The X-Project

Off in a small resort community in Western Oregon, Cain and Scott manage to track down Cameron Hodge and intend to ask a few questions about the stolen money. What they find is something else entirely, something that can't easily be explained.




The rented SUV clambered up the steep gravel road, tires spinning as small rocks and dirt went flying. Cain cursed as he looked out the windshield, once more damning whatever money-hungry developer had thought it profitable to put a series of rental bungalows this high up in the mountains of Oregon. Looking out the driver's side window, he absently noticed that the road they were on was actually above the tops of some of the sequoia redwoods growing in the valley below. That didn't seem right to him.

Looking to his right, he noticed Scott just blankly looking out the window, with the exact same expression he'd had all day. That didn't seem quite right either. Thankfully, the log cabin that was their destination was visible around the next bend. Cain smiled as he saw the small jeep outside.

"Looks like someone's home," he said gleefully. "This oughta be quick."

Scott shook himself out of his reverie and took in their surroundings as Cain pulled the SUV in next to the jeep. The glee in Cain's expression bothered him just a little. "We're here to talk, yes?" Scott asked a bit warily, remembering one of the reasons he was along on this little jaunt. "Just to talk." Although, really, what could he do if Cain decided to pop the man's head like a grape?

"Talk, right," Cain agreed, turning off the ignition and unbuckling his seat belt. Spacious as the vehicle was, being the biggest one the rental company had to offer, it was still cramped and uncomfortable to drive. All of which hadn't exactly contributed to a joyous mood.

"Bastard stole pretty much everything I had, Summers. I'd be lyin' if I said I don't want to beat every cent of it out of his hide." He looked over at the smaller man, then opened the door. "But that ain't how we do things, right? We can go about this all peaceable-like."

Scott actually cracked a smile. "You'd be surprised at how satisfying talk can be, if it's the right kind of talk," he said as he got out of the car. There was no reaction from the house to the noise, and he frowned a bit, falling in beside Cain as they headed for the door. "If he stole that much and is hiding out someplace this remote, you'd think he'd be a bit twitchier about company. I hope he's not behind the door with a rifle or something."

Cain stopped with his hand on the knob and looked at Scott with an incredulous expression, as if to say "Are you out of your mind?"

Instead he merely laughed and peered in through one of the windows. "Don't see no one with a rifle. Why don't we just-" He wiggled the door handle and frowned. "Locked. Of course. Well, looks like we do this the less friendly way," he growled, cocking one fist back.

Scott stepped up to the door, blocking Cain's way before he could smash through it. "Let's not and say we did," he muttered wryly and narrowed his eye. A narrow-focus beam blew out the cylinder of the lock, neatly. "Huh. Nice to see I can still do that, even without the visor..."

Cain arched his eyebrows, nodding slightly. "I'm impressed," he admitted, pushing the door open with a creak. "Cameron Hodge!" he called, taking a step inside. "Come on out, you got visitors, and we got business!"

The noises hadn't bothered Cameron one bit. He was used to them. Banging, yelling, swearing, all voices in his head never quieted. He just kept writing. He'd run out of paper the week before, and the last torn paper bag an hour ago.

He wasn't insane. Insane people did one thing, and one thing only. He had two, three if he counted destroying the paper he wrote on. He sat on the floor, cross-legged and rested his forehead on the metal folding chair in front of him. Hot. It was definitly getting hotter. But he had to finish. He couldn't go back to what he could see until he finished writing what he heard. He just couldn't.

But that voice - that voice caught his attention. He knew that voice. "Get thee behind me, agent of the devil." He whispered harshly, words rattling in his throat.

Cain heard the voice and stopped cold. That was Hodge, but...

And then he saw the walls of the cabin and his breath caught in his throat. Paintings, almost primitive and caveman-like, were scrawled on the walls, the floors, any available surface. Apparently Cameron had been busy. When he'd exhausted paint, he'd used what food was in the cabin, it seemed. The conglomeration of flies in the kitchen alone stood testament to that particular artistic endeavor.

The pattern was consistent, though. Repeated images of skeletons in red, lined by fire. The entire thing seemed somehow familiar to Cain, like an itch in the back of his brain, a memory that he just couldn't recall.

"HODGE!" he bellowed, "We know you're here, we just want to talk."

