THE ARCHETYPE ASSOCIATION

By

Jim R. McBriarty

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

Will had just changed into his uniform, and was about to enter the Danger Room, when he was stopped by Ororo and Jean. "We're holding today's session outside," Ororo told him.

"Any particular reason why?"

"I have a theory that I want to test," Jean said.

They went outside, then entered into a small grove of trees near the lake.

"You and Ororo are both sensitive to natural forces," Jean explained once they found a fairly clear spot. "I want to see if you can use that to play off of one another."

Will and Ororo thought about that. "It's worth considering," Will decided. "What do you have in mind?"

"Remember when you drew power from the lightning?"

"That's not the sort of thing you forget, Jean."

"I want to see if you can draw off lightning that Ororo summons, or if it has to be occurring naturally."

Will stepped away from them, then looked at Ororo. "Don't make the bolt too powerful," he requested. "I don't want to be supercharged all day long."

Nodding, Ororo took a few steps away from Jean. Her eyes went totally white, and a small arc of electricity danced between her and Will.

Will flinched slightly as the bolt contacted him, and his eyes began to glow. After a few seconds, he motioned for her to stop. "That's enough."

Ororo grounded herself, letting the charge sink into the earth. "How do you feel?"

"If you'll excuse the pun, wired. Now I need to figure out a way to bleed this off."

"Can you project it out?" Jean asked.

He thought for a moment. "Maybe. Let me try something."

He spread his legs apart until his feet were centered with his shoulders. Raising his arms above his head and out to his sides, he looked up and concentrated. Streams of energy appeared, focusing on a point in the air about half a meter above his head.

"Can you do anything with that?" Jean asked Ororo.

She studied it for a moment. I think so. Wait a moment." She reached towards the glowing ball of energy, and a stream of electricity traveled into her palm, through her body, and back into the earth.

Jean noticed that both Will and Ororo were somewhat flushed and breathless as the energy died down. "Okay, I've found out what I needed to know," she told them. "See you in the Danger Room later, Will."

Will nodded and walked off. Once he was out of earshot, Ororo let out a deep breath and leaned back against a tree. "What's wrong?" Jean asked her.

"Apparently, there is a somewhat... dualistic component to Will's magic. The exchange of energy between us had an... unexpected effect."

"...Are you saying...?"

"I am saying... that I could kill for a cigarette."

The Blue Team had just entered the Danger Room for their training session when the alert klaxon rang out. They ran down the hall to the War Room, where Henry activated the monitor. He blinked as a face appeared. "Good afternoon, Colonel Fury."

The image looked at Henry. "It's been a while, McCoy. Wish we had time to chat." Fury's eye turned to Scott. "I'll make this quick, Cyclops. A SHIELD helicarrier went down in Mongolia, in an area about twenty miles north of the Chinese border. The Chinese are still pissed at us over our capture of one of their sleepers, so they're refusing to help with any rescue efforts. We have to go overland, bring out all of the crew, living or dead, and remove all data that the carrier's system had in its memory. We'd appreciate any help you could give us, because it's going to be a bitch of a job."

Scott nodded. "We can be on our way in an hour. Will, you..."

Will blinked. The others howled in protest. Fury stopped them all with a raised hand. "This has nothing to do with you personally, Riley. My lab geeks told me what you do to electronics. The carrier uses experimental, extremely sensitive tech. If you get anywhere near it, it'll be useless, and those agents will have risked themselves for nothing."

Will looked unhappy about it, but he nodded. "I understand." He looked at Ororo. "I can shuttle you back here to rest. Raise me on the comm, and I'll open a Door." He turned to the screen. "Is that acceptable?"

Fury nodded. "As long as you're not physically here, things should be fine."

Ororo stepped forward to stand beside Henry. "Professor Xavier left this morning for a meeting with Val Cooper in Washington. He isn't due back for another day or so."

"Bishop."

Scott turned to the others before the screen had completely faded out. "Hank, Betsy, get anything from the lab that's not nailed down and pack it for transport. Everybody else get the stretchers, and then change into uniform if you're not already in it." He looked at Will. "You're going to have to handle security while we're gone."

