A/N: Here's the new Chapter! Which also means the next four chapters are up on my Patreon for early access as well as the chance to vote on the direction of the story!
Thaddeus makes a call. And then he makes a call.
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Noting his hesitation, Madelyne reaches out and takes his hand in her own, giving him a big, reassuring smile.
"It's alright, Thaddeus. Any moves we make right now are only bound to get us in trouble. Let's both just continue our day like nothing's wrong and use this time to come up with plans for what to do next. We can meet back up afterwards."
The worst part is, her words sound so reasonable. Is she right? Do they need to pause for a moment and let these realizations simmer in the back of their minds? Under normal circumstances, Thaddeus would be inclined to agree with her. There was no use in going off half-cocked and rushing into things.
And yet… and yet, something doesn't feel right about all of this. Leaving Madelyne alone right now, even if it's his walls that are fortifying and protecting her mind… feels like it would be a mistake.
In the end, he offers Madelyne a smile and a nod.
"You're right, of course. We should take the day to process everything and then regroup."
Madelyne positively beams at him.
"Yes! We don't want to risk making a mistake, after all. I'll see you again soon, Thaddeus and… then we can…"
It's around that time that Madelyne passes out, slumping forward onto her desk unconscious with Thaddeus still holding her hand. A grimace spreads across his face because really… she didn't even see it coming. A direct consequence of having the walls keeping her newly awakened mutation contained come from him meant it was all too easy to just… reach into her mind and flick the off switch, sending her into La La Land.
With an explosive breath, Thaddeus pulls out his phone and places a call. It barely gets through the first ring before the person on the other end of the line picks it up.
"Emma? I may have just made a mistake."
"… Yeah, I'll be right over."
Hanging up after the very short conversation, Thaddeus tucks his phone away and steps forward, leaning down to pick Madelyne up and drape her over his shoulders in a Fireman's carry. By the time the first of the university students for her next lecture start arriving… he's already long gone.
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Emma Frost leans over the red head that Thaddeus has brought to her, humming consideringly as she peels back an eyelid to stare into an unseeing green eye. Madelyne Pryor, aka Jean Grey's clone, doesn't react in any way to this action given that her brain is still currently shut down.
The man in question who knocked her unconscious and was keeping her that way paces back and forth across the room as Emma examines the clone. He's not much of a worrywart usually, nor a nailbiter… but right now he's both, clearly having had time on the way over to her to start regretting what he's done.
"Maybe I shouldn't have jumped the gun like this, but I didn't know what else to do. I got a bad feeling about leaving Madelyne alone… and while the things she were saying made perfect sense, they just didn't sound like HER, you know? I just… I'm afraid I've overreacted."
Straightening up, Emma fixes her younger partner in crime with a look.
"You didn't."
Thaddeus stops pacing at that and looks at her with a blink. Emma just raises an eyebrow in response.
"You say you had a feeling that leaving her alone would end poorly. A premonition, perhaps?"
"… I suppose."
"Mm. A premonition like one might get if they had a somewhat supercharged probability power guiding their actions and influencing events in their everyday life."
Thaddeus' eyes widen, causing Emma to smirk.
"I didn't pay Domino all of that money for nothing, Thaddeus. If you had a bad feeling about leaving the clone alone, then it stands to reason you made the right call by trusting that bad feeling."
"Madelyne."
Emma pauses at the correction and Thaddeus flushes a little bit but nevertheless doesn't back down.
"She's not just a clone. She's her own person with her own thoughts and emotions. Her own wants and needs. Don't forget that Emma. I won't dehumanize her just because her origins are… unconventional."
Heh. Sometimes Emma wondered about her partner in all of this. Sometimes she wondered if he was really cut out for all of this, especially life as a member of the Hellfire Club.
Then she remembers how he barely hesitated before killing Shaw and she knows he has the necessary mentality to go the distance with her. Even if deep down inside he's definitely a better man than the rest of the Hellfire Club, herself included.
