The Same…but Different
an M7 X-Men 2 crossover by Setcheti
Disclaimer: Don’t own M7 or the X-Men, and Mog
created the ATF AU. And it’s going to be
far too long a wait for the next movie.
Got this idea after watching X2 one too many times – what can I
say? TV is a bad influence on me, it
makes the bunnies breed in strange and unnatural ways.
It had just been a normal Saturday afternoon. ATF Team Seven had gathered out at their leader’s ranch to unwind. Chris didn’t mind, he was just thankful that all seven of them were there after their last bust – it had been a rough one, but this time they’d gotten through without anyone ending up in the hospital. He grinned as he took another swig from his beer. Any member of the team, anyway. So far as Chris Larabee was concerned, perps getting hurt was only what they deserved.
And sitting here watching this football game with his men was only what he deserved – especially since his team was winning. Chris downed the rest of his beer and reluctantly pulled himself out of his recliner so he could dispose of the empty can.
He’d made it halfway to the kitchen when the pain hit him, and after endless moments of agony everything went black.
Chris wasn’t sure how long he’d been out, but when the blackness – and with it the pain – finally receded and he peeled himself up off the floor…something was different. He didn’t know what that was, he just knew it was. He pushed that aside, though; his men were scattered around the living room, all still unconscious except for Nathan, who was kneeling nearby with a look of absolute agony on his face. He toppled over before Chris could get to him and fell unconscious himself a moment later, but by that time the other men were starting to stir.
Josiah was up first, but when he tried to help Ezra to his feet the undercover agent jerked violently away from him and retreated into a silent defensive curl in one corner of the couch. Vin had joined Chris by that time, and Buck was shaking JD awake. “What the hell is going on here?” Chris demanded of the room in general.
The answering round of ‘I don’t know’s’ and ‘Got me’s’ was interrupted, surprisingly, by Ezra. “We were attacked,” he said, not looking at anyone.
“You know something about this?” No answer. Chris scowled. “All right then, why is it happening to Nathan now and not when it happened to the rest of us?”
This time Ezra did look up – but not directly at Chris, although the team leader tried his best to catch the man’s eyes. “Everyone but Nathan was affected the first time? All of you?”
“Oh no.” Josiah was shaking his head; everyone immediately looked at him. “I think I know what happened. Ezra, how long have you known?”
Ezra retreated into himself again. “I only knew about myself, Mr. Sanchez. I had my suspicions about Mr. Larabee and Mr. Tanner, but as they appeared unaware I kept those suspicions to myself. Far better for them not to know.”
Josiah’s eyebrows drew together. “Ezra, have you always known?”
“Yes.” The undercover agent risked a look up at him. “All my life. And you?”
“I’ve known for not quite a year.” The profiler shrugged and turned back to his impatiently listening team leader. “We’re mutants, Chris – and apparently so are the rest of you. I’m guessing Brother Nathan isn’t.”
“Mutants?” Buck was confused. There had been a lot of conflicting information in the news lately about human mutation. “But I thought you found out about that when you hit puberty?”
“Only if you’re paying attention.” Josiah shrugged. “And sometimes something else can trigger the dormant genes. I’m no expert on the subject, though.”
Everyone looked back at Ezra, who flinched ever so slightly and put a hand to his head. “I’m no expert either – and you have no call to accuse me of anything.” The last part came out in a rush, painfully. “I haven’t done anything to you.”
“No one said you had…” But Chris trailed off, frowning. “But then, maybe we didn’t have to, did we? Ezra, you can read our minds?”
An emphatic shake of the undercover agent’s head. “I can only pick up emotions. It is more than enough.”
“And we were expecting answers from you.” JD frowned too. “Sorry, Ez.”
“Quite all right, I’m used to it.” Ezra rubbed his temple, wincing again. “At least, I was used to it. Everything seems much sharper now.”
“Maybe a result of the attack.” Josiah looked down at Nathan. “I hesitate to test my own ability’s…limits right now, but it is possible the attack forced our mutations to a higher level. Ezra, can you tell what Nathan is feeling?”
The undercover agent looked at him for a long moment, and then he stood up and moved to Nathan’s side, going down on one knee. His face took on a look of intense concentration, he put out a hand to touch the chemist’s arm…and then he abruptly got back up and put a few feet of distance between them again. “He is regaining consciousness. The attack must have ended, the pain is ebbing away rapidly.”
“So first someone attacks mutants, then non-mutants.” Chris shook his head. “JD, go turn on the TV, try to find some news or something. We need to know what’s…” JD was already gone, a bit too fast to be normal even for him, and Chris snorted. “Okay, I guess I should have seen that one coming.”
