At some point, he didn’t know how many doorways they had passed through, slamming open doors only to spill out onto unknown sands or through domains long forgotten or otherwise ignored before crashing through another into a pile within the hallways of Arcana; the chase leading the old man through one door in pursuit of his clone while he found himself thrown backward, tumbling into the once-left doorway only to find himself somewhere else. It was confusing, no help to trying to keep up with experience that seemed to go thousands - maybe millions for as long as the old man had traveled through time - of years deep; and while Nate was wholly devoted to ensuring that Stryfe didn’t get his hands on what he wanted, it was quick to being too nuanced to try and figure out where the old man and his doppelganger had gone.
But when he had spilled back into the hallway after enduring a stretch of rocky, craggy, red sands on an unknown planet, the stars in the skies twinkling not necessarily with hope as much as there was dread in contrast to the cactus and ancient bones that scattered the landscape, the last thing Nate thought he would endure was another toss - this time not because Stryfe had taken advantage of his distraction to telekinetically throw him backwards, but because someone had body checked him, literally slamming into him in a moment of pure distraction, only to launch him through another door and into the blinding white light of silence.
While he hadn’t been here before - not in any timeline that he can remember - there is a part of him that stirs, bubbling up like an unseen fire in its recognition of this place, reacting to the unseen presence in the stark white that he can’t seem to grasp or comprehend until it materializes in a form he is familiar with. She isn’t a hound despite the marks on her face, those long-laid torments from Ahab that seem to always reign her back into his control no matter the circumstances and she isn’t entirely the step-sister that he would come to know in those missions that traverse the depths of time and space - an equal protection given to that which had ensured his survival - but she isn’t the old woman Clan Chosen had come to know as the Bright Mother, Mother Askani.
It’s even hard to say she is Rachel Summers in anything other than form, but it feels the most fitting for the Phoenix in the moment, faced with an enemy from a future that long discarded the X-Men and the teachings of Professor X in lieu of their own resolution to the rule of Apocalypse and without the mother he had come to known, still trapped, still fighting, still clawing her way back to the top from the depths of dimensions laid deep. It doesn’t mean he can’t feel her presence there, that part of the Phoenix attached to Madelyne - to his mother - that bore the very spark of her life, but as the woman who had protected him, who had healed him, who had been the creator of the very evil they were facing now, Nate had to wonder if the Phoenix hadn’t picked up on his thoughts.
But even in such cosmic presence as the red-headed woman sitting next to him, even with such opportunity to ask what the intention had been in creating something - someone - that had turned so badly from the good he could have done, all Nate can do is remain silent as, as it had been in those moments where there were mutants to save and memories to wipe and as it would come to be in defense of Krakoa, Nate eases his mind, flexes his telepathy, and joins forces with beings far more powerful than he could ever imagine to be no matter the potential in his very bloodstream.
There’s a nexus to be protected and not just one timeline, but many to be maintained, and he is one of the Chosen.
He isn’t really surprised by the maze that Arcana had turned out to be, doors leading to expansive lands of nowhere just as readily as they land in homely accommodations, realities or dimensions or timelines that serve some purpose to such a magical presence in San Francisco; and he really isn’t surprised when his clone, the one who had never known a mother in any part, the one who wasn’t raised by Madelyne until her death and wasn’t further embraced by Jean Grey, and whose father had only been such a tyrant to ensure the future of mutant kind once they had found sovereignty on Krakoa - a load of bullshit, if Nathan was really given the opportunity to speak his mind on it - hasn’t a clue how to navigate them.
It isn’t easier to than navigating time, these hallways that constantly seem to shift as people pass through the doorways attached to it, and Nathan can’t say that navigating time is any more or less difficult, but time is something that they have experience with and time is what Nathan knows he can use to his advantage as he tackles the fleeing clone, arms clasping firmly around lightweight, but durable armor as they tumble through the threshold and onto grassy plains. If only for a moment, Nathan doesn’t recognize them in his struggle, mind too preoccupied with ensuring his hold around Stryfe so he can time slide his clone back to his rightful spot in the time stream; but it is only when he is thrown off, slamming into a nearby bench with only moments to materialize - even unintentionally - a telepathic shield around himself to avoid the brunt of the impact, that a young and nearly forgotten part of his mind taps into equally long buried memories, shelved and hidden away for as many years as he had been traversing the time stream.
