Readthrough: X-Men Classic 14

[sheliak]

This is from a few issues ago, but it's definitely one of the nicer ones:



This story opens with Lilandra held prisoner, about to be executed for treason (a recurring theme with her).



D'ken, here via hologram to gloat, offers her mercy--but she's having none of it.



That last bit is interesting: Lilandra discovered the M'Kraan Crystal, in the course of her wanderings. In trying to distance herself from politics and empire, she found the power her brother wanted--and stood against him to try to make up for that mistake.

Before D'Ken can order her death, the ship she's held captive on is attacked. These aren't warships coming to Lilandra's rescue, but "pathfinders". Lilandra was an explorer, not a conqueror; the fleet of which she was admiral was the same. Even as she takes advantage of the distraction to overpower her guards and escape, she knows that the old friend who's come to save her has likely only signed his own death warrant.

And, practically as soon as she's hailed him from her little escape craft, she's overcome by a psychic call, overwhelmed by pain and memory:



When she comes to, she's not sure which of them she is: Xavier, who just turned the full psychic power of humanity on the Z'Nox to save his world, or Lilandra, whose own struggle to save the universe seems lost.



She looks out the window into space, and sees a friend's body float past--interestingly, the man is not Shi'ar, the design of his helmet suggesting horns rather than a feather crest--and reacts as two people, one of whom knows him and one does not; the gods she swears by in her horror are both hers and utterly unknown. The lack of gravity in the craft is alien; her legs give out for no medical reason.

Her reflection gives her a partial answer: she sees another face there, Xavier's, superimposed over her own. She's able to assign names to faces, and both to memories: she knows who she is again.

At last I have my anchor.

I know you, outlander...

... as I do myself.

Which isn't to say she's comfortable with the realization.



She strikes too hard, and the machinery explodes; she's not badly injured, and mostly shaken by her outburst.

She considers her situation, and Xavier's immense telepathic power--greater than any she knows in her Empire. She wants to seek him out, despite her rage at being so vulnerable--and yet, the war she was fighting hasn't gone away.

How magnificent a jest-- to discover the missing piece of my heart, and he's not only alien, but from some fringeworld.

Any other time, I'd leap to follow this broadcast to its source.

But duty takes precedence.

Xavier would understand that.

Easy to understand, agony to accept.

But as she goes to assess the situation, her casual scan finds only carnage. Her friend Peri led the Pathfinders against Imperial warships, and it seems there were no survivors--on either side. He sacrificed not only his own life but those of all her other followers to save her, and that means she is alive but powerless.

She knows that she was the only person in the Empire with both the will and the resources to do anything to defy her brother: now there is no one who can stop him from reaching for ultimate power, and destroying the universe in the process.

But she does have one last set of potential allies: Xavier and his students. Her power base is gone, but he is the strongest telepath she's ever encountered, and his students are strong. More than that, they're heroes. She wonders if she has the right to ask them to risk their lives too--but then asks if she has the right not to, either: they're also living in an imperiled universe.

I must succeed, or perish.

I accept the challenge! Take note, brother! I choose to live, to love, to fight--

--to win!

I like this story more than I remembered. It's very introspective, and sets up Lilandra well as Xavier's counterpart, bound by duty and loyal to her own friends. Their telepathic link is depicted interestingly too; I've consistently liked how Classic X-Men handles telepathy.

I do wonder if Claremont is trying to distance Lilandra from the nastier aspects of the Shi'ar--he minimizes her involvement in the fleet (she's an explorer avoiding politics, seeking the company of aliens over that of her own arrogant kind), and while there are implications that she led the rebellion she mentioned to Cyclops, it's all very much offscreen. If so, I can't really blame him. And this is a version of Lilandra I like. I'm curious about her time as the leader of the Pathfinders...

There's also no indication here that D'ken knows who Xavier is, where Lilandra is running or why. If other telepaths overheard the psychic storm that overwhelmed Lilandra--and they probably did--they still wouldn't know that Lilandra, not a psychic, heard it too. But the Z'nox attacked quite a while before the current X-Men stories. Either telepathy is bound by the laws of physics somehow and non-instantaneous, as it were, or Lilandra was running for a long time, and at some point D'ken found out where she was running and why.

(Also, while soulmates is very much not my trope: canonical soulmates. Lilandra uses that very word.)

Poll #21793

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 5

View Respondents

Intergalactic telepathy: instantaneous or not?

View Answers

Yes
4 (80.0%)

No
1 (20.0%)

Next: Universe-saving shenanigans.
After that: Starjammers!