by and warned by two interesting (to say the least) of the group that she would never be able to betray them, but Martinique didnt think she was joining some sort of terrorist group. She put all that in the back of her mind and instead engaged in her own campaign to garner more control and a better grasp over her power. Her father wasnt teaching her. Her half-sister wasnt. Who would? And so she naively joined a group that wanted to destroy humans, thinking that she could do just that if it led to what she personally wanted. But the truth of the matter was that there was a lot about this Brotherhood that she didnt like.

She had nodded when he mentioned Italy and for a moment her mind went there. Things were much more simple when she had no power. Now and again, Martinique thought to blame her father for everything, but then, where would she be? If she were half someone else, she might not even have her beauty, forget her power. Shed be a nobody. That was worse than being cooped up here. And she looked down when he spoke of the dead. If she hadnt been on drugs, the moment might not have happened. She might have just chickened out and, instead of rushing into the fray, she might have stayed back like an illusionist should, and only shut people down with imaginary guns and pain and blocks.

Martinique sighed and ran a hand over her hair, distracting herself for the moment so that she could think of how fast it was growing since all that surgery. No matter what Martinique was good or bad she was as vain as all get out. That she could absolutely fault her father for. That certainly ran in the Wyngarde blood.

I never was going to kill anyone. I dont have such a power this you know. She flicked her gaze over to Ted and offered a bit of a shrug. What could she say? Other than, of course, this truth. They approached me. They offered me a greater control over my power. They offered me a boost, perhaps. The ability to To show her father that she was powerful and important and much more than a pretty face and dull intellect. Martinique looked down at her arm and the null cuff. She bit her lip. This sounded so silly, didnt it? There was no way to make it sound better. But they took me to this place where the world was oppressive, the atmosphere itself crushing down, you know? And their leader he is quite insane. I neither received any boost or much training. The fact I remembered how to shoot a gun from my teenaged years I had, how you say?, been with a police officer and he would take me to the range, eh? but, the fact that I could remember how to is lucky. For them, I mean. Not for the people she killed.

Now that all this is going on, I would give much to simply disappear back into my world of fashion and just never use a power again. What is the point, really, eh? It may be a quiet world without Martinique lifted her wrist to show the cuff. Powers, but who cares, eh? I had a much better time when no one knew I had any and I was just another pretty face. Martinique glanced up at Ted and smirked, ending with, "To complicate one's life is to ruin it, I now believe."
Quote Post Goto Top
 
Ted Kaplan-Altman
Member Avatar
Mutant Skrull Physiology
Ted wasn't exactly sure what kind of an answer he was expecting. If he was to be honest, he didn't really think any answer would satisfy him, at least not emotionally. And ultimately, it was an emotional explanation he was seeking.

Of course, he understood why mutants might choose to use their powers to destroy, to dominate, to control... they were people, after all, and people had been choosing to do those things to each other for all of human history, with whatever powers they could get their hands on: money, politics, religion, technology, brute strength, whatever. And he could understand the appeal of framing that in terms of liberation from oppression, just as he understood the appeal of framing it in terms of the free market, or God's will, or common sense, or any of a hundred different virtues. People liked to think of themselves as virtuous, as pure, as doing what was necessary; they liked to think of their victims as being responsible for their own misery. And ultimately mutants were people, with all the same failings and weaknesses as anybody else. He knew all that. Hell, he'd mostly known it even before attending Xavier's, but even if he hadn't he'd had it shown to him again and again and again while he was there. The X-Men, the Brotherhood, SHIELD, the U.S. Army, even the Purifiers, they all thought they were the good guys. He knew that. He just didn't like it.

That said, he didn't really think there was an explanation Martinique could give him that he would like. Which he supposed made it more of a rhetorical question, and he approached her reply with a correspondingly high combination of skepticism and chagrin. That Sanctuary under Brotherhood rule had been oppressive to her was not a great surprise; while the propaganda they put out painted Sanctuary as a glorious mutant utopia, Ted was in general of the opinion that real utopias chose decidedly fewer insane killers to lead them. That she described herself as not a killer was more startling, and Ted couldn't help but let his incredulity show on his face. "You'll do until a real killer comes along, I think," he replied drily... or, well, he tried to reply drily, adopting the understated manner he mostly associated with Agent Orchard, but he was pretty sure that his real emotions were bleeding through. It didn't matter. Ultimately, he knew it was a lot simpler than he wanted it to be -- they'd been soldiers, and they'd been fighting a battle in a much larger war, and people died in wars. That was just the way the world was... the way all worlds were.

He didn't like that, either.