Will straightened up and nodded. "I'll keep this place under lockdown. I'll leave a channel open, too. Call me when you're about to drop, and I'll get you back here for a hot meal and a nap."

Ororo nodded. "Good. Everybody report to the conference room in forty-five minutes."

"Promise me that you'll be careful over there," Will asked Rogue as she changed into her uniform.

"It's a rescue operation, not combat," she assured him, "and we'll have SHIELD backing us up. Don't get too worried."

"When you're not nearby, I always worry."

They arrived at the coordinates that Fury had given them, finding that the SHIELD detachment had already set up a command center. A middle-aged, but still, fit, man stepped out from under a tarp and approached them.

"Major Andrew MacLeod," he said to Scott as he shook his hand. "Thanks for coming so quickly."

"No problem," Scott replied. "What's the situation?"

"We're as close as we can get by Humvee," he said as he inclined his head towards the crumbling hills in front of them. "Any closer is going to take a chopper. The only problem there is that the Chinese have SAM batteries just inside their territory, which places the choppers in their sights."

Scott looked at Rogue and Jean. "Take the Humvees over the hill and place them on level ground. We'll climb over and load the gear, then move out. How many men have you got, Major?"

"Only ten, I'm afraid. Most of the military presence here is either South Korean or U.S. And I need to keep at least three people here to man communications and coordinate things."

"All right. Once you assign those men, we'll get going."

Rogue and Jean moved quickly, placing the vehicles near a trail that looked passable. A few minutes later, the SHIELD personnel were ready to leave.

Once the group set out, Jean, Rogue, Warren, and Ororo formed an aerial diamond around the convoy. The rest of the tem was split among the Humvees. Scott and Major MacLeod agreed that each of the X-Men would pair up with a SHIELD agent once they reached the crash site.

Rogue's communicator beeped at one point, and she opened the channel. "Rogue here."

"Roger that." She tapped her communicator twice, opening a channel to the Mansion. "Rogue to Base."

"Base here," Will's voice said. "Status?"

"We're about thirty clicks from the target. Estimated ETA one hour."

"Relief supplies?"

She smiled. "Got it. Any chance you could feed our escort, too?"

"Seven."

"Confirmed. Over and out."

Warren's eyesight allowed him to be the first to see the wreckage of the helicarrier. "What condition does she appear to be in?" Major MacLeod asked him.

"Well, the rotors are a total loss. The hull's taken damage on the right side, and the nose is pretty mangled."

"I'd have to get lower to see."

"Roger that."

The Humvees reached Warren's position about ten minutes later. Henry and Betsy helped erect a triage tent, while Major MacLeod and Scott paired together the X-Men and SHIELD agents.

Rogue was paired with a large, muscular, crew-cut blonde who introduced himself as Staff Sergeant Andrew Davis. Rogue smiled when she recognized his accent. "My goodness, Sergeant, what's a nice Alabama boy like you doing here?"

"I could ask a Mississippi belle like you the same question. The short answer is that I'm from an old military family."

"While I'm just your average action junkie. What's the S.O.P. for this situation, Sergeant?"

"We find or make an entrance, then do a room-by-room sweep. You have any night vision gear?"

"'Fraid not."

Davis reached into a pocket on the side of his rucksack and pulled out a pair of goggles, handing them to her. "The interior rooms probably don't have any power."

"Do we have a map of the inside?"

"The Major has one. He'll feed it to us through the goggles. You'll see a map superimposed over your field of view. It'll track your movement, and show you exactly where you are."

Rogue turned as Scott called her name. "Yeah, Cyclops?"

"Come over here for a second."

She walked over to where Scott and Major MacLeod were studying the schematics of the helicarrier. ""Did you need something?"

"Do you think you could punch all the way through the skin of this thing, given enough speed?"

She looked through the schematics, then indicated an area within the helicarrier where the hull was thinnest. "This area would be easiest. What's the outer hull made of?"

"Foamed aluminum," the major told her, "about half a meter thick."

She considered it. "Have Iceman freeze the metal so that it's a bit more brittle. Hitting it at just below Mach One ought to do the job."

