Morning Routine
                                                          by
                                                      Falstaff
                                        (gratton@worldnet.att.net)

	
	"What do you *mean,* 'it was no big deal?'" Xi'an Coy Manh said.  She
cradled the phone under her jaw as her hands clenched and unclenched on the
tabletop.  "Leong, Professor Ramsey has told me that if you are involved in
any more fights this term, he will have to place you on probation."  She
paused to listen.  "Yes, I do believe he is serious."  Another pause. 
"Truly.  Fascinating.  And where would you go?"  Another.  "That's not an
acceptable option, Leong.  This castle barely accommodates our team
properly as it is.  I can't simply ask Nightcrawler to bring an uninvited
guest into his family's ancestral home for an extended visit."  There was
an audible *click* on the other line.  "Leong?"  
	"Family troubles?" a soft voice wafted behind her ear.
	"Oui, Whisper," Xi'an murmured.  She didn't feel particularly comfortable
around Whisper.  But then, that was Whisper's purpose; the phantom had
served the Darkholme family for countless centuries as the guardian of
their castle.  Now, she was considered an unofficial member of
Excalibur--by the team.  Whisper herself claimed allegiance to no living
soul save Kurt Darkholme.  She tolerated the members of Excalibur because
it was the blue-skinned nobleman's will that she did so.  
	"Am I interrupting?" a soft voice asked.  Xi'an looked up to see a tall,
slender woman with blue skin and darker blue hair, pulled into a practical
braid.  Meggan Darkholme was a striking woman, but in the rather worn
terrycloth robe she wore, she seemed less like the mistress of Nornhaus
than a rather harried mother--something she often looked forward to being
someday.
	"No, please, Meggan."  Xi'an shook her head.  "Join me." 
	Meggan poured herself a cup of thick black coffee.  "Leong again?"
	Xi'an nodded this time.  "My brother is reckless."
	"Since when was that a bad thing?" Illyana Rasputin asked in her throaty
voice, as she strolled through the kitchen door.  Dressed for a night on
the town--[Which town?] Xi'an wondered--in all black, Illyana seemed in
high spirits.  
	"Recklessness is a sign of a passionate nature, Shan," Illyana continued,
plopping into one of the warn wooden chairs and putting a scarlet leather
boot-clad foot up on the table.  "You should be happy Leong's got some
fire."  
	"I should be happy if Leong would spend more time devoted to  his studies
rather than fighting with Joseph and Patricia Guthrie," Xi'an declared.  
	"Remove your foot," Whisper's almost inaudible voice sounded in Illyana's
ear.
	"Huh?"
	"Remove your foot from Miss Adler's antique table, sorceress, or I shall
remove it for you.  Perhaps permanently."
	Illyana's eyes narrowed, their clear blue darkening and acquiring a few
glints of deep wine-red.  "Try it, spook."
	Whisper's almost translucent disembodied face grimaced as she 
weighed her mandate from Baron Darkholme that she must not harm the 
members of Excalibur and her devotion to her former masters, the Baron's 
mother and her companion, Irene Adler.  In the end, it was the Baron's
orders which won out, although this was not to Whisper's personal satisfaction. 
The ghost, miffed, whisked away toward the upper towers of Nornhaus.  
	Illyana smirked.  It was a particularly nasty smirk, one Illyana only 
used when she had won some contest or other.  Her foot stayed where it was.
	Meggan--technically, Lady Meggan, Baroness Darkholme, but the gypsy 
in her hated the stuffiness inherent in such an unearned rank--looked on
disapprovingly.  It wasn't her place to chastise Illyana; Xi'an was
Excalibur's deputy leader and she wasn't saying anything.  Still, this was
her husband's home, and thus she was the hostess . . . . propriety aside,
she did not like that smirk or the feelings it revealed.  Deep down, she
did not like Illyana too well, even though she was the sort of person who
liked very nearly everyone.  That was a telling sign of how much Illyana
disturbed her.	
	"Ah," Saint Elmo boomed in his Welsh brogue as he strolled into the
kitchen.  "A fine morning!  A most excellent morning!"  He grinned his
million-watt grin at Meggan and Xi'an.  "Hail, o Azure Baroness; Madame
Deputy Leader . . . . looking lovely as ever, I might add . . . ." the
giant mutant glanced at Illyana.  He was not grinning.  "Sorceress."
	Illyana Nikolova Rasputin--the Bitch-Queen of Limbo, heir of Belasco, she
of the deadly tongue and the deadlier Soul-sword--for once had nothing to
say, no quip, no insult, no gibe.  Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but
her face seemed to pale at the immortal Welshman's words.  
	Not looking directly at Elmo, she returned his greeting.  "Priest." 
Though her tone was quiet, and the word itself benevolant, there was no
lack of venom in it. 
	Meggan cleared her throat.  If Elmo and Illyana got into it again, they
would wake Kurt.  And that would simply not do; her husband was sick in
bed, and there was no way she was going to allow them to disturb his rest. 
No way at all.
	The blue woman rose to her feet, placing her willowy form between Elmo
and Illyana.  "My friends, it's too early in the morning for fighting. 
Just calm yourselves and try to get along for a few hours.  Will you do
that?"" Meggan Darkholme asked, her tone one of velvet iron.
	A quiet "Aye," from Elmo and a muttered assent from Illyana was her
reward.  Meggan smiled slightly at the small victory.  Kurt would be so
proud of her!