The silence stretched between them when she finished her explanation. "Yeah," he finally agreed, happy to find at least some common ground, "life was a lot simpler before all this." When the biggest problem facing him was how to come out as gay to his family. But he realized, even as he said it, that he wouldn't go back to that if he could. "But here's the thing about powers," he added slowly. "Yeah, they complicate everything. Mine are pretty simple, actually... I'm big, I hit things, I don't break easy. Well, you know," he realized, remembering that he'd done precisely that to her during their battle. He wasn't being entirely honest, but he didn't know how much Martinique knew about the whole Skrull/shapeshifting thing, how much she'd inferred from the illusion she'd pulled from his mind, but he preferred not to share that fact with her if she didn't already know it. "And I get how powers like yours," he continued, "telepathy and illusions and things like that, are a lot more challenging. Ethical pitfalls and everything." He'd written a paper his senior year for his Ethics seminar evaluating several proposed sets of ethical guidelines governing the use of invasive telepathy, balancing people's desires for and rights to privacy against the good that properly applied telepathy could provide and the reality that for some mutants choosing not to read someone's thoughts was about as practical as choosing not to interpret their facial expressions, and he'd ultimately concluded that none of the proposals were good enough... it was a genuinely hard problem. "And I knew a lot of mutants at Xavier's whose powers were a lot more complicated than that." He didn't want to get into specifics, but he knew perfectly well that Billy's potential was practically godlike, and he knew how much that worried the guy.

"But here's the thing: there's no putting the toothpaste back in the tube, y'know?" He shrugged. "Sure, maybe it would be simpler if you were still an ordinary fashion model and I was an ordinary guy working in an office somewhere and worrying about all of this world-shaking stuff wasn't our problem. I don't know... hell, I don't even know if the question makes sense." If Ted hadn't been a mutant Skrull, would he have been a normal kid? Would he have existed at all? He didn't like thinking about that sort of thing, especially since wish-granting genies weren't just a fictional aspect of his life. Hell, he was practically dating one. "Honestly, it makes my head hurt. But here's what I know: you aren't a fashion model and I'm not an office worker and it is our problem. It is what it is and we are what we are," he added with a chuckle, remembering the teacher who'd first used that line on him and how much he'd hated it, "and all we can really do is decide what comes next. For my part, I figure as long as I've got these powers I might as well use them to help people." He shrugged again, then tilted his head to one side, genuinely curious: "So, OK, I get why you wanted out of Sanctuary... but if all you want is a quiet life and a good time, why join SHIELD?"

Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Martinique Jason
Unregistered

If there was one thing she was not, it was suicidal. Martinique wouldnt take her own life, no matter how fully engulfed by hopelessness she felt it was just not an option for her. Call it some form of faith or even fear, she simply would never do it. But she had felt close to it when she first awoke. Even now, even though she was being given a second chance and she had so much to live for at least, that was what Neena said Martinique felt the dark feelings of remorse and the inability to ever make anything right again. If she could have her way, things would have never turned out like this. It was too bad she never came across some sort of mutant pre-cogniscience what she would have given to have never accepted the offer given to her that fateful night.

But what is regret? What can one do with it other than keep it in ones heart and hold it until it dissipates or until it eats you from the inside. Either way, there was no much else she could do but try and be a good soldier for SHIELD and hope that somehow things would all work out in the end. In all reality, Martinique was just a lost soul that never had much of an anchor. She had tethered her chain to people that didnt care much about her and look where it got her. At least here, shed be with people who valued something about her, be it her powers or her knowledge of the Brotherhood (what little she had). At least here, she wouldnt have her heart broken by absent family again and again.

She listened to Ted speak and understood what he was saying. She knew very well that people had much more complex and even hurtful powers than her own. Before all this, the worst she used hers for was to look better in public to those watching her, to enhance her own social life. It isnt the fact that we cant change the past that makes us move on. Its the fact that we cant relive the problem over and over again. She said it, but honestly, she didnt believe it. She did relive what she remembered and all that did was haunt her. When they had taken her and debriefed her the first time they showed her pictures. They showed her the dead she left in her wake. All for what? Nothing.

Im here because this is all I can do.

Martinique looked up at Ted, her eyes rimmed with tears. She had no right to cry no right at all. But, what else did she have, really. I am here because you brought me here. I am here because Neena told them about me convinced them to not execute me or turn me over to someone who would. She lifted her hand to her eye, rubbing the back of her hand against it, smudging her makeup a bit and not doing much to dry her tears. I am here because where else would I be?