... what the hell, Scott thought, both eyebrows going up as he got a look inside. "You didn't mention that he was a mentally disturbed thief," he murmured, only loudly enough for Cain to hear. Then again, anyone who steals from Cain Marko can't be entirely sane...

"LIES!" Cameron yelled back. "You never just talk! You lie!" He pulled his cheek away from the chair, ignoring the tug of sweaty, sticky skin clinging to the metal. "Go away and take your devils with you. I have done ALL that you have asked of me!"

Frustrated, Cain walked across the filthy living room to the door leading to the cabin's bedroom. Not waiting for Scott, he wrenched it off its hinges, then stepped back at the stench that came from inside. "Cameron, jesus..." he muttered, eyes squinting from the intensity of the fetid stink.

Scott came up behind him, wincing at both the smell and the sight of the man on the floor. "Good God... what's going on here?" This wasn't as simple as a case of grand grand grand larceny. It couldn't be.

There were -two- of them. TWO! Cameron shrunk back, trying to put as much distance between him and the two men as possible. "You -promised-. You promised, if I did as you asked, you would let me alone.." Of course, the promises never came to fruition. The voices never let him rest, never stopped talking, demanding, yelling in his head. He pushed the chair towards the doorway, and covered his head with his arms. "Go away! I did what you asked!"

Cain glanced at Scott quickly. "Okay, he wasn't this crazy LAST time I saw him, but this is him. Whatever the hell he's talking about, though..."

Steeling himself against the smell, Cain stepped into the bedroom. The drawings were even more numerous here; Cameron had layered the room in newspaper, painting on the walls, the floor, even parts of the ceiling. Kneeling down, Cain cleared his throat.

"Cameron," he said firmly, "where is my money?"

He knew this answer! This was what he did, his vocation. He did things with money. He could answer this one. Cameron leaned against the wall he'd backed up into and relaxed. He knew where the money was, and that was good. Very good. Maybe the voices would let up now.

Scott was keeping one eye on Cain and Hodge, and... well, one eye mostly on Cain and Hodge, and occasionally looking around at the drawings on the walls. Definitely a repeating motif, but what did it mean?

"Money, Cameron," Cain insisted, gritting his teeth. "To the tune of nine figures that I trusted you with. Where. The hell. Is. My money?"

"Ten, but not now. I had to take it. I -had- to." Cameron babbled. "He said to, to use it as he would have wanted you to, and you weren't doing what he said." He scuttled along the wall until he reached the corner, wedging himself between the wall and the newspaper covered stained mattress.

He? Scott frowned again, looking at Cain this time, for some sign that the other man knew what this was about. "More in this than just him, then?" he asked.

Cain knew there was more to it, more than Scott knew, more than even he knew. But it wasn't fitting - something wasn't making sense and he knew that it should.

"Use it?" he asked, shaking Hodge gently. "Cameron, it's Cain. I ain't gonna hurt you, just let me know what happened. Did someone put you up to this?"

"You know who. He told you. He said he told you but you didn't listen." Cameron shook his head violently, and then crept up on hands and knees to come close to Cain. "He told me to. The devil. He talks to me. He says to take it, to destroy things, people, buildings, things! They all have to be destroyed. By fire be purged!!" His breath stank, of vomit and bile and rotten food.

"Cain, he obviously needs help," Scott said quietly. "If someone's put him up to this, we're not going to get any sense out of him when he's in this kind of condition."

He told you but you didn't listen.

Cain's eyes widened, and he grabbed Hodge's shoulders, holding the man still. Lowering his face to look into Cameron's eyes, Cain tried to remember. Remember everything back to when he'd been laying in that hospital bed, unable to move. Before that, the accident, the flashbacks, that sense of otherness that had pervaded it all.

"You're going to make me very angry, Cameron," he said slowly. "And if you want to see things destroyed, then keep on babbling. Because in about ten seconds, I'm going to start breaking things. And you know as well as I do, Cameron. You know..."

Cain looked down into the insane man's face, watching his mouth form the words in time with Cain's voice. "I cannot be stopped."