The two men looked at one another, then nodded. Scott relayed the plan to Jean, and soon Bobby was approaching the helicarrier on an ice slide.

Rogue flew off until she was about five miles away, then turned around and sped towards the helicarrier at top speed, while Jean telepathically helped her stay on target.

It took her an eyeblink to break through the carrier's decks and cone out through the other end. She slowed down, took a few seconds to catch her breath, and returned to Scott's location.

Scott and Logan widened the hole so that two people could pass through easily. They then entered the carrier, glancing around the room. "This one's empty," Logan told them.

"Okay," MacLeod said. He handed some small canisters out to everyone. "Infrared marking paint," he told them. "Once you're done searching a room, spray some on the floor just inside the doorway. It'll keep us from covering the same ground twenty times."

"Good thinking," Scott said approvingly. "Everybody team up with your partners. You find a body, live or dead, call for an assist. We'll cover one level at a time. Let's get started."

MacLeod looked at his watch, then spoke into it. "Note for log: entered structure at oh one hundred GMT."

Rogue blinked, then slapped herself in the forehead. "I forgot!"

"Forgot what?" Scott asked her.

She didn't answer, choosing instead to activate her communicator. "Rogue to Base. You can send your package now."

"Location?" Will's voice asked after a moment.

She turned towards an open area. "You have my coordinates?"

"Three meters south-southwest of me."

There was a flash, and a pile of paper lunch bags appeared on the ground, a jumbo-sized drink cooler beside it.

"Thanks, Base. Rogue out." She turned to the others. "Everybody grab something on your way in."

The search was grueling, both physically and mentally. While the carrier had landed right side up, everything that wasn't bolted down, and some of what was, had been thrown into disarray by the force of the impact, forcing them to climb over an obstacle course to get into a room, then move everything to search for the crew.

Logan found the first of them, grimacing when he saw that the young woman's temple had been crushed against the edge of a shelf. She was probably dead before she hit the floor, he thought sadly. He looked at his partner, a young man who had introduced himself as Sergeant Vasily Rurikovich. "Better call it in."

The sergeant nodded, then pulled his microphone to his mouth and gave their location to Major MacLeod. "He'll send a pair of med techs in to pull the body out. He has the coordinates, so he wants us to move on."

Logan nodded and stood up. "That a Vladivostok accent I hear?"

"Very good. Most people miss it. I've lived in Saint Petersburg since I was fourteen, so I've lost most of it."

"That was a long move," Logan said as they entered the next room.

"My father was promoted, and became a teacher at the Naval Academy." The sergeant stopped.

"Mat. Another one."

The vast majority of the people they found had died of crash-related injuries. The few survivors were unconscious, and had been in small, enclosed areas of the carrier, where the close quarters had prevented them from building up momentum during the crash.

A clearing just outside the ship was set up as a makeshift morgue. Bobby kept the area cold enough to prevent decomposition of the bodies until they could be removed.

The X-Men were split into three shifts, one of which was brought home by Will to get eight hours of solid rest and a good meal. Will continued to provide food for the SHIELD personnel as well, giving the departing shifts insulated carafes of soup and coffee along with the bags of sandwiches and fresh fruit.

After five days of sifting through wreckage, they located the computer's memory storage. It took another two days for the technicians to remove the hard drives that contained the data they needed.

A team of engineers looked at what was left of the engine room to determine the cause of the crash, and sealed the reactors until a hazmat team could be brought in to remove the cores.

Ororo and Scott ere pulled aside by Major MacLeod while the shifts were switching. "I was told that we found out what caused this. You want to sit in on the meeting?"

A few minutes later, they sat in the military-issue tent that MacLeod had set up as an office. They were joined by a young man who was introduced as Lieutenant Rahim Trivaldi. "Lieutenant Trivaldi joined us after he finished his stint in the Army Corps of Engineers," MacLeod explained. "He's one of our best. What do you have for us, Lieutenant?"

"It took us longer than I would have liked," Trivaldi admitted. "We went in thinking that it was a software problem... something that affected the navigation protocols. That turned out not to be the case. The root cause was mechanical in nature."