===================================================================

	Whisper whipped through the upper corridors and passageways of Nornhaus. 
She was angry, which is saying something for Whisper.  After all, rumers to
the contrary notwithstanding, the dead do not often feel the more
passionate emotions.
	Whisper had been dead for quite a long time--far, far longer than she had
ever been alive.  She did not remember her life with any clarity; it had
very little meaning to her save that if she had not once been alive, she
could not now exist in her current state.  Nearly all her energy was
channelled into doing what she had done for as long as she could
remember--guarding the great stone fortress in the Bavarian Highlands that
was the ancestral home of the noble Teuton clan called Darkholme.
	Say what you will about Whisper--say she is terrifying, for she can be;
say she is stubborn, for she always has been; say she is loyal, for that is
an understatement--but never say that she is weak.  Because that is one of
the few things Whisper is not and has never been.
	As her spectral form flew through the hidden staircases and stone walls
with their tapestry panelling, Whisper focused what was left of her
thinking mind on the problem at hand: the maddening demon sorceress.  The
Siberian was driving her insane, with her constant threats and challenges
that the Baron had specifically forbidden Whisper to accept.
	And, as such, she moved onward toward a great hall at the rear of the
castle.  A hall where one of the two occupants of Nornhaus she could safely
discuss her problems with was keeping quite busy.

