The X-Project

Xorn appears at the end of a broken world and changes everything



The world was a whisper. Long bloody rents had been torn in the fabric of reality, the space between universes reduced to a fractional amount. It was as if watching an entire universe collapse in on itself. Jean Grey was dead. That was clear. Her body had been incinerated, along with her rival and millions of innocent minds. The clear heat death of the mutant race was so fresh it ached like a brand.

There was nothing left to do. The wisp of consciousness was fading quickly. The inevitability of death in synch with that of a universe. Seven billion lives times a million universes were crashing into the same space, and in the wake of that carnage, it was impossible to even guess at how reality could survive.

When he appeared, it wasn't teleportation or travel. One minute Xorn wasn't there, the next, he was there as he'd always been. The figure looked around like a man who'd just discovered something surprising. His hands went to the clasps of his mask and he unhooked it with determination. The mask was the product of both Forge and Essex; a filter strong enough to allow a god to focus on a single person. He discarded it with a contemptuous manner.

"It seems we have no lack of fire. A great deal of ash is coming." For once, Xorn was communicating normally, a sign that things were different.

Xorn motioned with his hand, and around him, a billion worlds cycled. They could see the damage caused by the Dark Phoenix in hundreds of broken and burnt out universes. Fragments whirled like shards of glass caught up in a tornado, endless moments of other realities that existed for a fraction of time and then blinked out into nothingness.

But there was more.

"Consider the universe." Xorn hung in front of the others, crossed legged and floating in midair. The world had, for lack of a better term, stopped around them. The surviving mutants found themselves sitting in a frozen world, torn with destruction and chaos, wrapped with fire, and instead, they found themselves whole, listening to a pleasant middle age Chinese man. To one side was the discarded helmet of Xorn, enough for them to figure out who he was.

He held out his hand and in it, a single glass globe sat in his palm. "It's a flawed analogy, of course, but quantum theory isn't always best explained in language originally intended to tell other monkeys where the best fruit is. But if you consider this small glass globe as your universe, we can start to understand what has happened."

His hands moved again, and suddenly the glass globe was a string of globes hanging from his hands. "Now, if this is a universe, the others represent alternate universes. At the end of the day, a string of a million billion universes. And then," He said, his eyes bright. "Something interesting happens."

"It isn't a string. It's a spiral." The globes suddenly coiled around themselves, growing closer and tighter as they turned into a spiral shape, sitting in his hand. "The Spiral. It grows more complicated than that, but envisioning nth space tends to muck up the explanation. So let us stick with the Spiral. Now, to truly envision it-"

Xorn spread his arms, and they we plunged into the tapestry of infinity. Below them, the Spiral beckoned, but it wasn't the series of glass globes. Instead, a million galaxies were compressed in tiny bubbles and pressed against each other. Around it, a fog of shards flew, orbiting the structure like space trash.

The Spiral; the impossibly huge, impossibly dense, and impossibly compressed structure of dimensions showed more cracks, as if the damage wrought was leaking out, spreading like a web. Whole universes seemed to resist it, but when ones were found with existing creaks, it pooled in, enlarging and deepening them.

"-well, you see it looks a lot better upclose..." Xorn floated in front of them, the object in his hand returning to a glass globe. But this one was cracked, broken, missing pieces.

"Now, consider this is your reality. Broken; fragmented, and most importantly, on the point of collapse. Ready to join the other universes which shattered in the same way. Yet, there is something you have that others don't. The potentia of the energy of the Phoenix. She is gone but her energy exists to be harnessed. With it, there are... possibilities."

Xorn's brain was a miniature sun and his closest comparison was to God. And even he was discussing severe limits in their survival. It was troubling.

"You see this globe-" He waved his hands, and it grew to a huge size. "For all the repair that can be done, there are pieces missing. Huge pieces. From which we need to find something else to fill it." In the demonstration, other shards began to fill in the gaps. "And that is going to mean change. Tremendous change. We are going to rebuild your universe with parts of others. It means the deaths and the losses aren't reversed. Just... filled in."

Marie-Ange felt no pain, which was the most confusing thing about this to her. "So. So you are saying that all of the cats, alive and dead, existed, and you are going to make a new box with a frankenstein cat, yes?"