He unrolled what Scott had thought was a blueprint. It turned out to be a flexible, touch-activated LCD screen. Trivaldi laid the screen on the table and activated it, bringing up the schematics for the helicarrier. He zoomed in on the housings for the rotor cylinders. "The rotors are cooled and lubricated by what's essentially a high-tech axle grease. We found extremely high amounts of contaminants in the grease."

"What sort of contaminants?" Ororo asked.

"Carbon residue, carbon monoxide, PCBs... basically, a hodgepodge of industrial wastes. They gummed up and added abrasive grit to the grease, reducing its effectiveness. Friction built up in the shaft, and the components finally gave out."

"Would this have happened suddenly?" MacLeod interjected.

Trivaldi nodded. "The same as if your car engine seized up."

"Any idea where the contaminants came from?" Scott asked.

"I have a theory, but I'll need to gather some data on wind patterns first."

"Let's hear it, anyway."

"My guess is that the contaminants came from inside China. There's practically no oversight on the industry there, and pollution controls are almost unheard of."

"That may explain why they refused us access," Ororo mused. "They didn't want to implicate themselves in anything."

MacLeod nodded in agreement. "How is the hazmat team proceeding with the reactors, Lieutenant?"

"They'll be loaded onto a C-5 transport by twenty hundred hours local time. We've outfitted the transport with a lead storage chamber, so the risk is minimal. We'll be flying the things straight to Yucca Mountain for repair and reprocessing. I think that we'll be able to use them on either the replacement for this bird, or for two aircraft carriers."

"Very good, Lieutenant. Dismissed."

MacLeod turned to Ororo and Scott once Trivaldi had left the tent. "I think that my people can handle the rest of this operation. You and your team can head out whenever you're ready."

"What was the final count on casualties?" Scott asked.

MacLeod sighed. "The complement for this class of helicarrier is one hundred sixty-five. So far, the count is one hundred thirteen dead, twenty-three injured, and the rest unaccounted for. At this point, nobody else we find is going to be alive." He thought for a moment. "I'm going to tack Trivaldi's final report onto mine, and make sure that the techs find a way to avoid a repeat of this."

Scott nodded. "We'll get going, then."

Ororo sent a mental update to Betsy, and the X-Men soon gathered together for the teleport home. They shook hands with their SHIELD partners, and turned towards the site where Will would pick them up.

The team spun around, finding that the assembly of SHIELD personnel was standing at attention, presenting them with a crisp military salute.

Major MacLeod stepped forward, handing Ororo a box emblazoned with the SHIELD insignia. "These are from the men, Storm. A lot more of our people would have been lost without your help. It's our way of saying thanks."

Opening the box, Ororo found a set of enameled pins. They bore a design which combined the black-on-red 'X' logo and the eagle seal of SHIELD.

"Officially, you were never here," MacLeod continued. "Unofficially, we owe you one."

Ororo smiled and shook the major's hand. Stepping back, she tapped her communicator. "Storm to Base. We're ready to come home."

They appeared in the complex underneath the Mansion, right next to the locker rooms and showers. "Good thinking, Will," Bobby muttered.

They all washed up (they had all realized, years ago, that one advantage of having a Shiar geothermal power tap is that you never run out of hot water) and changed into their civvies.

Logan stepped into the monitor room as they made their way upstairs. "We probably have to reset half the security protocols. I just want to see what needs to be done once I wake up."

"Good thinking," Scott said. "See you in the morning."

As the elevator was ascending to the residence levels, Ororo's communicator beeped. She removed it from her pocket and tapped it. "Yes?"

"'Roro," Logan's voice said, "I need you and Cyke back down here... right now."

"Will? Can I speak to you for a moment?"

Will looked up from his sandwich and blinked at Ororo. "Of course. Is there a problem?" Ororo noticed that he was slurring his words slightly.

"There's a team matter that I haven't had a chance to discuss with you yet. Why don't we go to Charles' office?"