Josiah just grinned and took the place Ezra had just vacated beside Nathan. He shook his friend gently. “Nathan? Nathan, wake up. We need to know that you’re all right.”
The chemist groaned, but then his eyes blinked open and he sat up. The next groan was apparently for his aching head. “What happened?”
“We were attacked.” Chris decided to ease into it. “First us, then you. Your head hurt?”
“Like somebody kicked it – from the inside.” Nathan rubbed the back of his skull where it had hit the floor. “Someone attacked us? With what?”
“I think we’d all like that one answered,” Buck told him. His own head was still aching, but the pain was fading quickly. “But whoever it was, I guess they couldn’t make up their mind whether they hated mutants or not.”
“Mutants?!” Nathan’s head shot up – too fast, if his pained expression was any indication – and his dark eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, mutants? We were attacked by mutants?”
“The attack hit mutants first, then non-mutants.” Chris made a face at Buck; so much for easing into it. “All of us got it, then it hit you.”
“All?” The chemist accepted Josiah’s help to climb to his feet, but then a different expression crossed his face and he pulled away. “What do you mean, all? We’re all human…”
“Yeah, but six of us are newer models.” JD was back, literally in a flash. “It’s on the news, it’s all over the news. And it happened all over the world, guys, not just here and not just to us. The mutants got it first, then everyone else. The President’s going to make a statement just as soon as they have all the facts – I guess the second wave got him.” JD took a breath, and then his eyebrows went up. “Ez, what’s wrong?”
Ezra was backing away from them all, his face paper-white and his green
eyes wide with shock as they stayed fixed on Nathan. Chris looked from one man to the other and reached
a conclusion he didn’t much like but had to admit made sense. “Don’t like mutants much,
“Shit.” Buck stopped Ezra from making it any closer to the front door, careful not to touch him. “Ez, what was it?”
Green eyes flicked up at him and then quickly back, and Buck realized with a shudder that the man was afraid of Nathan – maybe he always had been and they just hadn’t seen it. “Ez,” he tried again, reaching for the new power he’d always had and feeling it leap into his control. He twitched it here and there until it was the way he wanted, exuding solidarity and safety and even a little protection. “Ez, you need to tell us what you’re seeing in him, we all need to know. We’re all like you, remember?”
Ezra looked up at him again. He wasn’t picking up anything but friendly concern from Buck, and a desire to protect…tentatively he reached out and put his hand on the larger man’s forearm and was enveloped by protective warmth. “I…he…” He blinked, feeling himself calm down. “He hates mutants, Buck. He knows…what they do to our kind, the experiments, the torture…and he approves. He…he thinks we’re monsters, masquerading as human.”
Nathan scowled at him. “What are you talkin’ about?”
Buck ignored him, and because he did Ezra did too. “Ez, he can’t hurt anyone,” he said softly, gently. He used the hold the undercover agent had on him to reel the smaller man in closer. “But have you always felt the ugly stuff like this comin’ from him? Is that why you always keep your distance?”
Ezra nodded. “So much anger, and resentment. And I…I remind him of someone he hated as a child, he…lashes out at me when he sees me much of the time.”
“That explains a lot,” the surveillance expert soothed. “I’d avoid him too, if he was doin’ that to me, whether he meant to or not. I’m sorry you couldn’t tell us, Ez.”
“I know.” The undercover agent had almost fully regained his composure, although he remained close to Buck. His back straightened and he turned his gaze back to Nathan with a look of concentration narrowing his green eyes. “Resentment, disgust…fear. He is afraid of us now…and he is not at all pleased to realize that his feelings have been an open book to me these past two years.”
Chris was amazed – not because of what his oldest friend had just done because he’d seen him do it dozens of times, but because he had seen him do it dozens of times and just hadn’t realized until now how spectacular it really was. He wasn’t even ready to think about what Ezra was doing, although it did explain why the undercover agent never seemed all that afraid of him. Chris had to give him credit, though, because the man had never once let on that he knew the ‘badass Larabee thing’ was mostly an act. Mostly. “Anything else, Ezra?” he asked.
Ezra looked right at him for the first time since this had all started, but he looked away again quickly. Vin spoke up before the undercover agent could. “I get it. Cowboy, don’t look at him so hard; it’s your eyes. Right, Ez, his eyes? That damn Larabee glare?”
The other man nodded. “The Larabee glare,” he repeated softly.
“Explains a lot.” Josiah was nodding too. “Useful talent to have, brother, to be able to freeze someone with a look. But right now we need to figure out what we’re going to do with all this new self-knowledge.”