===================================================================

	Fred Dukes stood on the cold bedrock floor of the cellar-level library of
Nornhaus and looked up.  There was an enormous library on every floor of
the castle, each wrapping its way between the four walls, but leaving the
central space empty, leaving the effect of a very deep pit.  There were the
stairs, of course, and there were ladders.  But Fred didn't need either of
them.
	The gargantuan mutant squatted low on the ground, feeling the cold stone
that was the castle's foundation.  His round, pudgy legs, thick as tree
trunks, tensed for a moment, and then his body was hurtling through the air
like an immense bonbon on steroids.
	Past the first level he flew, then the second, the third, the fourth, then
another and another and another--they whirled by so fast he was at the
eleventh level before he had prepared himself.  Utilizing his knowledge of
basic physics, Fred gasped the floor's outcropping with his ham-hock of a
hand, using his own wrist as a lever and propelling himself safely onto the
top floor's library without so much as breaking a sweat.
	Pushing his light brown hair back from his brow, Fred pursed his lips. 
[Hmm . . . . now which book was it that I came up here for?]
	But as he began to run his finger from book to book, he began to feel a
slight chill.  Then he felt cold.  Immediately afterward, the cold had
deepened into a familiar bone-numbing freeze.
	"Hey, Whisper," he said quietly.  "What's up, spook-lady?"
	For some reason, the word that had been an impertinent insult coming from
Illyana Rasputin was an affectionate compliment coming from Fred Dukes. 
Whisper smiled one of her rare smiles.  She felt a genuine warmth for this
man.  "I do not know what to do, Friedreich," the phantom began.  
	The big man grinned at hearing the German form of his name.  He liked the
ghost-woman as much as she liked him.  "Well, that's what the Wall is here
for.  Throw your problems at me, kid.  I'm a big boy--I won't break."
	Whisper snorted a spectral snort at being called 'kid' by someone whose
great-grandparents to the fiftieth or sixtieth degree had been learning to
eat solid foods around the time she died.  "It is the Siberian.  Again."
	"Aww, don't let her get under your skin," Fred grinned, his good-natured
voice echoing slightly in the cavernous room.
	"I do not *have* any skin, Friedreich," Whisper said, smiling.  Her
literalism had been a source of great humor to Fred when they'd first met,
but over time it had become their private joke.
	"Seriously, though, talk to Kurt.  Seems to me he's got as much--if not
more--invested in you than in the rest us."
	If Whisper had still had her head, she would have shaken it violently.  "I
would never dream of imposing on the Baron in such a way."
	"It wouldn't be an imposition," Fred coaxed.  "Big Blue's as human as the
next mutant; he likes helping people out."
	Whisper set her 'mouth' in a firm line.  "Such things would never have
happened if the Baroness was still alive."
	"Come on, Whisp, you know that's--"
	"It is so," the ghost said firmly.  "Lady Raven would have not tolerated
such behavior.  I ask you, Friedreich, would any member of the X-Men who
stayed here in those days act as the Siberian does?"
	"Marko was a giant pain in the butt," Fred mused.
	"An oaf, I grant you," Whisper allowed.  "But he never intended to be a
churl.  He simply was one.
	"No," she continued, "Neither Xavier, nor Lehnsherr, nor McCoy, nor
Cassidy nor you yourself nor Logan nor the Aborigine nor any of the other
early members of this team--not even Drosselmier--were as maddening as the
Siberian is."
	"I don't know about that," Fred mused.  "Sid Drosselmier's one of the most
maddening people I've ever met."
	"Always using his shape-shifting abilities to play his little jests on all
within these walls . . . . Lady Raven often said she wished she could
simply hang him from the central spire and leave him there."
	"Knowing Changeling, he'd enjoy it," Fred murmur, rolling his eyes. 
"Anyhow, Whisp," he continued, cracking his knuckles and wincing slightly
at the echo the action produced, "that's fifteen years ago.  Long time,
y'know?  Things change."
	"Fifteen years is *not* a long time, Friedreich," Whisper said, her quiet
voice smooth as polished steel.  "And pray tell me, what has changed so
very much since the original X-Men made this place their home?"
	Fred shrugged.  "Kurt's the philosopher, not me.  Still, I'd say it's a
different sort of world.  We're not waiting for the hammer to drop any
more.  It's like Erik used to say: if you want to understand the world you
live in, find out who's at war at the moment and the rest falls into place.
Who's being oppressed, who's doing the oppressing, and who's standing up
to that."
	"That is a very insightful concept for a living soul to have grasped,
Friedreich," Whisper commented.
	"Thanks, spook-lady," Fred said, a warm half-grin filling his round,
affable face.
	"It does not answer my question, but it is insightful all the same,"
Whisper continued, smiling her sweet, ghostly smile.

===================================================================

	"Pryde."
	"Mmmmm . . . ."
	"Pryde."
	"Mmmmm . . . ."
	"Christ, woman, you're driving me insane here."
	Katherine Wisdom's clear soprano voice was muffled under three layers of
blankets and the muzziness of a woman who has decided that she's Not Ready
To Get Up.  "I don't care.  Leave me alone.  Up half the night anyway . . ."
	Wisdom deftly knotted his thin black tie, squinting as he brushed some
flaking material off of it.  "It was your turn to stay home, love.  Same
thing happened to me, remember, three years ago when she was teething and
you had to go keep that wanker brother of yours from getting killed by
Sinister.  I'm sorry that Lil's taken ill and all, but you can't blame that
on me.  You also can't distract me that easily.  Up you get."  So saying,
the former Black Air agent grasped the blankets and flung them off of the
bed, leaving his wife with no blankets to huddle under.
	She looked at him with a gaze of fury not entirely feigned.  "You die,
Wisdom."
	"Maybe," Wisdom said, tossing the burgundy-colored cotton dressing gown
that he'd gotten her years before into her lap, "but not today."
	"Lil up yet?"
	"Nah," Wisdom said, climbing into one of his well-worn black trench-coats.
 "She's zonked out pretty well now.  Probably will be for the next few
hours.  You up for some breakfast?"
	As if in answer to Wisdom's question, the booming voice of Saint Elmo
echoed up from the kitchen, three floors below.  "Englishman!  Katherine! 
Awaken your daughter, find some clothes, and hurry along.  We ride the
Midnight Runner to Istanbul!"
	Kitty looked at Wisdom.  He looked at her.  
	"We breakfast on the way.  Come, Englishman!  Our winged steed has rooms
set aside if you wish solitude with your wife . . . ."  A hearty laugh
followed, then faded.
	"I still don't get that guy," Wisdom grumbled, as he went to his
daughter's room and scooped the snoozing four-year-old into his arms.
	"Don't worry about it.  I've known him since I was fourteen and I don't
understand him any better than you do."

