Rebirth

She lets the candle burn slowly. It flickers in front of her and reflects off the glass window. The first purple shadows of the sunrise are appearing on the horizon. She has gone another night without sleep. Her life is falling into a pattern; no matter how may times she tries to find peace it evades her cruelly. It seems to tell her that for one such as her there is no comfort, no rest.

She can't escape the feeling that she has fallen into some black pit, but failed to notice it. She keeps talking and moving, but no one can see her. When these moments come to her and she realizes that she is alone in her darkness, she feels a loneliness beyond grief, beyond pain, and surpassing every other part of her soul.

It is then that she wants to give up on the team. She just wants to pack her bags and find somewhere she could be heard again, where she can being to heal her scars. Instead she goes up to her room and tries to find some sense of calm. She longs for anything that can make her believe that things can get better, but she also knows life doesn't work that way.

********

Each step she takes is filled with sharp agony. Her visions have her told her she is dying, but this comes as no surprise to her because her body has told her that long before prophecy had the chance. She keeps walking because this journey has to be completed. Her time is short, and this is her final task.

She has had a long enough life. In some aspects it has been too long because she has lived long enough to see her attempts at happiness crushed. She has discovered that the difference between what she wants and what Destiny demands is often a vast chasm. She has lived her entire life not doing her will but instead doing what is required.

She has paid the price for her obedience. There are many things she left behind in the pursuit of this life. Most of them were unimportant, but there were a few that were betrayals beyond words. It is one of these she goes now to heal. It is her greatest regret and the last she must resolve before her end.

*******

Wing snuffs out the tall white candle in front of her. Her eyes quickly adjust to the change and allow her to perceive the room in the growing light of the sun. She is trying to find peace before the day begins.

She has scheduled an early training session with Jagger. She is a little worried about him; it is uncanny how Sky had just disappeared. Wing can see it from both points of view; Sky really needs a vacation, but with the slow adjustments to his new powers, Jagger has never needed her more.

She cuts off the thoughts because she knows her opinion can't change what has already been done. Sky is gone for now and soon the rest of the team will be on their own vacations. Wing slips into her black workout suit and braids her hair so it will be out of her way later. She checks the clock on her night stand; it reads 6:34. She stares at it half-amused. The clock is digital because the sound of a ticking clock in her otherwise silent room has a tendency to get on her nerves, as if the constant rhythm is mocking her nightly vigils and throwing the constant passage of time in her face. Then again, she thinks to herself, you can't get much crazier than thinking that your ex-clock talked to you.

She ducks out of her room and goes down to the kitchen for a bowl of cereal. She eats the first slowly and begins a second when that one is done. She is debating whether or not to put away her bowl when Jagger arrives.

"G'Morning!" he offers cheerfully.

"Morning," she mutters as if she were identifying the time of day rather than a greeting him. Jagger grins.

"You look like you need a morning hug."

Wing raises her eyebrows and is getting ready to deliver her usual rebuff, but asks him a question instead, "What is your obsession with hugs?"

"They make the world happy?"

"Eat your breakfast," Wing blurts out gruffly.

When he is done, they walk to the training room. Wing steps in and Jagger follows behind her and then positions himself across the room The walls are blank and could look like any room except that they disguise complex hardlight holographic equipment for more advanced training.

Wing looks to Jagger, "You ready?"

"Yeah."

"Computer engage safeties."

"Safeties engaged," the computer's Beast-programmed voice replies.

Jagger tugs at his uniform and squints at Wing as if he can't figure out what he is here to do. She tries to be encouraging.

"Okay we'll start slow. Hit me!"

He shrugs and aims a lazy one-handed attack of energy blades at her. She easily avoids them and they embed in the wall behind her.

"Think you can actually get near me this time?"

Jagger's face spreads with a smile, "Sure."

He uses both hands to send a deadly set of the blades toward her. She ducks out of their way at the last moment.

"This isn't going anywhere; Let's try the program. Computer load Personal Training 1216-level 2." As Wing utters the words, two thugs materialize behind Jagger.

"Begin."

Almost supernaturally, Jagger senses the thug to his left moving. As the man raises his arm, Jagger spins around and blocks it and then uses the inertia of his block to connect his fist with the underside of the man's chin. While the image is still off balance, Jagger sweeps him off his feet with a quick movement of his foot and watches as the man hit the floor. Then he turns to face the second thug. He makes a quick incisive jab to the sensitive spot right under the rib cage. He follows it with another. He is about to insure the thug joins his friend on the ground when Wing pauses the program with a short sigh of annoyance.