A park - they’re in a park and not just any park as the lights of New York City’s skyline shine softly over it, knees deep in a twisting landscape that seems to melt into itself as bright lights pierce the darkened skies in ominous shapes above them. The ground dips and furrows as if clay, the trees stretching and craning over those unfortunate enough to be beneath them as if monsters born of nightmares, and at the highest of heights, on the tallest of skyscrapers the city can provide, he finds it hard to deny the magic that is afoot, swirling in the air.
He knows what this is. It might not be in anything more than fragments of a childhood that was never normal, not when raised in a celestial ship by a team of mutants who were going through their own struggles - demonic angels that tore through the skies while men made of ice could barely regulate their body temperatures and geniuses were quick to find themselves suffering from an underlying atavism that slowly drained their intelligence among what someone would normally call “babysitters” - but he knew the fear, the knew the upset, and he knew the arms that held him until…
Nathan can hear his voice cut through the swath of memories - not from the baby crying from up on high, precariously hoisted above his mother’s head while demons swarmed, but the clone standing firm against his aged assault, strong, but not as quick as his younger counterpart. It prattles on and on, laying claims to confused origins that, in this place and at this time, Nathan knows aren’t true. They’re nothing more than lies, fabricated by a power-hungry survivalist who had wanted nothing more to use and destroy him to make sure he endured forever; and for the slightest of moments, Nathan can’t help but feel bad for Stryfe - for a clone that, much like his mother, hadn’t been given a choice and had only been thrown away.
But there was a difference.
Contrary to what anyone wanted to believe about Madelyne, there was a difference between the Goblin Queen, tossed aside while all that had been hers was taken away from her, and Stryfe, tossed aside while all that had been promised to him was denied, and it would take more than a war-hardened heart to deny it. Even as it felt too distant to grasp onto - both in this moment and in his proper place in the timeline, jumping through one portal to another to make sure he upheld his duty, and never quite staying in one place for too long - Nathan knew it was there, perhaps not in the woman who had taken to darkened clothes of no substance, but the way he saw her now as he had before.
She had been a pilot, bright red hair in an army green jumpsuit, and the one person who had seemed to care when his father would have rather galavant off into heroism with the X-Men while leaving the two of them alone in the snowy depths of Alaska; but never once had he been cold and never once had he been alone, only because he had her.
She had been a protector, thinking first and foremost about her son when the flames of jet fuel, ignited from a crash forged by the Marauders had brought them down, provided the background for her intended demise; and not even multiple gunshots from a mutant marksman had been able to keep her down. They hadn’t stopped her from finding him - powered by the denizens of Limbo or not.
And she had been his mother long before the Phoenix had brought them, Madelyne and her progenitor, together again, the perfect ending to the sins of his father, now with the love of his life and childless, Nathan sent far into the future in a blind attempt to save his life despite the fact they would never see each other again - not as they were; and by the time he had seen his father again with his own two eyes, they were old, hardened from experience with hair grayed from age, and not without history having repeated itself.
Not without Stryfe.
Madelyne, he could mourn who she had been before her mind had been so readily twisted - by Sinister, by his Marauders, by her loss. His mother, he could feel sorrow for though he was no longer the innocent son she had no choice but to leave behind. The clone of Jean Grey, born of Sinister’s mechanizations much the same Nathan and Stryfed had been shaped by Apocalypse’s, the one who had been denied peace in Krakoa as if her life hadn’t mattered, he could call his flesh and blood no matter how directly Stryfe’s genes were his own.
For Stryfe, he could not.
He rose against the psimitar in tow, hoisted off of his younger counterpart without issue, but it wasn’t for the concentrated beam of telepathic power that it could provide as much as it was to used to exchange blows, one after another, until there was the drop of something heavy against the ground. The helmet of the Chaos-Bringer, fallen, revealing a much younger version of his doppelganger, the one that more readily mirrored his younger counterpart in his rise to power among the Scions of Apocalypse and New Canaanites, already a tyrant in his own right without the title of Apocalypse to his name.
