[OP: "Secrets"-- One Republic.]

Mystique was waiting when the others stopped their discussion.

Shine and Wally went off to check on Frost, leaving Morph on his own, much to his chagrin.

"So..." he said. "Uh...thanks for not blabbing about it, I guess..."

He got a cold look in response.

"I get it, it's freaky," Morph said. "That's kind of why I kept it to myself...You really don't want to know the rest."

"You know, I'm getting tired of being told what I do and do not want to know," Mystique finally spoke. "Here's what I want to know, why do you suggest openness and honesty that you don't actually follow yourself? All this time, you had some kind of double life, even if it as in the past...or the future? I can't tell...and you act like you're simple and uncomplicated compared to the others. Turns out you've got just as many problems as they do with the past...Not such an open book."

"I don't remember ever saying I didn't have a past," Morph said. "I just don't talk about it."

"Trust works both ways," Mystique said icily. "You ask people things about their past, but you hold back on your own? Double standard much?"

She crossed her arms. "I have my dark side...more of question if I have a light side, at all actually, and I know it...But I admitted it. I admit my life is what it is, take it or leave it. I don't care. But this? This is nothing. No one around here actually knows the real Morph. And you say I fake my way through life."

That was...crushing.

Especially since Morph couldn't think of a ready response to it.

"But...I am real," he said slowly. "I don't act any different than I always do."

"Oh, I know," Mystique said. "I'm fairly certain of that. But here's the thing, Dimension Traveler," and her tone was killing on that last part. "There's more than one way to fake your life. You've said it yourself, I can't act, I'm always pretty much the same person, just different trappings. Always guarded, always dishonest...well, so I am. I can't help that. But that doesn't mean I'm not living a lie just the same. I know it...At least if you know that, there's something about you that is still apart from the lie, isn't there? But to live a lie and not feel it's a lie? What is that?"

"It's not a lie," Morph said. "I am an X-man. I gave up that other life."

"You can't just give up the past," Mystique shot back. "It is always part of you. The things you know, the things you've seen...what, for all the new lives I put on, I still have the same story. It doesn't change. You think moving Dimensions will change a d--- thing? But I suppose if you don't want anyone to confront you on it, it's convenient."

She suddenly laughed. "Turns out you're way ahead of me on this new life thing, I could never go so far as to exit my world and start something over and completely evade having the past coming back to haunt me. I should have thought of that."

"Are you actually saying that's the reason?" Morph said. "My family is here."

Why was he letting her make him mad? This was stupid.

"Yes...part of it," Mystique said. "But they don't really know you, do they? I should have seen it before. I always did think you hid the truth from them about your emotions, but why stop there? What's a half-hearted lie like that to something with that kind of power? Just construct a whole new life. I've done it a hundred times. I know what it looks like."

She looked at him frostily. "Do me the courtesy of not BS-ing me about it. One thing I'm the master of is to suddenly abandon one thing for another, and I think I can claim the right to not be conned about it when I see it."

"Listen--" Morph suddenly lost his cool. "--you have no idea the kinds of things you have to deal with when you do this sort of thing. You can't just blab about that to everyone."

"You know, I might have bought that--" Mystique was still scornful. "--if Shine had not talked to me about her difficulties. Somehow, she manages to be authentic. Of course, there's a lot we can't possibly understand about what she's seen...but I think I know why now. This whole thing has made it clear to me. She's not running from it. She's not afraid of the mystery of what she does, and she tells people what they can handle in order to share it with them. That's a kind of openness I have never had with anyone, and I don't expect I ever will, but if someone has the gall to have it, I have to respect their grit. Perhaps it's foolish, but something tells me she would prefer the risk to living in shadows... Somehow, they make things that seem impossible, seem nearer and clearer. Maybe it's that weird thing about clarity she was saying on the plane." She crossed her arms. "You all thought I could not understand...but I'm not as stupid as you think I am."

"No one said you were--" Morph began, but she went on.

"I understand enough. I understand that you don't trust me." She frowned. "I don't blame you. I wouldn't trust me either. But I can give Shine this much...she has never used my talents without telling me what I was getting into. She is respectful...to everyone. I wouldn't have made her do it, but she offers it, on principle. I know, I'm speaking of matters I do not understand, but there is a difference between you and them, between the X-men and them..."