"Very well. Madelyne then. And even ignoring your probability-based powers, you made the right call in bringing her in. From what you're describing, it sounds like you triggered some sort of failsafe either when you told her the truth about her origins, or when she activated her latent mutant gene and awakened her psychic powers."
That gets another blink from Thaddeus as he looks down at Pryor in a new light.
"A failsafe… yes, that would explain her sudden one-eighty perfectly."
Emma hums and nods, also looking down at the woman. It's hard not to stare, to be honest. The White Queen of the Hellfire Club had never had a single direct interaction with Jean Grey before her death, but she would have had to have been a fool not to be aware of her… and Emma Frost was no fool.
Jean, as much as it hurt to admit, was definitely the stronger psychic before she died. New York City had a rather large population density, both human and mutant alike, but that didn't change the fact that Emma had been very aware she was practically living next door to the woman who might just have been the strongest psychic on the damn planet.
Even Charles Xavier didn't give her pause in the same way Jean Grey had. When the red head had died, Emma couldn't deny that she'd been just a little relieved, truth be told. After Thaddeus had come to her about Madelyne and she'd seen the woman's picture, part of Emma had been… afraid.
Only now as she stands over the clone does she realize she didn't need to be scared. That was then and this was now. Jean Grey might have been the strongest telepath back when she was still alive, but Emma… Emma hadn't been idle in the time that had passed since. An opportunity had fallen into her lap that she'd seized with both hands and quite frankly, the blonde had gained an awful lot from her relationship with Thaddeus so far.
"You were right to bring her to me. She might very well have the same telepathic potential as Jean did and if that's the case… I'm probably the only one in the world who can currently stop her if necessary."
Thaddeus grunts at that, nodding his head. Indeed, while he himself had become a somewhat powerful telepath thanks to their mutually satisfactory arrangement, unless he started fucking other psychics like Tessa or Madelyne here on the regular, she was still pretty far above him in terms of raw telepathic power.
His defense was still stronger than hers though, so it all evened out in a way. Regardless… it was time to get to the heart of this matter.
"Come. Let's see what lurks in the mind of your Biology Professor, shall we?" Sёarᴄh the NôvelFire(.)net website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.
Jaw setting, determination filling his eyes, Thaddeus nods again, this time far more decisively. Together, they both move to above Madelyne's head. Emma steps into place first, her hands coming down atop the other woman's brow and her fingers sliding through Madelyne's red locks across her scalp.
Thaddeus, being nearly twice her size, steps into place behind Emma, his much larger and longer arms easily moving around her body where he rests much larger hands atop her own, spreading his fingers over her own.
For a heartbeat, Emma almost wants to forget about figuring out Madelyne Pryor's deal and just proposition Thaddeus for some more sex. It wasn't like the red head was going anywhere, after all.
… But no. She had more self-control than that, and enough self-awareness besides to know that he wouldn't be pleased by the suggestion. Right now, her partner in crime was focused solely on the matter at hand. That meant Emma had to as well.
The two of them dive into Madelyne's mind together, something made all the easier by the fact that her mental defenses are literally crafted by Thaddeus' power. He does the metaphorical equivalent of opening a door in the wall for Emma to waltz right on through and just like that, they're both among the sleeping clone's inner thoughts.
"… Where do we go first? I've never… delved this deep into someone else's mind before."
No, he hasn't. Despite his strength, Emma is well aware that Thaddeus has been leery of using his psychic abilities to their fullest extent, in no small part because of the inherent potential for abuse. With the amount of power he's accumulated from her, he could do any number of… morally questionable things.
He hasn't and likely never will because that's not the kind of man he is. In turn, Emma has done her best to curb her own… activities in that regard. Keeping Thaddeus as her partner is far more important to her than continuing any previous activities she may or may not have taken part in from time to time.
Now though, they needed to delve into a mind not for their own selfish reasons, but to help yet another woman that Thaddeus had grown attached to. He was lucky that she wasn't the jealous ty- hah, who is she kidding? She's very much the jealous, possessive type.