"Jagger.. that was great, saying you weren't a member of the New Mutants. I'm supposed to be teaching to use your powers. Try it again. This time powers only."

Jagger shrugs, "I got by this long."

"Computer PT-1216, from the beginning." The guys on the floor resurrect. Jagger focuses on the second guy his shot slices into the man's arm.

"Okay now take him down, carefully."

Another wave of blades lands this time planted in the thug's chest. It falls over suffering a holographic death.

"Computer: Pause."

Jagger grins, "Whoops?"

"That's why were here. Let's try again, this time focus on spots that will stop them without fatally injuring them. Computer: Reset...."

"Urgent message for you, Talonfire," the computer interrupts.
"Relay," Wing commands, her forehead creased with curiosity.

"TF? There's a visitor here for you in your office. I think you should come right away," It is Tony, one of the few people still around the base during the vacation.

"I'm on my way."

Wing looks over at Jagger who is examining the wounds he has created.
"Maybe I could control how far they go in?"

"Sure. I'm going to have to cut this short to go see this visitor." She nods to Jagger and then exits the room.


Ming-Sai Lei sits in a comfortable leather chair in the small study. She is a cluttered desk away from the chair's exact twin. Her vision, however, is concentrated on the photograph hanging on the wall above the chair's back. Wing-mei is located to the left side of a group of nine teenagers. They look to be a fairly normal bunch, as if they couldn't even slow down for a picture. They are all wearing different uniforms and are smiling and laughing. It is a single stolen moment of their youth pulled out of time and captured for eternity. She looks at the impression of Wing next to them. She is dressed all in black and she isn't smiling, but there is a particularly fierce pride in her eyes. Sai sees this and she fells pleased that her daughter had found something that could create that kind of passion in her. The teenager who answered the door has told her Wing would be there in a minute. Sai turns her head and studies the book shelves that lined the walls. They are stuffed with all kinds of books from philosophy to tech manuals for new weapons.

Wing shrugs at Tony and turns into her office. She starts in with her apology before she even makes it into the door, "I'm sorry for the wait; I was in a training sess... ion."

Wing pauses when she sees the woman sitting in front of her. Sai stands up and smiles slightly. Wing studies her in a quick glance. The woman is obviously from northern China; she is only a couple of inches shorter than Wing. Her hair is black and thick with a few grey streaks around here ears; it falls to her shoulders. She is small, but obviously in good shape. Her eyes are a rich brown and fairly familiar. The skin around them is lined with sorrow and the rest of the lines that mark her face suggest to Wing that the woman has suffered a difficult life. Her outfit says none of this. She wears a crisp white, long-sleeved blouse and a pair of carefully ironed khaki slacks. At her neck hangs a twisting Chinese dragon made out of some kind of clear stone and strung from a gold chain.

Wing recognizes the woman only in that spiritual way, the one where you can feel the realization crawling up your neck, and you just know. She tells herself that the woman could be anyone who happens to have come to the island. Willfully she takes control of herself and speaks to her guest.

"Can I help you?"

"Yes, I believe you can. You are Wing Chai-Sang, correct?" The woman speaks with only a faint trace of her native accent. The way she looks at her, Wing is sure there was no question in the woman's mind about her identity, but she feels compelled to answer anyway.

"Yes, I am."

"Good, then you can help me. I'm Ming-sai Lei. I'm... your mother."

Sai watches as shock breaks on her daughter's face. She questions herself; she wonders if she has waited too long and if there is no chance to repair the past. Wing is nearly twenty-five; her birthday is on April 4, about a month away. It is strange to her that while she has missed a majority of her daughter's life, she can still remember the first three years perfectly, including the day of her birth.

Sai had gone into labor just before midnight. Wing was born at the next morning at 6:42 and her twin brother followed her three minutes later. While she would always love the boy she named "Pao", the fact that they were non- identical was obvious. Her connection to little Wing-mei was immediate. She had to reach out for Pao's mind, but Wing's sought her in a set of swirling blue shot through with red. She was a child born of hope and cursed with a destiny-- she had been born with their mother's mutant heritage.

Now Sai looks at her daughter and questions, as she has so many times, if it has been fair in believing that leaving Wing was the only way. There is much she has to make Wing-mei understand and so little time to do it. She realizes that her daughter's gaze is still piercing her, so she shakes away the web of thoughts that has been gathering around her and tries to think of something sensible to say.

