The X-Project

At Ororo's request, Pietro and Kurt make their way to San Francisco to check on Nathan. She didn't precisely mean for them to join him, but sometimes there's nothing to do but drink to mutual evil-parent issues.


The house on Russian Hill was large and elegant, with the unmistakable look of the buildings constructed not long after the 1906 earthquake. The gate was open, Nathan's rental car in the driveway. More surprising was the fact that the front doors were unlocked as well, the alarm system disengaged.

Inside, the furniture was covered with white sheets and a thin layer of dust. There was a charred smell coming from somewhere, but it wasn't strong enough to suggest that anything was actually still burning. There were doors open haphazardly, here and there, and one overturned table in the hall, shards of colored glass strewn across the floor. It was impossible to tell what they had initially been.

Kurt stared around, unsettled, as they stepped inside, and picked his way carefully across the glass. "Nathan?" he called out, unsure where in the house the other man had gone.

"I don't much care for his taste in redecoration," Pietro muttered, a few errant glass shards crunching under his feet. "Dayspring," he called louder, "I ran the breadth of the continent this afternoon. The least you could do is answer us." He rolled his eyes at Kurt. "If he's knocked himself out again . . ."

There was no direct answer from Nathan. But very dimly, from somewhere down the hall, came the sound of someone singing. It was not an entirely pleasant sound, and certainly not anything resembling on-key. The tune was, however, just barely recognizable, and the words, at least for Kurt, certainly were.

"-in the ranks of death you'll find him! His father's sword he hath girded on! And his... uh, wild harp slung behind him!"

Kurt's wince was as much for the quality of the singing as for the choice of song. "He is that way", he told Pietro, jerking his head down the hall. "Singing... Irish rebel songs about war."

"Drunkenly, if I'm any judge. And I've hauled Wanda home from enough bars. Does this place have a wine cellar, do you think?" Pietro started down the hallway.

"A house like this? I would be surprised if it did not." Kurt wasted no time following him, glancing around for any sign of said cellar.

It turned out that Nathan had helpfully left the door open to the stairs that led downwards. The wine cellar was actually fairly sizeable, well-stocked with both wine and other things. Which was good, Nathan had reflected a number of hours ago, because he really wasn't all that much of a wine fan. The whisky, on the other hand, did nicely. Even if it really ought to be tequila.

"Land of song! said the warrior bard - " Nathan paused, blinking owlishly at the two of them. He was sitting on the floor - nice, stable floor that wasn't going anywhere - leaning back against one of the wine racks. "Oh. I don't remember inviting either of you."

"Munroe did that. Were you really setting things on fire when you talked to her?" Pietro looked around the wine cellar. "And was that before or after you'd started drinking your father's booze?"

"She did say she thought you were drunk", Kurt contributed. "So I am thinking the answer is... after."

"I broke into Saul's safe," Nathan informed them pleasantly, then took a swing from the bottle of whisky. He'd lost his glass somewhere along the way. "All kinds of interesting papers and letters. I still have a bunch to burn."

"And why are you burning your father's papers, Dayspring?" Pietro asked patiently. "I mean, if it were just for catharsis, presumably there's a picture somewhere you could throw darts at."

"Well, first I was just burning the letters Gideon sent him. Because they're pure evil, just like he is. Then I found letters my mother sent him, and figured that since I'd made such a good start, I might as well continue. Ignorance is bliss." Nathan waved grandiosely with the bottle. "And then I ran out of scotch."

"And so you... came to look for more?" Kurt hazarded. "Have you been reading your mother's letters before you burned them?"

Nathan proceeded to give him a look that somehow managed to suggest both profound ambiguity of feeling and serious stubbornness - at the same time. "She's evil too."

Pietro raised an eyebrow. "What is this, a game of one-up? I don't think you're allowed more than one evil parent, Dayspring. It makes the rest of us look bad."

"Oh, well, we can't have that..." He waved the bottle at the others like it on the racks. "I'm being a very bad host. Help yourselves, if you want. And while you're doing that I can strategically lose my train of thought... whoops, there it goes. What was I saying?"

"That your mother was evil," Pietro reminded him helpfully as he perused the bottles. He gave a low whistle. "Your rat-bastard of a father had excellent taste, I'll give him that much."

Nathan ignored the first part. "He did, didn't he? This whole house. The contents are probably worth even more than the house itself," he said restlessly. "Antiques, and artwork... nothing ostentatious. Just tasteful. Stuff I would have picked, too, if I'd been trying to furnish a house like this." It was perfectly obvious that the realization irritated him.

"I hope you have not destroyed too much of it", Kurt said dryly from the corner he'd wandered to, studying the bottles. "It would be a shame, when it would be better sold."

"Pass it all on to someone else, wash my hands clean, huh?" Nathan snorted, a curiously disconsolate sound. "The thought is tempting. Walk away and pretend they never existed... oh, hell, will you listen to me?" he snapped suddenly, the irritation returning in force. He took another pull at the bottle of whisky. "I ought to go find his tombstone and kick it over, that's what I ought to do."

"Would it make you feel so much better?" Kurt asked gently.

"Childish vandalism can be therapeutic," Pietro said, sliding a bottle of wine out of the rack and going over to sit down on the floor. "If my father had a tombstone I'd kick it over. I think I would do a little jig on the grave first, though."

"Oh, see, here's the thing!" Nathan said, waving his bottle a bit wildly. "Them being dead? Doesn't help! You'd think it would, but no, that just means they're gone." It didn't come out sounding quite as profound as it had in his head.

"Well, at least they're not actively making your life hell anymore. I mean, they can't do unfortunate things to your nearest and dearest when they're dead. On the other hand, you can't run a memory up to Mach 5 and let go." Pietro cast around the room. "Did your father keep a convenient and tasteful corkscrew down here, or did his evil extend to making me go back upstairs for one?"

The cork popped out of the bottle in what was really a shockingly adept display of telekinesis, considering Nathan's current state. "I think we just need to not have evil parents," he said almost fitfully. "Just... not have them, in general. Find a nice reality-warper, and... poof."

"It is a tempting thought", Kurt agreed. "Though it might bring more problems than it solved, all things considered."

"What, you mean we might wind up vanishing from existence? Yeah, that'd be a bit of a hitch in my grand and wonderful plan, wouldn't it?" Nathan eyed Kurt. "Get something to drink, or I'm going to start to think you have ulterior motives." The 'warning' delivered, he went on. "You know what bugs me? They're perverse. Evil parents, I mean. They do very unparently things because they want the best for us. It's counterintuitive, damn it!"

Pietro snorted, nearly choking on a mouthful of wine. "Oh, Dayspring, are you ever preaching to the choir. The number of times my father told me 'Everything I do, I do for you and your sister,' or 'I want to give my children a better world' . . . well, thanks, Papa, but personally I'd prefer one with fewer corpses in it, just one man's opinion . . ." He shot Kurt a grin. "And you--you're damned lucky you barely know your mother. There's enough loose screws in that head to supply a hardware store, trust me. And worse yet, we might technically be some exceedingly loose definition of stepbrothers." This realization called for a significantly longer pull from the wine bottle.

Kurt took a moment to consider the meaning of that, then clearly wished he hadn't. He wasted no more time grabbing a bottle off the rack. "Thank you for sharing that, Pietro."

"Ororo is going to be terribly disgusted with all three of us, you realize," Nathan said cheerfully, raising his bottle in salute. But he had to admit, he was rather glad to no longer be drinking alone. Although... "I bet you two aren't going to let me keep burning things, are you?"

The looks he got in response were answer enough. "Nuts."