The turn to the melancholy was not unheard of for a woman like Martinique. She had never worked an office job in her life and emotions bubbled easily up from her soul. She had never been in a team, either. The Brotherhood liked to think itself a team, but she hadnt seen any camaraderie. Not even like that from her fathers silly Club. Now she was expected to be part of a team, to be a support person, to be useful for some reason or another. There was more expected here than there ever was anywhere else. It scared Martinique. Im just lucky that they thought they could teach me to be a good soldier.
Quote Post Goto Top
 
Ted Kaplan-Altman
Member Avatar
Mutant Skrull Physiology
When Martinique mentioned Neena -- whom Ted mostly knew as "Domino," but he did know her regular name, even if it would never occur to him to refer to her using it -- some things became clearer. Or, well, not exactly clearer, but... well, there were just some people for whom nothing was really surprising, and their mere involvement in a situation meant that anything was possible. It was a running joke around Xavier's that if you walked into a room to find it ripped to shreds, "Logan" was a perfectly acceptable answer to any questions about what had happened. No further explanation was necessary. To Ted's mind, something similar was true of Domino... when something utterly implausible happened, like (for example) internationally wanted mutant criminals suddenly becoming law-enforcement officers, "Domino" was a perfectly acceptable answer, and nothing more needed to be said.

The tears, admittedly, seemed a bit much. Was she trying to manipulate him, or was she just exceptionally emotional? You didn't meet very many SHIELD agents who wore their hearts on their sleeves like that, but Martinique was admittedly not a typical SHIELD agent. Neither was Ted, come to that, but he was getting better. At least, he thought he was.

Maybe she would get better, too. And in the meantime, well, she was one fewer mutant working for the Brotherhood, and Ted supposed he'd rather have her on his side than on their side. Bad enough that Emma Frost had gone over to them. He'd never exactly liked her, but he hadn't expected that. And given that Martinique's father and half-sister were both illusionists and both working for the Hellfire Club, he supposed it was also fortunate that she hadn't joined them. "Do you ever talk to your family?" It no doubt sounded like a non-sequitor, and he supposed it was, but this was turning into a fairly disjointed conversation anyway, and he was curious.

"Soldier... yeah, I guess that's right." He didn't really think of himself as a soldier. He was, granted, but that just wasn't the label that came to mind. Though now that he thought about it, he wasn't sure what label was more apprporiate. He liked to think of himself as a hero, or at least a potential hero, and there was something heroic about what SHIELD did... in principle, anyway. But that wasn't really something you could put on a business card. His SHIELD business cards simply read Ted Altman, Trainee Agent. He supposed that was as good a title as any. But titles notwithstanding, Martinique was basically right. It seemed like his life was one fight after another, interrupted by paperwork. "What's that line about war?" he wondered out loud "99 percent mind-numbing tedium, 1% mind-numbing terror? Something like that." He thought about it for a minute and continued "Though I guess lately it's been like that for everybody." Certainly the victims of the Madbomb in Times Square hadn't been soldiers; they'd been perfectly ordinary civilians. Didn't stop them from getting killed. Ted didn't think he would ever forget the little girl Omega Red had destroyed right in front of him. He wasn't sure he ever wanted to; he didn't want to be the sort of person who could forget something like that. "At least we get to fight back. Get to do some good, every once in a while. That's something, right?" It was hard to remember that, with public opinion turning against them the way it was... not just mutants, that wasn't news, but heroes in general. Ted had listened to some loudmouth in a bar the other day explaining that if it wasn't for 'those so-called heroes' there wouldn't be all that trouble in the first place. It had been all he could do to pay his tab and leave quietly before the temptation to prove the lout right became irresistable.


Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Martinique Jason
Unregistered

War. Martinique hadn’t been in a war when the building she lived in came crashing down on top of her. It wasn’t the blitz of London or Kristallnacht – it was the Apocalypse (L’apocalisse) – and she was only collateral damage. No one was searching for her, no one was trying to kill her. She was simply a model on break from her job living in a small village in Italy, trying to live her life with as much joy and ease as she could. Around her, no one knew of her ‘talents’. No one knew who the Wyngardes were and no one cared. This was a place that cared about what was on the dinner table that night and why they didn’t see her at Church the week before, not powers and place within the global political economy. She didn’t know much about Ted at all, but before she came to New York, she was blissfully unaware of the ‘war’ being fought around and with mutants.

Now, here she was, and here it all was. People concerned not about her cooking skills or her looks, but her powers and her ties. This was not Martinique’s world. She was being forced into it by the fact that she had allowed herself to get caught up in the thought of power. Now, she wanted nothing to do with it. She had allowed herself to get caught up in the desire to please her father. Now, she didn’t even know if he missed her, if he worried about her or thought she were dead. Maybe SHIELD did what they did in that movie… made her disappear from everyone’s memories. She imagined that was not beyond their capabilities.

He asked about her family and immediately she thought of her cousins. The ones she lived with back in Italy. Her mother had remarried and her stepfather wasn’t someone she could be around. So, she lived with cousins and she missed them. Missed talking to them. Hadn’t even written them in a while. But she wondered, why on earth would Ted ask me about them? They weren’t mutants at all. Just regular humans living their regular lives. But, then, as she was about to ask him why, she realized that he meant her father and half-sister. The Wyngardes. The name that they insisted on calling her by, even if it wasn’t hers. Her real name was Ghirlandaia. She could have taken her stepfather’s name, Russo. But, she took ‘Jason’ out of deference to her real father without actually acknowledging him outright. There were many Jasons in this world, but only a few Wyngardes.