~Cannot be stopped. Cannot be stopped. Cannot be..~ "Stop!" Cameron shrunk back, or tried to at least. He couldn't -not- look at Cain. Even when he closed his eyes, squeezing them shut tightly, he still saw the angry red face. "Bank account. Swiss.. " He muttered. "Cambodia, Darfur, Haitian rebels... "

Cain swore under his breath, letting go of Cameron. "Where is the account information, Cameron?" he insisted. "Where did you..."

He stopped, listening to the litany that Hodge was murmuring under his breath. "You've been using my money to fund wars? Terrorism? Genocide? I ought to..." Cain clenched his fists, suddenly very conscious of Scott standing beside him. Anger threatening to overwhelm him, he struggled to open his hands and place them flat on the floor to either side of Hodge.

"The account information, Cameron. Give it to me, and I'll stop."

Satisfied that Cain wasn't about to do anything drastic, Scott backed off a bit and pulled out his cell phone. They were remote enough that by the time the police got here, Cain should have the information he wanted.

"Stop.. stop stop stopstopstopstop..." Cameron babbled. Cain would stop. He would stop. The voices would stop? He collapsed to the floor, pulling his chin close into his chest and wrapped his arms over his head, like a beaten dog. The account numbers. He didn't have to do the devil's work anymore, the devil would do the devil's work for him. Giving out the numbers was a relief, he spouted them, repeating over and over, the long routing and account numbers, the numeric passcodes he used for wire transfers, the names and addresses of the bank. And when he was done, he started over, repeating the same information again and again.

Grabbing a pencil, Cain scrawled the numbers and information on the back of one of Cameron's drawings. "Good, good. Cameron? Cameron, listen to me." Cain reached out a hand, pausing before making contact with Hodge. "You're going to go talk to the police now. You're going to tell them what you did, and you're going to let them take care of you, okay? You'll be safe."

"All right," Scott said softly, coming back over. "The police are on their way," he said as he slipped his cell phone back into his pocket. He looked from Cain to Hodge, then back again, measuringly. "Do we want to wait for them?"

"I'd rather not if it's all the same to you," Cain said as he stood up. "I've had enough weird questions for one day, let the locals handle this."

"I could use some fresh air myself," Scott said, taking one more look around the cabin before he shook his head and turned, heading for the door.

"Tell them everything. Everything, every... every thing." Cameron repeated, watching Cain leave the cabin. "And then stop. It'll stop." His eyes darted around the room, as if he'd seen something skirting along the walls. "The devil made me do it, Cain! The devil!" he shouted at the closed door.

"He cannot be stopped!"





After getting what they can from Hodge, Cain and Scott go for a bit of a drive. Or more accurately, Cain goes for a drive and Scott gets dragged out and given a talking to. Cain calls Scott's sanity and capability as a leader into question, and Scott has trouble finding the right answers.






Scott was busy contemplating the various oddities of the meeting with Hodge, and didn't notice for some time that Cain was not driving in the direction from which they'd come. "Where are we going?" he asked with a frown. They were driving deeper into the woods, he realized.

Cain glanced at the signs along the shadowed highway. Despite being early afternoon, the enormous sequoias kept the road darkened, with only slivers of blue sky visible through the massive trees. Giving no immediate answer to Scott's question, he turned off on a small gravel road, seemingly driving by memory.

"I ever tell you I spent a fair amount of time out here?" he mentioned offhandedly, as the rented SUV bumped over a tree root that had grown into the road. "Back after I got myself out of that hospital, spent a few years just wandering. Lot of space up here for a fellow to get lost in if you don't know where you're going, or you just don't care."

... okay, then. Scott shook off the contemplative fog, giving Cain a sideways look before he turned his attention back to the trees. "Reminds me of Alaska," he said, almost without thinking. "Not the trees. Just the space."

Without another word, Cain laid on the brakes, skidding the SUV to a stop amidst a shower of small gravel and pine needles. Removing the keys from the ignition, he opened his door and stepped out, walking off into the forest.

And now he's walking off into the middle of nowhere... Scott stared at him in bemusement for a moment before frowning and getting out himself, following. Some sort of trip down memory lane? He had said he'd spent time here.

Cain paused, standing in grass that was knee-high, even on him. Looking up, even his massive frame was dwarfed by these trees that had been standing longer than recorded history. He nodded contemplatively as he heard Scott's shoes crunching the needles under his feet.