===================================================================

	Xi'an Coy Manh looked sidelong at Saint Elmo.  "Were you truly a priest,
m'sieu?"
	Elmo grinned ruefully.  "Only very briefly, my dear," he rumbled--quietly,
for a change.  "I was never very good at being *good*--at least not in
front of others."
	Fred Dukes chuckled along with his teammate.  "Well, speaking of good,
this is," he said, nodding down at the still-sleeping Baron Kurt Darkholme,
who he was wheeling along in one of Charles Xavier's old chairs from the
storage locker.  "'Crawler's gonna have a heart attack when he finds out
where we are."
	"Ah, but *what* a surprise!" Saint Elmo grinned.  He paused for a moment
to nod 'good morning' to the Wisdom family, and to wink 'farewell' to
Whisper--who sniffed a rather ghostly sniff--before drawing a deep, hearty
breath and leading the way toward the fortress' former stable--now the home
of Excalibur's Midnight Runner.  His voice faded behind him.  "The
steam-baths of Istanbul are among the great wonders of the world!  Why, I
remember with great joy the first time I ever saw them.  It was 1021, you
see, and I was . . . ."
	Whisper snorted to herself again.  At least they'd taken the Siberian with
them.
	

	

END CHAPTER ONE

All right, very well then, just a few words and I'll let you go on about
your business.

Preliminary note for those few of you who care:  This story takes place in
the 'present' of my Arleccino Timeline stories, about four years after the
last AT Excalibur story and--to be especially maddening--four years ahead
of where Marvel continuity falls as well.  So now you know.

Point one:  Kudos to anybody who can figure out who all the people I named
herein are.  I've always found it a little hinky that these folks go around
referring to themselves by their stage name in the privacy of their own
home.  To my way of thinking, they ain't Nightcrawler and Shadowcat and
Magik to each other; they're Kurt and Kitty and Illyana.  

Point two:  You know that oft-quoted statement about how fan-fic is a labor
of love?  It's really true.  Thanks to the folks who've encouraged me to
keep on writing this and the other tiers of the Arleccino Timeline series. 
I can't tell you how much I--wait a minute, yes I can.  Thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis
much!

Point three:  I admit, sometimes I play favorites.  Every single character
in this story (less the ones I made up) are characters who had great
potential, but Marvel didn't use them to the best advantage.  So I did it. 
And I'd like to make an appeal--to those of you out there who feel like I
feel--not just about these particular characters, though that's what I'd
like best--about an underused set of fictives, bring 'em on up!  I'd give
my eye-teeth for a decent Changeling story--AOA or, even better, non-AOA. 
I'd give my left foot for some Xi'an 'fics . . . . and just once I'd like
to see somebody other than me or one of my AF Fan-fic list cohorts write
Elmo . . . . and then I want a vacation, and a million dollars, and a
rabbit, and a clone of Magik . . . . wait a minute, am I thinking out loud
again?

Point four:  Personal apologies to those who've been waiting for the next
GenX Arleccino Timeline story.  I seem to be facing a bit of writer's block
where that bunch is concerned . . . . see, I'm waiting for a certain
somebody (and she knows blamed well who she is, snarl-grumble-snort) to
finish writing a story with said characters . . . . I'm hoping that I'll
get back on track after reading that.

All right then . . . . who can have this story?  Hmm . . . . well, this
story--being my idea--belongs to me, but the characters--in one form or
another, save Whisper, Samuel Pryde, and Lillian Wisdom--belong to the
Marvel Entertainment Group.  As such, it is fan-fiction, and as for that,
it's meat for the archives--however, if you ain't the Archmage, Lady
Phoenix, or Jelpy & Mirage--i.e., if you don't have standing permission
from me to archive any ol' thing I write, you must ask.  I'll probably say
yes--who am I kidding, of *course* I'll say yes--but it's nice to be asked
first, so I can go and look dreamy eyed at my work and such.


-- 
'There came gliding in the black night the walker
 in darkness . . . . from the moor under the mist-hills   
 Grendel came walking, wearing God's anger.'
	        ---the Lay of Beowulf
Yours,
Falstaff
(gratton@worldnet.att.net)