“I … My half-sister and I don’t have a relationship. She is my sister in blood only.” Her words were certainly dark and said with very little emotion. “She is her own person and what she does with herself, her time… It is to her to decide.” But it wasn’t her half-sister that was the catch. It was her father. She couldn’t help the way she felt about him, the love and devotion… All she wanted to do was please him and it was killing her inside not to have even talked to him since that night in New York.

“As for my father, well…” What could she say? They didn’t appreciate her father around here because of who he hung around with. He had bad taste in business partners – power partners – and she had seen that the moment she met his colleagues. She had tried her best to rouse him from the dreamspell they had him under, but it hadn’t worked. Instead, she felt like mourning for the father that could have been instead of trying to change the father that was. “I haven’t seen him in a while. I’m not sure what is going on there. I hope… I do hope he is alright.”

Martinique looked up and over at Ted, doing the best she could to press forward a hint of a smile. “We all have family, eh? Living or dead, we have them. We don’t pick them, God picks them. We just accept them and try to survive together.” She shrugged. What could she say, really? “You, no doubt, have family, too. Do they know what you are? That you are here?”
Quote Post Goto Top
 
Ted Kaplan-Altman
Member Avatar
Mutant Skrull Physiology
Martinique's pointed reply to his question about her family made it perfectly clear, both explicitly and implicitly, that she didn't really consider Regan family. Given what he'd read about the woman, Ted supposed he didn't really blame her; she was quite a piece of work. Then again, a couple of months ago he would have said the same thing about Martinique as well. People can surprise you, if you give them a chance to, he thought wrily. It sounded like something Scott would say... would have said, he corrected himself, remembering yet again that Scott wasn't around anymore to say anything. Not the way he used to be, anyway.

He didn't want to think about that right now. He wasn't sure he'd ever want to think about it. He kept thinking he ought to visit the school and see how everyone was doing... even during a shutdown, it shouldn't be too difficult to get authorization to drop by for a visit if he pushed it. He still had friends there, or at least he hoped they were still friends. And he couldn't be the only one who felt like he'd lost a father, in his case the closest thing to a father he'd ever really known. He at least had Billy to talk to about it, but even so he thought it would be nice to talk to some of the other students, maybe to Ororo and Jean and the other faculty as well. They were family, really... not a normal family, maybe, but it wasn't like "normal" was a reasonable description for any of his family. Which he supposed was something he and Martinique had in common, in a strange fashion. And it was clear that she did consider Jason Wyngarde family, and she was unhappy about it. The way she talked about him, it was like he was some kind of lost child who might find his way back home any day now.

Ted thought it unlikely. But then, he reminded himself again, people can surprise you if you let them.

"Yeah, my family know what I am," he replied to her question. It seemed only fair, turnabout being fair play and all. "Heck, they knew before I did." Which was true enough. Not only had his mother known he was a Skrull (it would have been difficult for her not to know, under the circumstances), she'd also known he was a mutant, like she herself was, and her father had been. Whatever the quirk in their family tree was, it apparently bred true, as was demonstrated by the fact that the three of them had remained Skrulls after the virus was released, rather than being reverted to Nuwali like all of his aunts and uncles and cousins. Which presumably also accounted for their decision to leave Skrullos in the first place, to avoid involvement in the coming Invasion. He wasn't really sure; he hadn't talked to them about it much. Really, he hadn't talked to them much at all. Nor did he have any intention of talking to Martinique about that particular aspect of his family. "They were pretty cool about that part," he continued, "though they did kind of freak out when I signed up for SHIELD duty." Which was an understatement. His grandfather, in particular, continued to think of SHIELD as the enemy. Ted had given up trying to explain that SHIELD had been infiltrated and taken over by the Skrull Invasion when most of that shit had happened. "We kind of had to agree to disagree about that. We don't talk much anymore."

Of course, once she was part of the SHIELD club, she'd probably find out about Ted's story sooner or later; though it was officially a secret, he'd found it was difficult to keep secrets around the Helicarrier. But he wasn't going to be the one to bring it up.

"I suppose your dad isn't too thrilled about you working for SHIELD either, huh? Was it better when you were with the Brotherhood?" The relationship between Hellfire and the Brotherhood was confusing at best. "There were rumors going around a while back that the Black Court had invaded Sanctuary to rescue your half-sister, Regan," he volunteered. "Of course, there's lots of rumors in our line of work. You can't take them all seriously."
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous)
ZetaBoards - Free Forum Hosting
Join the millions that use us for their forum communities. Create your own forum today.
Learn More · Register Now
« Previous Topic · S.H.I.E.L.D Helicarrier Archives · Next Topic »
Add Reply