"Maybe you should sit down?" she suggests. Wing shakes her head in a small, barely perceptible motion. She edges her way around the desk and struggles not to collapse into the chair. She lowers herself slowly and then settles, staring at her mother. She pulls her braid over her shoulder in a nervous habit she thought she had broken years ago and twists the tip of it around her fingers. She collects the scattered shards of her thought process and tries to start from the beginning.

"You're alive," she says immediately feeling stupid for stating the obvious.

"I'm sure you're wondering why I'm here. I should start at the beginning," she says decisively.

There was a knock at the door.

"Come in." Wing calls shakily from her chair. Moonstar stands in the doorway holding a tray with a couple of mugs. She is wearing her tight-fitting, leather Xena costume as usual.

"I heard you have company from the computer location system. I made up some worm cocoa."

Wing smiles at her briefly.

"Thank you. Just leave it on the desk."

She puts down the tray and walks out of the room, shutting the door behind her. Sai reaches for a cup.

"Warm cocoa? Sounds good."

"Don't drink that!!" Wing's eyes widen; she looks horrified.

"Why not?"

"That's worm cocoa, as in the things that crawl in the dirt."

She frowns and sets the mug back down. She stares at it as if waiting for worm to float to the surface.

"Where'd you get her?"

"Honestly? Mojoworld. It's a long story, and you already have one of those to tell."

She looks down and after a moment she takes a deep breath.

"Yes, what would make a mother abandon her own daughter? I suppose that's what you really want to know."

"I already know that."

"H-How?"

"I suppose it is I that have the long story to tell, and you owe me for more than leaving me. You owe me for what THEY did to me. Did you think, mother, that by changing my name and leaving me they wouldn't come looking for me later? Being such a wonderful mutant, right?" Wing voice is growing tight with emotion. Sai shakes her head.

"No.. no.. I never knew... Oh God... when?"

"When I was 18. I knew nothing of the truth. Grandfather fed me every lie you told him to keep. I learned everything for the first time in an interrogation room!! Did you ever think of that in your perfect little plan, mother!? You never even told me my father was an American! How would you like to discover your entire background was a lie!?"

"I thought you would... I didn't know. I thought I was protecting you and Pao."

"No, you just made it so I was easier to break!"

"Would you like to hear a story? Maybe about your daughter and how you nearly ruined her life?"

"I..." she can't even finish her sentence. Wing is furious. All her pent-up emotion is bursting out of her, raging with the ferocity of her anger. She clutches the arm rest in her hand and slowly begins her story:

I was young and stupid... and so angry. I left the house in Texas to see the US it was going to be some grand adventure. I was in St. Louis when it happened. For the first time I was on my own. The June day was sunny and hot. I was feeling so free I bought this silly light blue cotton sundress. It was sleeveless and the skirt swung above my knees. I changed into it at the store and bought a pair of brown leather sandals the saleswoman convinced me would look good with it. It made me feel like a different person. I don't have to be trapped in all that hate I lived with growing up. It felt wonderful. I continued buying 'normal' clothing for a few hours.

I was carrying several bags when a man bumped into me forcing me into an alley where I dropped the bags. I was picking them up when a group of men came out of the darkness. Moving quickly I took two of them down. They had six. I fought hard, but I was basically untrained. One of them slammed me in the ribs and a second hit me over the head with something. I remember falling forward in to the glass and dirt of the alley.

When I woke up I was strapped to a chair in an interrogation room. The room was cold and so bright it hurt to think. My mouth was dry; I tried to open it to take a breath of the chill air, but I couldn't because there was duct tape over it. I tried to take account of my wounds. There was a tight feeling across the skin on the right side of my face, dried blood.

It was most likely coming from the throbbing spot near my hairline. My ribs ached; it hurt to breathe, and when I looked down I noticed my arms and were covered with tiny, bleeding cuts where I had fallen into the glass.

I sat there for a while wishing I could move my hands. Instead I studied the cotton dress that was too lightweight for the chill of the room. It was torn in places and had several stains across it. The door opened to the room. The man who walked in was dressed in a simple black outfit, and had a blonde prep boy haircut. He smiled coldly at me.

"Shall we begin?"

I felt awful. My entire body hurt from the abduction. I stared at him with my eyes full of rage. He caught the look and slowly shook his head.

"Oh no, that won't do." He struck me across the left cheek with a force I didn't expect. I thought my teeth were going to explode from my mouth. I felt the blood rush to the spot and make it burn; involuntary tears of pain formed in the corner of my eyes. He reached toward me again and ripped the tape from my mouth.