She stopped, like she didn't know where she was going with this.

But she had at least made one thing clear to Morph...perhaps what Shine and Wally had been trying to make clear to him before.

"Oh...gosh, is it really that unfair?" he said bleakly. "I didn't...but... We always thought it protects people more not to know anything."

"I don't know much about trust," Mystique said. "But I know this: People are never protected by not knowing something. You withhold information to make them unable to do things you don't want them to do. I've done it lots of times. It's to protect yourself."

"No, there are times you can't," Morph protested. "Like with kids, you can't tell them everything about life, can you? They're not ready."

"I'm not a kid," Mystique said. "And they are the X-men...but even if there was some truth to that, I think Frost has made it a moot point. Knowledge comes to all of us, whether we're ready or not. I've known that since I was a kid. But if Shine and Wally have been endangered by the fact that nothing about this came out sooner, when they had already introduced this knowledge to the team...well, I fail to see the problem there."

Morph swallowed. "I guess maybe that was just me trying to not rock the boat... But how was I supposed to know anything would come up again?"

She gave him a long look. "Am I supposed to answer that?"

"And you? Since when do you want to know anything about who you work for or with?" Morph said. "How could you lie to yourself about it not being something you did, then?"

He should not have said that, at least, not when he was that emotional.

Mystique was offended, for once. "Don't you pin this on me!" she said. "For once, I did ask. I was denied knowledge, that is why I don't ask. No one tells you anyway. It's useless. Either you find out for yourself, or you accept ignorance. The only people I knew to volunteer information were the DJs...I assume because it does not scare them...so what does that say about you?"

"Okay, I don't really like you very much when you're actually insightful," Morph said.  "You're just trying to get to me, I can see that. "

"And it's working." Mystique sounded kind of smug.

"Why, you..." Morph trailed off. What could he say?

"Everyone has their weak points." Mystique saw she'd won.

"Wow..." Morph said dully. "Congratulations...you've found it.... Yeah, go ahead...gloat. It's not like it was something I had a good reason to put behind me."

This mood shift surprised her.

"Well, that takes all the fun out of it," she said. "What's your problem? You do this to me whether I like it or not."

"It's not like I'm picking on you," Morph said. "I just ask... You don't have to answer."

"I can't make you answer me, but now you're acting upset. Why?" Mystique narrowed her eyes.

Morph looked down.

"I didn't just leave the.... Well...the thing was partly because I wanted to come back here," he said. "I tried to keep going for a while, with the new team..but...it just wasn't the same."

"The older team all retired, then?" Mystique had no idea who she was talking about, but she guessed it must be a former and latter sort of thing.

"Not exactly," Morph said.

Mystique had enough experience to suddenly get uncomfortable. "Oh."

She paused. "All of them?"

"No, not all," Morph said. "But too many. The empty spots just...glare at you after a while." He sighed. "The X-men, at least they were the same, you know? They were still here. So I came back to them and put it behind me. No sense living in the past...or out of the time stream at all, I guess. I didn't want to just always be thinking about how sad things were. It was getting to be too hard not to."

Mystique bit her lip.

"That is a good reason to start over," she admitted. "Perhaps I shouldn't have assumed...but, that kind of loss...I have the feeling if it were me, someone would be saying it's not wise to just try to pretend it never happened."

"I guess that's my pattern," Morph said. "I tried to pretend what Sinister did didn't happen also. I always could handle things pretty well...at least, I thought so. I've started to realize that may not be as true as I thought it was. But who wants to be sad all the time?"

"I'm no shrink, but is it necessarily sad to just accept that there have been unpleasant experiences in your life?" Mystique said strangely. "I have always done so. I never really thought about it being sad till...well, till others said so. And I still don't really care. Sad or not, it happened. I had to do something about it...the wrong thing, most people think, but something. Not nothing."

"Well, isn't moving on something?" Morph said.

"But you have something most people don't have," Mystique said, "friends who actually would care if you told them about this. Why would you not utilize that? Few mutants or humans have that."

"I don't know," Morph said. "I just never really complained."

"You just admitted this to me, of all people. Did I say you were complaining?" Mystique said. "It's just a fact. How stupid can you be?"

