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Author's Notes: The story takes place around Uncanny X-MEN #315. References events from X-Force #24-25 (Fatal Attractions) . The title inspiration comes from the song by Heart from their album "Brigade." ("I pray for the love that�s fallen from grace, the tears left behind won�t wash from my face, I�m left with all these feelings, but nothing fills the space of the love that once was, that�s fallen from grace")
Avalon, present day
Dusk lit the forward array of windows in a luminescent mother-of-pearl glow. Sally Blevins soaked up the view afforded her, the endless stars scattered like diamonds upon a black velvet blanket.
From her vantage point, she could see the blue-white marble of Earth as it spun in its orbit around the Sun. As a child, Sally had been fascinated by accounts of astronauts journeying from the Earth to the Moon. Like most kids with dreams, Sally had often imagined herself an astronaut, and even had planned on attending Space Camp, graduating, flying missions, and making discoveries. Eventually, she'd been sure, she would become one of the first volunteers to colonize a space station.
"Well, here I am. Just not in the way I'd always pictured it," Sally muttered to herself. She gave a sigh as she wistfully admired the beauty of Earth.
Slowly, the planet of her birth rotated on its axis, showing her the oblong shape of Asia's nightside. Sally gazed in rapt fascination as the Red Sea seemed to split in half right before her eyes.
At that moment, she was very close to launching herself through the window and experiencing the ultimate in free fall, just so she wouldn't feel trapped on the floating junk heap called Avalon, as she saw winds course diagonally across the surface of the planet, like the breath of gods.
Sally suddenly whirled around and strode across her room to pick up a photo resting on her end table. She stared at it, wishing that Rusty Collins was there with her so she could share her thoughts with him. However, ever since they'd arrived on Avalon, he'd been avoiding her, and not wishing to intrude on his privacy, she'd allowed him his space.
"Rusty, when did everything go wrong?" Sally muttered to the empty air. "When my mutant powers manifested, any other dreams I might have had somehow became entangled in a larger one. One larger than me...Huh. Never thought I'd find myself mutant, fighting for peaceful coexistence between homo sapiens and homo superiors.
"My codename, Skids, fits my ability to create frictionless forcefields. Y'know, I was terrified until I met you, Rusty. When I joined a community of other lost souls, the Morlocks, it was as if I'd found my soulmates. Through everything, loss and love, we were there for each other...
"Then, of course, everything fell apart. We just coasted along for a while until we met up with the x-teams. I can barely remember a time when we weren't together..." She turned away from the window, sighing softly, and flopped down upon her bed, closing her eyes and thinking back to how she'd ended up in this monstrosity.
"It wasn't all that long ago, yet it feels like a lifetime..." She frowned, feeling a little weird indulging in this kind of second guessing.
"When Stryfe came along, that was the beginning of the end. We were brainwashed, conscripted into into the Mutant Liberation Front. Then, after a whole mess, we're sent from a maximum-security prison to Xavier's for treatment.
"Like that was going to happen! But, instead, those bigots from the Friends of Humanity decided to take matters into their own hands. X-Force, our friends, rescued us, even though they knew we were still under Stryfe's influence. I hope he's dead, that monster!" Sally growled at the memory.
"So, we're brought back to X-Force's base in the Arizona desert, and the next thing I know, Sam, Ric, Tab, Bobby, Rusty and I are spirited away by Exodus, on Magneto's orders, to this floating hunk of junk called Avalon..."
Trial of the Neophyte (flashback)
"NO!" the Neophyte protested as he was forced into a kneeling position on the floor, his upper arms covered in a gold metal armbands that temporarily nullified his powers. He'd heard to Voight's opening statement about trust, and betrayal and faith, and then he was forced watched as Milan graphically played out the scenes of his past that would bar his access to Avalon and determine his fate.
From her vantage point, Sally watched, fascinated, as Voight and Rasputin verbally fenced with each other.
"No, child? Then perhaps you would share with us, in your own words, what could possess a person to turn his back on our fellowship?" Amelia Voight asked, seeming like a kindly relative soothing an agitated child as she placed her hand on his shoulder.
"When I first arrived, I felt with all my heart that Magneto was a savior for us all! Then Moria Mactaggert arrived, and I witnessed first-hand the hyprocisy of the Acolytes. On one hand, you profess to support Magnus' goal of allowing mutants to live in peace, but you feel the only way to do that is by treating humans with the same hate they have for us! In the face of your inhumanity to the woman, I realized there must be another way. An alternative to the pain, suffering, and deadly confrontation between our two people!" The Neophyte exclaimed. 'The Neophyte.' That was the only name he was allowed for this trial.
"This other way, did it have a name?" Colossus asked, knowing in his heart what the only possible answer could be.
Sally found herself whispering the name 'Xaiver' and mentally kicked herself.
"Yes, Charles Xavier's dream!" the boy cried.
Sally watched as the other Acolytes argued among themselves. She shuddered involuntarily as hot-tempered Usicione's psionic exoskeleton enveloped the boy.
Sally figured the Neophyte would have been finished right then and there, if Colossus's innate need to protect kicked in and if Voight hadn't immediately teleported the boy to safety. Exodus, sitting in judgment throughout the proceedings as an impartial observer, finally rose from his seat on the platform to consider the judgement.
Soon, Exodus returned, having gone to confer with Magneto to decide the Neophyte's sentence. Energy sparked to life from his hands as he prepared to end the Neophyte's life.
"No! The boy's only crime was the strength of his convictions! Something Magneto, as I knew him, would have respected and honored. He himself was a man whose entire family was slaughtered by an army of soldiers -- men who were only 'following orders'; and those same men sent millions of their fellow human beings into a holocaust raging with the heat of stupidity and ignorance!" Colossus cried.