“I’m not going to kill you,” Nate said though his menacing presence remained, looming over Stryfe as a monolith while winged beasts circled overhead like vultures just waiting for the chance to descend on their prey. He could hear them, the beating of wings and screeching cries of otherworldly beasts summoned from the depths of Limbo. The end of the psimitar found itself a place in the ground as Nathan stepped back, standing sentry with it in his hand while his eyes remained unmoving from Stryfe who readily cast his eyes upward.
“I’m going to give you a chance to be who you never will be...”
“... Nathaniel Christopher Charles Summers.”
He knows everything is unraveling. Bit by bit, piece by piece, one inch of spring pulled into a gradual decomposition of all that he had made - be it because of the combined efforts of Dayspring and his younger counterpart, young and brash and not quite trained, but not so broken, to stop him; their friends, many of which from dimensions he didn’t know and timelines he couldn’t traverse, taking on the efforts of his Mutant Liberation Army before they could become a thunderstorm of chaos in the middle of the city; or bonds he could never begin to comprehend, that he had never experienced, between month and son, amplified by the magics found in Arcana thanks to forces unknown, Stryfe recognizes his plan is falling apart and there is no sympathy from Dayspring other than a life - one that should have never been - spared.
And even under the swirling vortex of demonic bodies that only seems to grow more intense, winds whipping about bare locks of brunette hair not marred by the ravages of Apocalypse’s long laid techno-organic virus as the materialized memories born from the sources that had lived them descend, all he can do is be angry.
“You’re a coward, Dayspring! You know what leaving me alive will do, what pain it will bring to you and those you love!” He yells, threatens, attempting to get a rise out of the old and tired figure, fatigued by the chase and treasons of his own body, walking away in search of a doorway that would take him away from this place - from this moment in time. He doesn’t know if it will San Francisco he will find himself in again and he doesn’t know if it will be 2021 or another era lived or yet to be seen, but he knows it won’t be New York City and he knows it won’t be this moment - a space in time no one could return to in earnest without undoing all that had to remain.
“Dayspring! Do you hear me? I will destroy everything you care about! I will bring nothing but death and destruction to Clan Chosen, to your wife, Ailya, and not even the great Mother Askani can stop me!” They’re but whispers, echoes of repeated warnings that, close to fruition as they had ever come, never truly come to pass, and he finds they quickly fade in the presence of another - a dark shadow from the depths of Hell itself, equally displeased as all parties in what had come to pass.
“You’ve failed. Again.” His voice is as menacing as the presence he carries, tall, dark, and foreboding in all manner demonics of the darkness could be, but Stryfe still exhibits nothing but rage, nothing but contempt, nothing but petulance in the presence of Blackheart, the one who had made this all possible in the first place as soon as that trap had been laid for Nate. Without it, there would have never been the bait. Without it, Madelyne Pryor would have never been trapped in Limbo in the first place. Without it, Stryfe would have never had the opportunity to exact the revenge he was willing to trade his very soul for.
“And now, instead of fight, you do what you always do and blow up like a ballon who likes to hear himself own speak,” Blackheart pointed out, tone dripping with disappointment for a being that he had already extended his arguably good graces to - first against the mutant Warpath, one soul for another in a Hell-bound battle royal that Stryfe had ultimately lost to the demon’s boredom and the imposition of his teammates, and now, the failed promise of Dayspring’s soul, in full, for the opportunity to eradicate his opposition from the map and take over his so-believed rightful place as the Nathaniel Summers.
“I can still -”
“I’m almost sure this counts as a sacrifice - self-sacrifice for your failure,” Blackheart interjected, a taloned finger coming up to tap on his chin as he regarded the ever-darkening landscape. “Do you know what happens in this place, in this moment in time, if the Goblin Queen is successful in sacrificing her son?”
He doesn’t need to know as the cacophony of demons seems to multiply, pulling themselves from empty grounds as if suddenly able to find the means to claw through and appearing in ever-darkening skies in sharp contrast to the warring factions in the distance, the twinkling sound of magic reaching his ears as Blackheart remains still in the growing chaos. It’s obvious and it’s nowhere Stryfe wants to be.
“Hell on Earth.”