“Turnin’ yourselves in would be best.” Nathan spoke up again. “They’ve got people who can help you, places you’ll be safe…”
“Drugs and surgery, researchers, detention facilities,” Ezra interrupted in a monotone. He was withdrawing into himself again. “Autopsy rooms, crematoriums…”
“No.” Buck slid his arm around the smaller man’s shoulders and pulled him close, protectively. “No, Ez. Not gonna happen.”
“No, it isn’t.” Surprisingly, that came from Josiah. He was clearly furious. “Nathan, are you listening to yourself, to what you’re thinking about?” He stepped closer to the other man. “ARE YOU LISTENING TO YOURSELF?!” he thundered when the chemist didn’t answer. “Are you looking at what you’re doing?” He waved a hand toward Ezra and Buck. “Is that making you feel powerful, knowing Ezra is afraid of you? Are you really that small?”
The contempt in his voice stung Nathan into answering. “I’m better than him, he’s a mutant!”
Josiah smiled in a way that made Nathan cringe. “Brother, I believe you’ve forgotten something,” he rumbled, taking out his pocketknife, flipping it open and with a flourish inflicting a deep cut on the inner aspect of his arm. Bright blood pattered to the floor below…and then dripped to a stop as the cut closed itself up without leaving even the faintest of marks behind. “Except for you, we’re all mutants.”
JD zipped up to his side in the silence that followed, looking at the place where the cut should have been. “Wow.”
“I could say the same.” Josiah patted the younger man’s shoulder when he got a confused look in response. “Could you run out and get the paper that I left on my dashboard, JD?”
Zip. Wind whipped through the room. The front screen slammed open, then the front door slammed closed and JD was back with the folded paper, handing it to Josiah. “Is there something in there about mutants?”
“No, I just thought I might want to finish my crossword puzzle later on.” Josiah smiled down at him. “I clocked you at eight seconds getting out there and back, by the way.”
JD’s eyes widened, then he grinned back and wind whipped through the room again. He reappeared behind Buck. “Oh cool! I’m the Flash!”
Ezra spun out of Buck’s hold and grabbed the younger agent just as his knees buckled. “Someone get that soda he was drinking!” he snapped, pulling JD over to the couch and sitting down beside him. One of his hands stayed on the younger man’s arm, and his green eyes were ever so slightly unfocused. His face was also starting to turn a pale shade of green, just like JD’s. “Hurry, he needs the sugar.”
Buck ran for the kitchen, and Josiah stopped Nathan’s instinctive forward rush. “I think you’d best keep your distance,” he rumbled, not threateningly. “Brother Ezra’s gift seems to be proximity related.”
Nathan tried to pull away from him and failed. “JD is sick! I can…”
“What, say we should take him to the hospital and tell them he’s a
mutant?” Vin plopped down on JD’s other side, wrinkling his nose. “Shit,
“Stink?” Chris asked while the chemist was still spluttering. He made a show of sniffing, mainly to irritate Nathan more, then shook his head. “Are you sure you’re not smelling something you tracked in on your boots, Vin?”
“He is scenting Mr. Jackson’s fear, I think,” Ezra offered. He had made JD put his head down to his knees and was rubbing the younger man’s back with his free hand, the other still locked loosely around JD’s forearm. “I know I can sense it quite clearly.”
Chris took that with a nod and turned his attention fully on Nathan. “You’re that scared of us?” he asked bluntly. He very deliberately didn’t use his glare, although he could feel it now behind his eyes and in his head like a pressure that wanted to be released. “You’ve worked with the six of us two years, and all of a sudden this happens and we’re some kind of monsters to you?”
From the look on Nathan’s face he’d been expecting his team leader to do more than just snap at him, and he visibly relaxed when nothing else happened. “No,” he said. He didn’t sound too sure about it, but he looked like he was at least trying to mean it. And he was, because Chris was right; for two years he’d known these men, he’d seen them at their best and at their worst…and right now he was seeing them in pain. The hunch of JD’s shoulders, Chris’ narrowed eyes, Ezra’s self-protective nervousness and Vin’s wary animosity – even Buck, just returned from the kitchen with a soda for JD, was looking strained. Only Josiah seemed to be comfortable, but he was just plain unhappy. Nathan looked at him with new eyes. “Instant healing, is that it?”
The older man cocked an eyebrow at him, shrugged. “Isn’t that enough?”
Nathan shrugged too. “Yeah, I guess it would be.” His eyes swung toward the Southerner. “And Ezra?”