"An analogy that is altogether unfortunate for the cat. But yes, I will rebuild what can be rebuilt and replace what is gone."

"But this is also a fragile repair. The more pressure put on it, the closer it comes to shattering. You, coming from a whole world, will be the only ones who remember what has always been is not what was. That is more power than you may think. Enough doubt, enough questions that things are not as they should and, wellness ..."

He spread his hands and the globe had turned to shards in them.

"That is a stunningly easy way for someone to break this new world that you are building," North pointed out, running hands down his side only for it to come back blood-free. "Someone speaks, another overhears and then we are all out on our asses again with another broken world? Unless, of course, you intend to wipe our memories of our past from our minds."

Artie nodded, and, too exhausted to project, signed and damed if the rest of them could understand him. "Will I still remember who I am and what I've done?" He'd killed a lot of people. Forgetting that wiped the consequences away. He could no more do that than he could forget the good things he'd done in his life.

"Maybe it would be better to just forget," Adrienne shrugged. Standing between Garrison and Emma, she was staring at an empty space, head down, not really looking at anything at all. It was all so impossible to digest. Glass baubles like a string of pearls, rebuilding the universe, not being able to talk about it. Not bringing back the dead. It was all too much. All she could focus on right now was that Tandy wasn't here. Tandy was dead. So many people were dead. It would undoubtedly be better to just forget all of them, all of this pain.

"It is and it places a fierce responsibility on you all. The reality will have its strengths, but trying to reassume your old lives or demand others acknowledge a past that for them never existed or tread a future that is not theirs will strain it badly. It will be your duty to learn to accept the changes, large and small."

"How big are we talkin'? I mean, is bacon suddenly gonna taste like cherries? Cause, dude, I'd totally miss bacon."

Jubilee was a bit weirded out by the whole floating thing but it wasn't like she wasn't used to her life being a series of impossible events before breakfast.

"I never ate meat so I can't reassure about bacon."

"Great, we get a shiny world that's mostly ours but sort of not. Awesome. You're a stand-up guy," Wade said. He didn't have his guns. He didn't have his knives. This place wasn't really real except that he could see the places in the mansion where he'd been, where he'd gotten skewered - the fires were literally frozen, time stopped. "Bring back the kids. Bring back the people who died."

"Once a life passes in a universe, it is gone. There is no power that can unthread the dead from their fate as anything but a grotesque mockery. Would you risk that for them or for your own comfort, I wonder?"

Topaz, of course, had no bloody clue who Xorn was. She was only just barely following what he was saying. The massive headache she'd had was gone, but the exhaustion from overusing her powers remained. She just wanted to sleep.

"Can you bring them back?" Her voice was small, entirely unlike her, when she heard what Mr. Wilson was saying. If this Xorn character could bring people back...if he could bring back Matt and Tabitha and Sue and...everyone...maybe that would at least make this hell worth it.

"Not much of a reality-maker if he can't," Clarice pointed out, she too was exhausted as everyone else and all she wanted was to go back in time so none of this ever happened. That wasn't how life worked though. It was probably more difficult being a survivor than it was anything else in a situation like this. "So. Do it. Fix this. Bring back the dead."

"But you can't bring back the dead, not really," Jennie pointed out. Her chest no longer hurt, and she could draw in full breaths of cold clean air. She should have been shaking, her body on the verge of collapse, but instead she mirrored the man's calm. "Their energy, their potential is gone."

She tucked a piece of black hair behind her ear.

"And for us, and our lives? If you're making things whole with new cloth, won't our lives be different as well? Won't we be different? I have tasks yet unfinished. And if I won't be able make things right, then you might as well let me die with the rest. For I won't be myself anymore."

One moment he'd been lying face down in the rubble, and now . . . this. Whatever "this" was, whoever this was, Marius didn't know. He didn't want to, because the moment he began to analyze was the moment he was forced to recall all that had transpired, and he didn't want that. Not now. He didn't want to hear this pleading for those that had died. Not those that he had seen, not those he hadn't. As long as he didn't think about it the losses remained unreal, abstract. Instead he focussed only on the small sliver of reality he could be certain of: his friend's tone of voice.

Jen . . .