"How old are you, Summers?" he asked bluntly.

Scott stared at him. "Twenty-eight," he said warily. "Why?"

"Twenty-eight..." Cain mused on that for a while. "How long you known Jean?"

Okay, this was getting disturbingly personal. "Twelve years," Scott said brusquely, and almost added minus two taking into account when she was dead, but that hardly counted, did it?

"Twelve years. Let's see, you been married for a few months, divide into the... no, wait, carry the..." Cain started counting on his fingers, then threw his hands up in the air with a perturbed noise. "Anyway, I was just trying to figure out which is worse, watchin' her get buried under a lake those years back, or dealing with her going all psycho and screwin' Drake?"

Scott's jaw clenched, anger flashing over his features for a moment before it, and the itch behind his eye, was ruthlessly controlled. "It's not a comparison I'd bothered making."

"Why not?" Cain asked, smirking slightly as he turned to look at the leader of the X-Men, standing there fuming silently. "After all, it's your fault, ain't it?"

Scott felt the color go from his face, but his expression just tightened and he stared back at Cain stonily. "Go to hell," he said, turning to head back towards the car.

Cain reached out and grabbed Scott by the shoulder, spinning him around. "I'd love to, but you seem set on blocking the damn way!" Looming over Scott, he pushed him slightly for emphasis. "You just can't quit blaming yourself, can you? Way I hear tell, she made her own choice - both times. Ain't got a damn thing to do with you, but you're so damn addicted to being a fucking martyr that you ain't gonna see that, are you?"

Scott caught himself, straightening, and glared coldly up at Cain. "I'll go through this once," he said, his voice tight, chilly - if only on the surface. "Since it's actually none of your fucking business in any case. I am not holding myself to account for anything that I shouldn't be. I do not have a martyr complex."

"Wrong on both counts," Cain insisted, poking Scott in the chest again. "One, it is my business because I can see how close to snapping you are. You think I ain't seen it before? You forget where I've been, boy. I've seen people pushed so far past the line they ain't got nowhere to go, they crack because they start taking on too much. You are this close to becoming a fucking psych job," Cain growled, holding his fingers an inch apart in front of Scott's face. "And frankly, I don't care much if you go home and cry into your pillow, or take it out on the heavy bag or go have fucking high tea with Chuck. But admit you've got a fucking problem."

He folded his arms and smirked again. "Which brings me to point two. Yeah, you're addicted to being a martyr. You've always gotta be the responsible one, always gotta be in charge, don't you? You got the responsibility for the team, for the school, for your marriage - you can blame yourself any time anything goes wrong. You got it all covered, man."

"And?" Scott ignored the first part. That didn't even deserve a response. "Yes, I have responsibility for the team, and the school, and my marriage. Yes, that means I'm the one who gets held to account when something goes wrong. What's your point?"

"Wrong!" Cain barked, pushing Scott hard enough to send him back a step. "My point is that you're full of shit. Your own wife fucks around with one of your teammates, and you take her back with open arms because you think it's your fault? Jesus, I knew you two shared a brain, I didn't think she had all the balls."

Cain very nearly got an optic blast in the head. Scott squeezed his eyes shut for a moment until the pressure ebbed. "You don't know what the fuck you're talking about," he grated. "She was sick, Cain. It wasn't her fault."

"Excuses," Cain said, this time holding back from pushing Scott, at least physically. "You can't think it's her fault, because then it's something out of your control, ain't it? Just like you couldn't stay back in Westchester when you thought I might do something stupid. For the same reason you push yourself into nineteen-hour days trying to solve every little problem. Same reason you were puking up blood from a damn ulcer - yeah, I heard about it." Cain idly backhanded a tree in frustration, small limbs and dead branches plummeting to the ground around them a second later.

"Point is, you think you're fucking Atlas, shouldering the weight of the world. Maybe your daddy didn't hug you enough, maybe everyone picked you last for kickball, what-the-fuck-ever. You ain't got the right to try and make it up when it's starting to put other people's lives on the line. You ain't gonna fix this with just another vacation, shit, you'll just run away to wherever and keep on working in your head. Because you can't fucking let go."