"Anything else?" He asked viciously. Words formed in my throat, but I could say nothing. I shook my head slightly.

"Good."

"What is your name?'"

"Wing Chai-Sang."

He looked at me carefully, to see if I knew I was lying. Then he shook his head.

"No, your name is Wing-mei Lei. You have one grandfather: Jai-sen Lei, mother: Ming-sai Lei, father: Steven Rider, one brother: Wing-pao Lei, 18, and a sister: Alexis Rider, 14."

I shook my head in defiance. I knew it wasn't true. After all my grandfather told me my mother's name was Sai Chai-Sang and she had left me in China to save my younger sibling. It was in that moment I realized what they were saying was true: my father was an American; my sister alive. My interrogation turned into a rough education about who I was, and who my family was.

My mother did good work. They had files on me--my name change, our home in Texas. Later after my mutant powers manifested, they had detailed reports about it's developments and uses for their work. They even had reports on the level of training I had received from Grandfather in field medicine.

They told me that I was going to work for them because of you. They had let a rumor spread that you had leaked information to me. I was a sitting target with out their protection and I had nothing to prepare me for the people who would come after me. I had no choice. I worked for them or I died.

Wing finally finishes. Sai watches her as if suffering from her own shock. Wing knows it is unfair to dump this on her, but she feels that Sai deserves it. She needs to her mother to know how much it hurt her that she never told her the truth, that she stayed away from her daughter for all those years.

Wing sits quietly and waits for Sai to say something. She moves her hands to her lap out of her mother's view. She watches as her knuckles turn white and the skin stretches across her hands which are balled up into fists.

"I regret that it had to be this way."

"You regret? Well, so did I, but you never really gave me a choice, did you?" Wing spits out the words that are burning inside her. At this Sai grows solemn, her head bows slightly and then she looks up to her daughter.

"What did they make you do? What was your primary duty?" she says slowly.

"What else? Reconnaissance. I... My mutant powers were useful. No one would expect a random bird as a spy, but... but.. better than that were the psionic powers; they taught me how to use them. Then I became their best information gatherer. Through a simple process of mind rape."

Wing looks away toward the book shelves as she speaks these words. The words she won't speak aloud are that this is why she doesn't sleep at night. There is nothing to explain the horror of raping another human's mind, rifling through their deepest thoughts, their dreams, while you are both locked into an experience and intimacy that should never happen between two minds. Wing has done her best to lose the other memories deep inside her, but sometimes they come to the surface in a deep rushing that plunges through her and makes her physically sick.

Sai knows her daughter is too quiet, but she feels there is nothing she can do. She has come for another task, but she never imagined that her involvement of so many years ago would come back on her like this. She searches for any words of comfort, but she can find none. She had left everything then-- her job, her children, Steven. She did what she thought she had to do.

"Who ever said I had a choice? There are things you must know. I have much to tell you. By now you must know of your powers..."

Wing lets out a short snort, "Yes, I might of noticed them."

"You have no patience. If you had given me the chance to finish, I would have asked about the extent. Yes, of course you must notice the shape-shifting, it is unavoidable. I was asking you if you have started having visions yet. Do you ever have memories of the past that are not your own, or have strange dreams of shadow that suddenly come true the next week?"

At this Wing cools because she is shocked again. She has realized in this moment that her mother is raving mad. To her, things suddenly begin to make sense. All her longing to have this woman back in her life and all the times she burned with rage because she had been captured through Sai's association, none of this matters now because her mother is so obviously nuts. A giggle tickles at the back of her throat. It moves forward and soon she is laughing. It is a deep gut laugh that robs her of her breath and causes tears to trickle down her face. She can't escape the force of this moment and she keeps laughing. Then she sees that her mother is still sitting there serious and she knows that it is not a joke. There is a dark knowledge in her mother's eyes, and it was from this that Sai had spoken. The words are a warning of what is to come. Wing sees all this, and she stops.

"There are things you need to know. Can you leave here for a few days?"

Wing thinks about how she feels toward her mother. She's not sure she wants to spend any time with her.

"Please, Wing-mei. Time is short."

"I can. I wasn't planning on using it, but all the team currently has vacation time."

"Good. You'll need to back a wide variety of clothing. Hot, cold..."

"Where are we going?" Wing asks cautiously.

"I don't know yet." Sai shrugs, "We'll see, soon."



Rebirth Part 2

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Emily's Asylum