Morph finally smiled wryly. "Pretty stupid, I guess...but who isn't stupid sometimes? That's how people are."

"They could be more humble about it," Mystique muttered. 

"So many people are afraid of their stupid decisions," Morph said. "But it's not like we can avoid them every time. I'm not really afraid of failure myself...more of not trying my hardest and failing because of that. But it doesn't matter. Loss hurts whether you did your best or not."

Mystique had nothing to say to that...it was just true. But she'd never felt she'd done her best.... She couldn't feel that way. It had long ago been wired out of her.

She figured Morph was probably still the least crazy out of the two of them, but even so, he was not the wholly stable person he tried to come off as.

But instead of this annoying her, it actually put her somewhat more at ease. She knew it--no shape-shifter really had life all that easy...

But she was not a cruel enough person to be happy at the deaths. That was something she'd not really experienced much of, herself.... She tended to leave people before they died...perhaps, even, that was part of the past she avoided. Her family must have died long ago by now...but she wouldn't have cared anyway...

Death...one more event she distanced herself from as much as possible.

"Well," Morph sighed, like he was trying to lighten up, "That was...unpleasant. You always make things about that."

Mystique went from more mellow back to angry at once. "All I did was point out the obvious."

"No, that's what bothers me," Morph said. "It was obvious. I have some thinking to do. Maybe I just don't do that enough. I can't tell which of us is worse at facing this stuff."

"Probably still me." Mystique didn't mean that to be funny, but Morph laughed anyway.

"Well, at least you're owning it." He shrugged. "But since we're being so honest, why don't you just...do something about it?"

Mystique normally would have brushed that off with some cynical retort, but she didn't feel like it after all that.

"I suppose because I hope I can just start over again," she said, "and not have to... I always take the coward's way out."

"Yeah, but...don't you ever think maybe you're missing out on something way better by not taking the harder route?" Morph suggested. "What if things don't have to be miserable all the time?"

She gave him an odd look. "Why would starting over be miserable?"

"Because all those lives still aren't really yours," Morph said. "Why not get one of your own? I mean...you've tried literally everything else. Why not try the one thing you haven't tried...? What was Shine saying earlier? That people always don't want to try either the evil thing or the good thing that would work? She's right--that's true."

"I..." Mystique hesitated. "I suppose we just prefer what we know. Even if we don't like it."

Funny, saying that out loud, she saw it was true. Shine called it a cycle.... It was one...but it was a comfortable one.

[What every person who goes to therapy for abuse finds out.... Ugh...not fun.]

Morph couldn't even argue with that. Even he knew it was true, for him too. 

Perhaps it was more convenient to just go back to the X-men and pretend nothing happened than it was to change things by telling them about his other life...and change how they saw him. He hadn't wanted them to treat him different.

But if Mystique was right...that might be a selfish thing to want.

Or maybe it was just protecting himself... How did it take all this happening to make him understand that fact?

And now...he couldn't get away from it.

* * *

Emma Frost must have been horribly disoriented that first day, but, from how she acted, you almost would not have known, the X-men thought.

They weren't sure what to make of her cool, composed demeanor. 

It wasn't, they thought, the same kind of peacefulness Shine and Wally had displayed. It was more of a refusal to look weak in front of them.

Kurt, when he heard what was going on and came to meet her, thought she reminded him of ice. Hard, but the kind of hard that might have been easily shattered with the right blow.

Apparently being abducted was not the right kind of blow.

She seemed to prefer to talk to Kurt, the DJs, Morph, and the kids. She treated all the other X-men like they were something she'd rather not think about or look at more than strictly necessary.

Shine told Wally that, in her opinion, Emma must not have been trusted by the X-men in her world if this was how she reacted to the ones here.

"I can't blame her for being on edge," Wally said. "She doesn't know what we'll do. Poor lady."

"Yes, but I wish she'd open up a little about that," Shine said. "But maybe she needs a few days."

Accordingly...a few days passed.

In that time, Morph had no success getting in touch with Mimic, and the Talis link showed no signs of life. Which alarmed him.

But he did take the chance to finally tell the X-men who he was.

It came about rather awkwardly, while they were having dinner together.

Emma was there but sitting in a corner, like Gambit often did, or Mystique.