Ororo shut the door behind her as they entered the office. Will blinked when he found that Scott, Jean, Henry, Logan, and Rogue were already in the room. "Is something wrong?"

"Will," Scott said, "I'm going to ask you a question, and I want a straight answer. Do you understand?"

"Of course."

"When's the last time you got any sleep?"

Will was silent for a moment. "I need to know something before I answer that."

"What's that?"

"How long ago did you leave on the mission?"

Don't answer that, Jean sent to Scott. He'll collapse the moment he finds out.

"It's... been a while, Will. Why didn't you get any rest?"

"Didn't have any relief."

"Will," Ororo said, "Listen to me very carefully. You're relieved. I want you to wash up, and then I want you to sleep yourself out. Do you understand?"

He nodded, then turned towards the door. Rogue noticed that his walk was somewhat unsteady. She looked at Jean, who nodded.

Will was too disoriented to even say anything as the two women placed his arms over their shoulders, supporting him as they left the room.

"Rogue may need help with him," Ororo said. "I'll be back once he's settled into bed." She left the room.

Scott looked at a printout which Logan had handed him earlier. It gave a record for the past seven days of the security checks, which were designed to be manually updated every fifteen minutes.

Every single one of the checks, over their absence, displayed Will's security code.

"He kept himself up the entire time," he murmured. "How?"

"Pure willpower, probably," Logan suggested.

"I'd have to agree," Henry said. "He never left the grounds, and none of the stimulants from the infirmary have been touched."

Scott digested that. "Why in the hell would he do it?"

"He was the only one here," Logan suggested. "And if his powers flared while he was asleep, no one would be around to fix things."

Scott rubbed at a temple. "I can't decide whether to be impressed or horrified. What's this going to do to him, Hank?"

"I don't know. But if sleep helps him recover from injury, then it's reasonable to conclude that deprivation of sleep could hurt him somehow. We can only wait and see."

Ororo entered Rogue and Will's room to find that Jean was supporting Will with her TK while Rogue undressed him. "Could you turn on the shower, 'Roro?" Rogue asked.

"Of course." After doing so, checking to make sure that the water was fairly hot, she went down the hall and took a metal stool from Henry's room. She placed it inside the shower once she returned.

While Jean moved Will so that he was seated on the stool, Rogue changed back into her uniform leotard, and Ororo stripped down to her underwear. Working together, they quickly scrubbed Will down and washed his hair. He was, by that point, too incoherent to even notice what was happening.

Once Will had been toweled dry, they laid him in the bed. Rogue cradled his face in her hands. "Will, listen to me. You can rest now. I want you to sleep. Sleep."

His head went limp, and his breathing became soft and regular.

The three women watched in horrified fascination as, over the next few minutes, Will's face and body became almost frighteningly gaunt and wrinkled, until he appeared to be in his mid-sixties.

"Should we have Hank insert an I.V.?" Jean asked.

"He tosses and turns a lot when he sleeps," Rogue said. "He'd probably rip it out. I'm going to get to sleep myself, and see if I can talk to him while we're dreaming. I'm exhausted, anyway."

"So am I," Ororo confessed. "We'll talk with him once we've all recovered." She stood up and headed towards the door. "Sleep yourself out, Rogue. I plan on doing so."

Jean followed Ororo, shutting the door behind her as they left. Rogue changed out of her leotard, replacing it with a body stocking and mask, then laid beside Will and drew the sheets over them both. She was asleep within seconds.

Xavier and Bishop returned early the next morning. Scott and Ororo barely said hello before locking themselves in Xavier's office with him for the better part of an hour.

Xavier shook his head when they were done. "I know that Will feels the need to push himself, but this is just disturbing. Where is he now?"

"He and Rogue are still asleep." Ororo told him, "and I suspect that he'll remain asleep for several days yet."

The next few days were, thankfully, quiet, since none of them were in any condition to deal with trouble. They preformed the minimum work needed to keep everything running, but little beyond that.

Will awoke only once during the next three days, and that was only at the insistence of Rogue and Henry that he eat something. His recover was slow, even after the rest, and he tired easily for about a week. At one point, Bobby asked him why he wasn't healing as quickly as usual.