He wasn't risking other people's lives. He wasn't, Scott told himself, squeezing his eyes shut again, this time against a sudden wave of dizziness. He'd been fine at FoH headquarters. He'd managed the situation with the crazy old woman as well as it had been possible to manage it.

But it didn't matter, in the end, what he thought. He knew that. It was whether or not they were doubting him, and if Cain was... no. Stop it. The paranoia was not productive. But the nagging panic was harder to control. He was fucking up. He was doing it again, and Cain of all people was seeing it, calling him on it.

He couldn't do it again. He couldn't.

"Point taken." His voice came out sounding more dull and tired than tight, at least.

"Finally!" Cain breathed, throwing his hands up in the air. "I know you probably don't like me much, Summers. That's okay, you ain't exactly my best buddy neither. But trust what fuckin' experience I got here. I seen people just like you keep pushing and pushing, piling on responsibility after responsibility. Good men, good soldiers. They could handle it. But it got to be all they ever handled. Everything was a task, everything was the mission. Lost the damn human element."

He prodded Scott gently in the chest. "Funny to say this, but you need to get some fucking perspective. Yeah, Cyclops can handle any situation. Headmaster Summers can cope with any crisis. But Scott cracks like an egg the moment shit heads south."

"Perspective..." Scott looked away, swallowing past the tightness in his throat. His expression stayed level, at least. "I don't know, Cain. Being the headmaster, being Cyclops... at least there's a point to it. I can do some good." Even if I don't manage it sometimes when I really should.

Cain snorted. "You're drawin' lines where there don't need to be any. 'Being' Cyclops. 'Being' the headmaster. Been probably 'being' someone your whole life, ain't got a fucking clue who YOU are. How many years you been sharing a brain with Jean? She dies, you hop right into the same thing with Betsy? Shit, it's like a lifeline with you, isn't it? Just looking for someone else to be, 'cause you don't want to cope with who you are."

Pausing, Cain turned and smacked his fist into the tree again, with more spectacular results as a branch the size of a limousine crashed down on the other side. "Christ's sake, Summers. It don't matter what you're calling yourself. Scott, Cyclops, husband, leader, whatever. Quit hiding behind roles and responsibilities already. Like I told Drake, a man owns up to what he's done, and takes the consequences." Cain stepped forward, less than a step away from Scott and looking down, "but he also knows when to stop taking shit on that ain't his fault."

"Hiding. Just how the hell is it hiding?" Scott demanded, his voice less steady than it had been. "If I wanted to hide, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing. Wouldn't be out there taking all the shit when something goes wrong."

"It ain't your shit!" Cain barked back. "We need a leader, not a fucking savior! What're you hiding from? Lemme ask you this: who are you?"

"I don't want to be a fucking savior! I just want-" Scott bit back the rest of it, wrestling himself back under control. "I don't have the foggiest fucking clue," he said, his voice low and almost savage as he made himself answer Cain's question. "Is that the answer you were expecting? I don't know who I am. I know what I'm supposed to do, and that's it."

Cain leaned against the tree, hands interlaced in front of him. "Nothing but the job," he repeated sagely. "It'll burn you up, I've seen it. Eat you from the inside out - hell, already got a good start there. I ain't your father-figure, Summers. I ain't your priest, and we ain't exactly friends. But we're teammates. And this ain't like clocking in nine to five. You told me that - it's more than a damn job. Figure out who the hell you are and act like it. You can be a leader, you can be a hero. Maybe I just wanna see if you know how to be a man."

"Because I've done just a thunderingly good job at that so far." It slipped out before he could stop it, and Scott turned away, struggling to keep his expression level. What did it say when even someone who didn't have a whole lot of personal interest in your welfare decided to take it upon themselves to point out that you were being very obvious about the not-functioning? "I used to think the team was the only thing I could really count on. After Jean died."

"And in what world is thinkin' like that a good thing, Summers?" Cain said, hoisting himself away from the tree and walking back towards the rental car.

"The only world I know, Cain." Scott followed him after a moment's pause, hating him and hating himself and hating this whole stupid, stupid situation. Chalk one more up on my list of 'interventions'. He wondered if this one would take. He wondered just what would happen if he went back to Westchester, walked into Charles's office, and told him that he was quitting.

Right. Who am I kidding?


_{Many thanks to Frito for socking Cameron Hodge.}