“He has the gift of empathy,” Josiah answered. “The ability to feel what others are feeling,” his eyes grew sadly knowing, “whether he wants to or not.”
“I can tell what kind of soap you used when you took your shower this morning,” Vin stated flatly, his blue eyes flaring briefly yellow. “Didn’t help with that fear-stink none, though. And I can see what’s left of the shampoo you used, too – if that package says it rinses clean, you need to switch brands.”
Nathan had taken an involuntary step back when the sharpshooter’s eyes changed, although he also raised one hand to his short hair with a surprised frown on his face. “I…I don’t know what to say.”
“What’s to say?” JD wanted to know. After gulping down about half the soda he didn’t look quite so green any more. “Either we’re the people you know or we aren’t. But I’d have never picked you for someone who’d be prejudiced, Nathan.”
Eyebrows went up all around the room, but none higher than the shocked chemist’s. Buck chuckled. “You sure called that one, kid.”
“Don’t deny it, Mr. Jackson.” Ezra still looked shaky. “You have predisposed yourself to hate and fear certain individuals on the basis of anomalies in their genetic code.” He didn’t quite shudder. “I have been hiding from people like you my entire life.”
Nathan seemed on the verge of arguing with him…but then he caught Ezra’s eyes and stopped. He also didn’t miss the way that Buck casually put a hand on the undercover agent’s knee, or the fact that Ezra almost immediately started to look more relaxed. Curiosity won out over fear. “Buck, what is it you do?”
“Animal magnetism,” Chris answered with a half smile before Buck could. “He’s always tellin’ us how much of it he’s got, we just never took him seriously.”
Buck laughed out loud. “I do…well, kind of the opposite of what Ez does, I guess,” he explained for the still-confused chemist. He winked roguishly. “Or you could just say I’m one charming son of a bitch.”
Ezra rolled his eyes in their team leader’s direction. “Mr. Larabee, I hold you personally responsible for starting this. He will be absolutely insufferable now.”
Chris snorted, and Buck patted the undercover agent’s knee before removing his hand. “But you love me anyway,” he claimed, batting his eyelashes outrageously and then laughing again when it was Ezra’s turn to snort. “Feelin’ better now?” he asked. When the undercover agent nodded he turned to JD. “How about you, kid?”
“I’m okay.” JD yawned and stretched. “Feel like laying down for a nap, though.”
“You still need to eat something, the soda was just a stopgap measure,” Ezra informed him. “You expended a great deal of energy and seriously depleted your physical reserves, JD.”
“I think we could probably all do with something to eat,” Chris said, trading a look with Josiah; Ezra still wasn’t looking all that hot himself. “We’ve got those steaks, I’ll go fire up the grill…” The phone rang, startling everyone, and he grimaced. “Okay, Vin you go get things started while I answer that.”
He hurried out to the kitchen to grab the extension phone and the sharpshooter rose fluidly from the couch to follow him, wrinkling up his nose and giving Nathan a wide berth. That visibly irritated the chemist. “There’s no call for him to act like that.”
“You seem to think he’s doing it just to spite you, Brother.” Josiah dropped into the chair closest to the couch, smiling slightly at Nathan’s pointed look. “Well, maybe just a little. But Brother Vin suddenly went from having sharper than normal senses to having enhances senses, he must be feeling bombarded by sensations right now.”
“He is.” Ezra’s green eyes had gone slightly unfocussed. “But he is handling it.”
“I know, Ezra.” Josiah returned his attention to Nathan. “It definitely explains his claustrophobia; even before, being enclosed would have seemed a lot like sensory deprivation – or sensory overload, depending on his surroundings.”
“Yeah, that would make sense.” The chemist found a chair of his own, not thinking it would be a good idea to take the vacant seat on the couch, and sat down himself. “So now what?”
Buck stretched. “Are you askin’ us or yourself?”
Nathan made a face at him. “I was thinkin’ out loud, Buck. But since you answered me, what do you think we should do now?”
The surveillance expert shrugged. “Now we eat some steaks, maybe have a few beers, and we’ll decide where we’re goin’ from here. Decide together – we’re a team, remember?”
Josiah nodded sagely. “That we are, brother, that we are.”
“We’re the best damned team in the country,” JD agreed. “We put our minds to it, we can figure this out.”
“Well we’d better figure it out fast.” Chris had come back out of the kitchen with Vin right on his heels, both of them looking a lot less than happy. “That was Travis, he wants us all in early tomorrow morning for a meeting. We’re going to be briefed on…special weapons. The ATF is adding mutant tracking to its MO.”