"The damage occurred gradually," was the response. "Any recovery will be the same."

Rogue did what she could to encourage his healing process. She made sure that he ate high-protein, organic meals, and called Stephen Strange for ideas on alternative therapies. At his suggestion, she bought a book on shiatsu massage, and gave Will a full-body rubdown each afternoon.

She entered their room for one such session to find that he was in the midst of applying acupuncture needles to his body. "Are you in pain?"

"No. I want to try to stimulate my energy field. I might try some moxibustion later, if I don't start showing more improvement soon."

She blinked. "Please repeat that. I'm positive I misheard that one word."

"Moxibustion. Basically, I stick herbs on the ends of the needles, then burn them so that the particles from the smoke enter my bloodstream."

"Oh. Does Hank know about that?"

"I'll let him know before I do anything."

He sat cross-legged for about fifteen minutes, after which he removed the needles, placing them in the sterilizer. He stretched his arms above his head and stood on tiptoe, then slowly bent at the waist. "I think my range of movement's improved."

"Looks like it," she agreed. "You feeling better?"

"Quite a bit," he said as he put on a T-shirt.

"You sure? Good," she said as he nodded. She turned around and shut the door.

When she turned back towards him, her expression was one of fury. "What in the hell were you thinking?" she demanded as she stalked towards him, hands balled into fists at her sides.

Will's rudimentary survival instincts kicked in, and he backed away until he hit a wall. "Um... excuse me?"

"Don't even try to play dumb! You know exactly what I mean. Why did you push yourself that far?

"Why did you take on so much work? You could have just tossed a few MREs through a Door, or had one of us come back to relieve you, or just said that SHIELD could feed us for once! You could have asked the Professor to send Bishop back here so you could get some sleep!

"But no... you had to go the hardest, most difficult, most self-destructive route you could possibly have taken! You had to push yourself to your absolute limit... and push your healing abilities to their limit in the process! I had to watch, yet again, while you took days to knit yourself back together!

"I want to know... what could possibly have made you think that putting yourself through that kind of hell was an even remotely good idea?"

"Because this was the one place where I could have been of any use!" he snapped.

That stopped her short. "What?"

"Do you have any idea how humiliated I was? After all the training, all the work, to be told 'Stay away. We don't trust you to keep a lid on your own powers'? I've been busting my ass, frying my own brain, and the best I can do when there's a real emergency is to be a glorified caterer!"

"Fury had good reasons for keeping you away."

"Do you think that makes it any easier? How do I know that I won't get left behind the next time Lilandra needs a hand? Or when we have to go to Astroid M, or to see the Inhumans?"

"You don't," she replied. "We're all left behind at one point or another. It's frustrating, but you learn to live with it."

She backed up and let him sit down in his desk chair. "Please, Will. Never do anything like that again if you can possibly help it."

He was quiet for a moment. "I'm sorry, Rogue, but I can't promise you that." He raised a hand as she started to object. "Let me explain my reasons before you say anything, okay?" At her reluctant nod, he continued.

"The simple fact is that I can take more punishment, over an extended period of time, than any of the other X-Men, with the possible exception of Logan. So, in certain situations, I'm going to be the best person for a job that might be very dangerous. So, I can't promise you that I'll never do that to myself again. But I can promise you that I'll never do it needlessly."

She thought about that for a moment. "I guess that'll have to do for now." She sat in his lap. "I'm sorry for yelling."

"No need to be. You had every right to be upset." He scratched her back lightly. "You on duty tonight?"

"Nope. We both have dinner tomorrow, though, if Hank gives you his okay."

"Feel like a nap, then? Maybe we'll go out later."

"Okay. We'll see how you're feeling, though."

She stood up and started to undress. She had combined a flesh-colored body stocking with short boots, a skirt, and a sleeveless top, so she simply removed the outer garments. Will, meanwhile, slid out of his jeans, leaving himself in a T-shirt and boxers. He set the alarm while she put on her mask, and he got into bed first so that she could settle her head on his chest.

"I'm still mad, y'know," she murmured as he wrapped an arm around her.

"I know."