But Mystique, who continued to have a tempestuous relationship with Emma, and vice versa, had sat with them, as if to spite her. So it was a crowded table, but the teens were outside; Trinity was there for her soccer lesson, and they would eat afterward.

So, having the freedom from worrying about scaring them, Morph suddenly said, at a lull in conversation,

"So...maybe it's time you all know the rest of the story about why I'm the one who found Frost."

They still mostly called her Frost--she acted too distant for her first name.

Emma herself shot him a strange look, like she wondered what this was going to turn into.

Mystique looked up, then looked at Shine like, What prompted this?

Shine shrugged at her, not sure herself.

"I've been wonderin' about that," Logan admitted. "But ya didn't seem real anxious to talk before."

"Yeah..." Morph said. "Well...it's a long story. I guess the hardest thing to explain is that...well, I'm...actually not from this dimension either."

Everyone stopped eating, some halfway through chewing and swallowing.

Rogue covered her mouth.

Xavier, the only one who knew this already out of the X-men, looked up but didn't interrupt.

"My goodness," Hank said. "How...how is this possible?"

"Wait, are you not our Morph?" Jean asked. "Just like this is not the Frost we know?"

"No, no, I'm the Morph you know, just...not the one who was born here, I guess," Morph said. "It's a real long story.... I used to work with the X-men Frost worked with--way before she did though. I never met her or even Rogue or Gambit. When I left, Cyclops and Jean were still teenagers."

"Really?" Jean said.

"How come you never tell us dis?" Gambit said.

"It was a weird thing to explain," Morph said. "And before this year...well, I thought no one would believe it. I was gone from the X-men here for a while anyway, before you all joined. Remember, Hank?"

"Yes, I thought you were overseas," Hank said.

Morph shook his head. "I was on this other team. They...do saving people stuff. Nothing too big, you know, but they needed help. So I was...kind of out of the time stream here."

They stared at him.

"So you're what they are?" Scott said, gesturing at Shine and Wally.

"No...we do different kinds of things," Morph said. "But I guess there's some overlap, isn't there?"

"Sure," Wally said. "Like saving people."

"Yes," Shine agreed. "But we are not the same thing. More like cousins of it."

"Fascinating," Xavier said. "I wondered, at your story, if it was something like Morph's...but at the time of your arrival, he was not with us, and I did not want to trouble him with it when he returned--it was so long ago now.... But all I thought was that you were from another dimension, Morph, not that you had a job related to it."

"Well, I kind of retired." Morph fiddled with his fork. "I didn't want to talk about it because we're not supposed to. You can see why.... It's confusing, and people might get the wrong idea. But, now that Frost is here, I think you all should know. Because this could all be tied in to my job and my group. The Exiles...thought we'd kind of name it like the X-men, you know. A lot of us knew the X-men--or versions of them."

"How many versions of us are there?" Rogue asked.

"Think more that the concept of X-men is one many people like," Shine suggested. "A team of heroes. Wally has a counterpart of it in his world, but again, copies of people aren't real...unless you have a clone, maybe, but even then, they tend to be different. You can't replicate life experiences perfectly."

"Some worlds with mutants are so different from this one, you'd not recognize them," Morph said. "So it's hard to really answer that question anyway. I only saw a little of it, myself. We don't stay in them, not like Shine and Wally do. We don't start things like that...but after I decided I was done with it, I wanted to stay here.... I...uh, like you guys. The other team was okay, but they didn't really need me, I thought. There were so few of us here back then, you know, it seemed the right place to be. Of course, it sounds like the other X-men have been reduced now, but at the time there were a lot of them."

"There will be again, if their Wolverine and Beast have their way," Emma remarked.

"This is a lot," Storm said. "Of all the things I have been wondering the past few days, I thought this one was a little outlandish. But in a way...I suppose we always knew you were different. Just not how different."

"I guess it's flatterin' that ya picked our team," Rogue said. "But ya coulda told us. Ain't we friends?"

"Sure, but...it's not like we tell each other that much about our pasts..." Morph said.

Since all of them were guilty of that, except maybe Storm, they had nothing to say to that.

"So now we know," Gambit said. "What we in for?"