But all those other bitches don't hold a candle to what she and Thaddeus have. And so long as that remains true, she doesn't care who he fucks for power. He'll always be her partner. The rest of them are… minions at best.
Case in point, it wasn't the X-Men who he contacted after knocking out Madelyne Pryor in spite of his connections via the likes of Talon, Shadowcat, and Mercury. Nor was it the Avengers despite his close relations with She-Hulk. No, it was her. Not just because she was a telepath, but because he knew at the end of the day that she would help him, no questions asked.
"Simple, Thaddeus. We go where the mind doesn't want to go. We find the deepest, darkest parts of the psyche and plumb them for information. The things that Madelyne either doesn't want to or simply can't remember. The things she's either tried to forget… or been made to forget. Because the mind never truly forgets, Thaddeus. Not without the right… touch."
And that would tell them just as much as anything else, really. If Madelyne Pryor didn't have memories hidden away in the dark, that meant someone had gone out of their way to wipe them and that… that would narrow things down to a very short list of people.
But Emma was getting ahead of herself. She leads Thaddeus down Madelyne Pryor Boulevard, taking the young man through the 'streets' that make up the clone's mind. With Madelyne unconscious and their psychic powers combined, there's no interruptions, no pushback, and no resistance.
As they go, they see several of the red head's memories. Emma hums as her gaze flickers back and forth among them.
"Fake. Real. Fake. Fake."
Thaddeus doesn't ask how she can tell because once she points it out, even he can see it. The difference is night and day once you know what you're looking for, the equivalent of looking at something in black and white and something in color.
To be fair, it's no surprise that so many of Madelyne's memories are fake. Her amnesia was nothing but a ruse to cover up her true origins, that being the fact that she was a clone. As such, all of those 'memories' of skills and knowledge she'd gotten from before the 'accident' that robbed her of her personal recollections and memories of her family were faked. Implanted, if you will.
Her knowledge of biology. Implanted. Her Public Speaking abilities. Implanted. Hell, her grasp of the human language and ability to tie her shoes… all of it was implanted. Had to be, given she was clearly grown in a lab somewhere.
But where? That was the real question. Where had Madelyne Pryor been born? How had she come to be? That was what they needed to push for more information on.
Foraging ever forward through the winding pathways of Madelyne Pryor's half-falsified mind, Emma leads Thaddeus deeper and deeper, until they're 'lost' among twisting dark corridors. Or they would be if this weren't all simply a metaphorical representation. They can pull out at any time still… but they won't because they're still looking for answers.
For a brief moment, Emma begins to think that they won't find the answers they seek. Which means another telepath would have to be involved to have erased the memories they're looking for. Just as she's wondering if she should voice this concern to Thaddeus however… they find it.
"Here it is. Her earliest real memory. Hm, it's been suppressed but not erased. That's a good sign."
Thaddeus nods, his determination having only grown after seeing firsthand how many of Madelyne's memories have been manufactured. Together, they push on through, into the memory itself… and find themselves in a dark lab, staring out through Madelyne's eyes as she floats in a tube, blinking awake for the very first time.
There's a pause, a minute of nothing… and then lights all over the lab start to turn on. And out of nothing, swirling into existence in a clear display of teleportation… is a man. But not just any man. No, this man is something darker. Something… sinister.
Chalk white skin. Unnatural red eyes. Pitch black hair. A red diamond in the middle of his forehead. And… armor that covers him from neck to toe, with strand floating metal tendrils coming off of it at the back. There's also a rather large, red, flared collar protruding from the top of the armor. Extremely dramatic.
And yet, he wears the look all too well. It doesn't feel like he's trying too hard for even a second. In the end… he just… is.
Stepping forward, the chalk white man leans closer to the tube, his red eyes narrowing as he takes Madelyne in for a long moment. Then, his lips curl into a wide, toothy grin.
"Curious. Very, very curious."
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The Vote:
[X] Stick with Emma's POV - 81%
[ ] Switch back to Thaddeus' POV - 19%
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