Amelia stood to counter that, but Sally only heard Colossus's voice as he seemed to reach right into her heart.
"I came here to Avalon because I believed we were going to be better than that. It is the very same reason this boy came to you, to us. Is he to punished for refusing to sit back and follow orders? Is he to be condemned for thinking differently? For not standing back and watching as another living being was beaten and tortured? If so, then we should all follow him into death, because eventually that is where we will all end up, and anyone who disagrees..." Colossus trailed off, shaking his head. "No, Exodus, if Magneto's life has taught us anything at all, it was how not to follow orders of others, but to follow the dictates of his own heart!"
The room was silent, save for the echo of Colossus's words. Exodus, quickly glancing at the expressions of the Acolytes and adapting--as always--to the situation, smoothly continued. "As I was about to say, Piotor Nicklovech, I would have taken his life without a shred of remorse, but Magneto is by far a more compassionate soul. That is why he instructed me to banish this wretch to the place of fools, known as Earth. Be gone, Neophyte, knowing you are forever banned from the heaven that is Avalon. As for the rest of you, peace be with you." He spun and left the court-room quickly, before any questions could be asked.
Sally left with the others, watching their faces, but found herself with little to say in the aftermath of the trial. She idly wondered when Colossus had become such a convincing public speaker. The Russian farm-boy she'd met during her tenure with New Mutants had been awkward and shy. He could never have pulled off as eloquent a defense as she'd just witnessed.
She sighed, trying to decide what would happen next. "Did he really mean it? Did Exodus hear and decide to be lenient? Did the Acolytes take his words to heart?"
Elsewhere
"Sally, may I come in?" Peter Rasputin voice called, faintly, as the door chime signaled his presence.
"The doorlock signature isn't activated." Sally snapped, irritated at the interruption.
"I'll take what I can get." Peter replied, entering the room as the metallic door slid shut with a soft hissing sound.
"What do you want? It's not like you've gone out of your way to associate with me or acknowledge my presence." Sally stood rigid, staring resolutely away from him.
"I'd like to talk to you, tovarish, if I may call you that?" Peter said, gently turning her towards him.
"You can talk, but that doesn't mean I'll listen." Her fists clinched as she turned back to stare out of the window. "What did Exodus call this place 'a safe haven away from the insane asylum the world below had become'? It's anything but!" She whispered, watching her breath condense on the cold metal windows. No matter how much they tried, science had not yet solved the problem of recyclable source of oxygen. It had been necessary to keep the station's temperature at about 55 degrees, and Sally shivered, but not from the cold.
"Why do you stay? Because of loyalty to Magneto?" Peter asked.
"Good question. Why do I stay? You knew about the brainwashing Stryfe did to Rusty and me?"
Peter nodded, seemingly to sum up a world of meaning in that single gesture.
"Magneto freed us. So, if where my loyalties seem a little blurred, chalk it up to that. Why do you stay?"
"Magneto's way was so simple. So direct. Do as you're told. Don't ask questions or, heaven forbid, disagree. Just do as you're told. It was balm to my soul, the day my beloved sister, Illyana, died. When Magneto came to offer us all Heaven."
"And you accepted the offer. Was Illyana's death, which made you think you'd been betrayed by Xaiver, the only reason? Later, even after Xavier took away Magneto's mind, you decided to stay."
"Yes, I accepted Magneto's offer of my own free will. His way seemed the brighter path. Charles had failed me, failed Illyana. His way promised strength and unity. I was wrong, and I see that now. Don't think for a moment that it was easy to figure that out! While the way is good, the people he had chosen, the Acolytes, have twisted their status for their own power plays, their own ego." He looked thoughtfully into space.
"What did you come here to talk about?" Sally asked in spite of herself.
"You may found this odd, but I came to talk about you."
"ME? I'm nobody." She shrugged.
"You are hardly a nobody, tovarish. In addition to clearing the air between us, I wish also to offer something of an apology. I've been so self-absorbed in mourning my sister's death, in second-guessing my decision to remain on Avalon, that I've ignored you." He sighed.
"Don't sweat it, Rasputin. It's not like you and I ever had any history together, other than Ilyanna ..." She trailed off.
"I know that. It's that, since your arrival on Avalon, you've been very quiet and withdrawn. I'd like to hear your thoughts on the trial that just took place."
"It's not exactly the �heaven' they advertised, is it here?" Sally smiled slightly, a vague thinning of her mouth. "If it's any sort of reassurance, you did a bang-up job in there of defending the Neophyte's case. Too bad it was wasted on those creeps. Exodus has them believing anything he tells them."
"I wouldn't go that far. At least, they listened." Peter smiled thinly back at her.
"I guess they did at they that." She shrugged again.
"May I ask a personal question?" He let his eyes drop to the floor. "Is there friction between you and Rusty?"
"We're experiencing a little relationship snag...what's it to you?" She frowned slightly.
"I'd like to help," Peter whispered.
"Thanks for the offer, Rasputin, but you're not exactly an expert in romance. Rusty and I have basically known each other all our lives. This isn't anything we can't handle in that arena."
"I guess you're right about that, considering my own track record." He grinned suddenly, breaking the tense atmosphere that had grown up between them.
"So where does that leave you...us?" Sally asked.
"I wish I could give you a clear-cut response...but perhaps we can figure it out, Sally..."
They stared at each other in silence after that. Perhaps their answers had yet to be found, or perhaps there just weren't any answers to be found.
THE END
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