"You will be the only ones who will remember this now broken past. For everyone else, they will remember their world as it has always been. You may find your tasks still awaiting you or changed. I cannot guarantee what. All I can assure you is that if you'd rather be dead, you will have the opportunity to make that choice on your own."

"He's not bringing back the dead", Angelo said tiredly. "He said - the deaths aren't going to be reversed, but he's going to fill in the empty spaces. Xorn - does that mean there'll be people who look like our dead but don't remember what we do?"

"Those lost will potentially be replaced from other realities, although like everyone else in this world, they will remember this world as being as it has always been and their lives as their own."

"So that's it? There won't ever be a time we can put things back as they were?"

Laurie couldn't understand how they'd come to be here but she'd read about Xorn in the X-men archives.

"W-we'll still be us, then? The good and the bad? I don't want to lose anything." Jessica asked, her voice shaky. Sure, she'd been through some shit in her life. Some serious shit, this whole Dark Phoenix bullshit included. But...deep down, she'd liked her life. There'd been people out there that had made it work living and the prospect of having some of them, or all of them, disappear in the blink of an eye was horrifying. Especially since she'd remember it all. It'd be like being haunted by ghosts.

"You will change. Life is change, but you will remember this past as you do now and you will be there in the beginning as you are now. But can you stand at the centre of change without being touched by it? I doubt that."

North sensed rather than saw a pissed off mercenary throwing himself at the pretentious prick that was practically single-handedly trying to determine their fate. And while he could get behind the sentiment, the German man let out a pained sigh, and moved to hook one arm under Wade’s armpit and pulled it back, kicking at his ankles for good measure.

“That is not a good idea, mein Freund.”

Another, gentler, hand helped to restrain Wade. Arthur shook his head. He had no smiles left. "It doesn't matter. We could ask a million questions, make a thousand demands, or demand to know where this guy was during everything went down, but we'll get no real answers. He's just humoring us."

"No, he's not." Amanda had been quiet during the exchange, taking in who was there and who... wasn't. Her physical injuries were healed, but she was exhausted and heart sick. "This isn't about us. It's about saving a whole fucking universe. This universe. This isn't a fucking negotiation he's offering us, it's a choice. His world, or nothing. You think he wouldn't have stopped it, you think he wouldn't bring it all back just the same as it was if he could? He's not God, he's just another mutant, like us. He can't, and what he's offering is the best he can do." The small blonde straightened, looking Wade in the eye. "Personal isn't the same as important. Remy taught me that. And I'm not going to spit on his sacrifice - on all of their sacrifices - by chucking a tantrum 'cause the only way for things to go on is probably the hardest thing any of us is going to to."

"Pointless," Wade said. "Their sacrifices were all pointless." He wouldn't let himself say anything more, though. He hadn't lost everything. He'd just lost pieces. Everyone had lost pieces. Turning away, he found Doug to make sure he was there, that there wasn't another piece missing, and then he started walking past the other survivors. Whatever this place was, he couldn't look anyone else right then.

Scott looked up from where he had been sitting with his head in his hands as he struggled not to just collapse under the weight of everything that had just happened as he watched Wade's retreating back. "Amanda's right," he said in a quietly, his voice near breaking, "Jean, Namor, Remy they all gave everything they had to save the universe, and now Xorn is offering us a way to let everyone else in the world get on with their lives. Or the closest approximation to their lives that they can get. Now everyone gets to go on an live their lives, that's why they, we do this." The X-man's voice dropped to barely a barely audible whisper, his voice breaking as he spoke, "It can't have all been pointless, she saved the world again."

Xorn spread his arms, his body superimposed against the view of the Spiral. In his hands, the red-gold flames of the Phoenix danced. with a twist, he released them, flooding out into the angry cracks in the globes of the Spiral, racing through them. They were joined by Xorn's own energy; blue lightning that jumped and arced between the flames, fusing the cracks where they touched, like an arc welder melting whole a rent in a steel plate.

Xorn's form slowly stripped away; the human body disintegrating and leaving a form of pure blue energy. The figure closed its eyes and suddenly Xorn was gone with a flash. The wave of blue energy suffused them and the Spiral, linking the fire and electricity into one stable balm.

With a blinding flash, they found Spiral falling away from them, growing distant as they fell, speeding up as they fell faster and faster down into the abyss.