"Emma Frost's situation is still weird," Morph reiterated. "Normally, no one gets taken out of world. People go into it instead, to mess stuff up. Or go backward or forward in time. So that's what I don't get. And...if she's the only one it happened to. But whatever the reason is, it's kind of my job to fix it. Or to try."

"As well as ours," Shine added, "in our own way. But we want to work all together. You all know enough about how we work by now to know why we will need to be on the same page."

"Any other surprises?" Beast asked.

Morph looked somber. "I guess...one other thing.... I retired...partly because a lot of my old team was gone. That's partly why I didn't talk about it."

They were silent for moment.

"I'm sorry, Morph," Storm said finally. "That must have been hard to bear alone."

"Ya could have told us that." Logan frowned. "It's not like we all don't have the same story. It's not that weird, is it?"

Shine laughed. "You say that, Logan, because you've known us for months. I can't picture you accepting this before then--can you?"

"Maybe not right off, but I'd have liked to try," Logan said.

Morph shrugged. "Well...it wasn't something I thought mattered. I'm an X-man now. But I guess it was going to come up sooner or later, right?"

"Not like we ask," Gambit said. "Gambit don't poke into other people business."

"We know." Rogue leaned on her hand. "None of us do. But dang it, Morph...that's a lot to drop on us. Next you'll be tellin' us we could cause the end of the world."

"Not that I know of," Morph said. "I mean, its not like I know the future just because I can leave this dimension..."

"I hope not," Gambit said.

"If you did know the future," Hank said, "would you warn us? Like Bishop did?"

"I could try," Morph said. "But Shine thinks that trying to change the future like that can make it worse, and I've never really tried to do that without a clear cause...so..."

Shine nodded. "I've heard of it leading to worse things," she said. "You don't know this, but Bishop stopping you before, it actually created more problems in his future, which he had to correct other ways. You only got half the story from what he told you. It's good he has not come back. He might make it worse. You all have a better chance of making a bright future by trying to live in the present and do what's right than by trying to prevent one event."

Mystique suddenly looked at her strangely.

"As Gambit recall, it wasn't us who almost ruin it." Gambit looked at her.

Mystique picked at her plate.

"One time it's one person, another time it's another," Shine said, warningly. "I would not point fingers. We can spin it any way we want and say Kelly was at fault. But now he's in favor of mutant rights. We have a saying in my time. I think it's here too. 'The past is what you make of it.' Well, so is the present. The future is not in your control. We do what we can."

"How long have you know about Morph?" Rogue had a different question.

"Just since Emma got here," Wally said.

"Seems like you would have told them, at least," Storm commented. "Why hide it?"

"It's hard to explain, but I really didn't think about it," Morph said. "All this kind of just went to the back of my mind, especially after Sinister. I barely remembered it myself till this happened."

"That's actually normal," Shine said. "Long enough in one dimension and your memory of the other fades like a dream--or 'a dream of a dream,' as Lewis put it. I remember people, but I rarely think about much else, even after a few months. Years and years would make it as distant as your early childhood is for most people."

"I suppose that makes sense," Xavier said. "The mind probably cannot hold two realities in its forefront at the same time. But now that you have been stirred up about it, Morph, is there anything more we should know?"

"I'm not sure," Morph said. "Not sure what would be important."

Emma suddenly got up and came to stand at the end of the table.

"Perhaps, then, it's time to ask if comparing notes about our worlds would actually be beneficial," she said, in that airy voice of hers. "I have refrained as you said to do, and we have discovered nothing--not with Cerebro, nor with trying to stimulate my memory of what happened to me. It is simply not there. But, perhaps, some parallel events in our worlds would hold a clue."

They all looked at Shine and Wally.

"Maybe she's right." Wally turned to Shine.

Shine bit her lip. "Maybe... All right, but first, let's establish some guidelines. Emma, do not tell us if anyone died, other than you--we already know that. Don't tell us if anyone switched sides. I won't have suspicions aroused here. I want only world events and brushes with villains and possibly scientific developments and the political climate. You cannot play with this stuff."

"Fine," Emma said. "You want the study notes version of it? I will oblige you, but if it's missing what we need, do not blame me. Where shall we start?"

"Begin with what happened to the X-men in your world," Xavier said. "Minus deaths and what Mrs. West said."

Emma paused to think about it.

[Here we go.]