Second Watch: The Cave - Drew and Maeve

Posted on Mon Aug 3rd, 2026 @ 8:23am by Narrator & Maeve MacKenna & Drew Williams

6,761 words; about a 34 minute read

Mission: Episode 8: Shadows Over Avalon
Location: Avalon
Timeline: March 26, 1992

As Alaric and Gwen finished the first watch at the cave entrance, Drew and Maeve quietly took their place. The night had reached its darkest hour and with most of their teammates asleep an almost unnatural stillness settled over the campsite. Firelight flickered across the jagged stone, making the cave's mouth seem to shift and breathe with every dancing shadow. Whatever lay beyond its blackened entrance remained hidden, waiting in silence as the pair began their vigil.

Drew nodded at Maeve as she walked up. He thought about Maeve's sisters and wondered how she was doing. He was troubled by Angela’s need to be in a stasis pod to survive until a cure for her was found. He hoped Maeve was a stronger person than he was, because his fears and doubts were tearing him up inside.

Drew took a few short logs from the wood pile and placed them in the fire. He gestured to the cave and then the forest before speaking in a low voice so as not to wake the others. "You feel anything off about the cave?" He watched her with concern. He wanted to ask how she was doing, but he wasn't sure if he should. He knew how the first few hours felt when a loved one was in danger. He had to admit she was handling it better than he had.

Maeve sat beside the fire and pulled her coat tighter around herself, looking towards the cave. She let her senses settle into the stone beneath them. Water moved somewhere below. Further in, faint vibrations travelled through the rock, quick and scattered in some places, heavier in others.

“It’s still the same,” she said softly. “Movement deeper in. I can feel it when it touches the stone, but I can’t tell what’s makin’ it.” She glanced at Drew. “Whatever’s in there hasn’t come any closer. Not yet.”

Maeve went quiet again, turning Drew’s whistle slowly between her fingers. The fire popped and sent a brief scatter of sparks between them.

“I keep thinkin’ I should be able to find them,” she admitted. “I can feel everything here. Every bit of rock, every hollow place under us. But not Amelia. Not Saoirse.” Her voice caught slightly on the names. “It feels cruel, bein’ able to hear a whole bloody world and not the two people I came for.”

She looked over at Drew properly then, the hardness she usually carried nowhere near her face. “I’ve been thinkin’ about Angela too. About you havin’ to leave her in that pod and come all this way with us.” Maeve lowered her eyes to the whistle in her hands. “I’m sorry, Drew. I don’t think I ever said that.”

After a moment, she held the whistle back out to him. “I’m scared for them,” she said. “All the time. So... you don’t have to sit here actin’ like you’re the only one frightened. We can be frightened together for a bit.”

Drew sat looking into the darkness of the cave for a moment. He offered up a weak smile. "You sure you aren't psychic or something. I felt like saying the same thing to you." He looked at the whistle resting back in his hand again. He tossed it into the air a couple of times than extended it back to Maeve. "Hold on to it for now. I have the feeling if anyone is going to locate yours sisters. It's gonna be you. You can use it to signal for help."

Drew appreciated that Maeve understood how he was feeling. It meant a lot to him. "Look, if you ever need to talk about...it. Um, just let me know. Might be times I may need to as well."

Maeve gave him a tired little smile.

“Sadly not. And thank God for that. I’ve enough bother with what goes on in me own head without hearin’ everyone else’s.”

She looked at the whistle when he offered it back, then closed her fingers around it. The gesture meant more than the bit of metal itself, and for once she did not try to joke it away straight off.

“If I find my sisters, I don’t think anyone nearby will need a whistle to know,” she said quietly. Her gaze drifted towards the dark beyond the fire, jaw tightening for a moment before she looked back at him. “But I’ll keep it. Just in case.”

At his offer, Maeve hesitated. They had never been especially close, not enough for this sort of conversation, but Avalon had stripped a lot of the usual nonsense away.

“Aye,” she said at last. “All right.” She turned the whistle once between her fingers. “Might be easier talkin’ to someone who already gets the worst bit of it.”

Her eyes met his briefly, softer now.

“And same goes for you. About Angela, I mean. You don’t have to wait till you’re fallin’ apart to say somethin’.”

Drew took a deep breath and released a heavy sigh. He thought about Maeve's words for a moment. "Last few weeks, I've felt like I am seconds away from falling apart. I came back here half expecting I would get a miracle, that there was a magical cure at the school that would make Angela better." Silent tears began to slide down his face. "My decision may have prevented her death, but it's not like what I did has given her back her life."

Drew picked up a long stick and poked the fire with pent up frustration. He shook his head and sighed again. He looked at the cave and glanced over his shoulder at the forest for a moment. "This place...I can't get use of my powers. Grounds to difficult to navigate at anything more than a quiet walk." He jabbed the the stick into the fire, causing popping noises to erupt and sparks to fly.

Maeve watched him work the stick into the fire until sparks spat back at them. She reached over and caught his wrist, not hard, just enough to stop the next jab.

“Drew,” she said softly. “She’s not dead.”

The words felt too blunt once they were out, and Maeve’s face tightened. “I know it probably feels near enough the same, with her lyin’ there and you not able to talk to her. But you got her here. If you hadn’t...” She glanced down at the fire. “There mightn’t be any time left for a cure to turn up. You gave her that much. Time.”

She let go of his wrist but stayed close, shoulder nearly touching his. “That’s not nothing. Doesn’t matter if it doesn’t feel like enough.”

Her eyes followed the sparks as they climbed and vanished into the dark. “And maybe not bein’ able to tear about at a hundred miles an hour is doin’ your head in, but...” Maeve gave a small shrug. “Sometimes slow’s not the worst thing. Gives you a chance to see what’s actually there instead of just runnin’ past it.”

She looked across at him, gentler now.

“You’re still here. She’s still here. That has to count for somethin’.”

Drew pulled back the stick about to jab it in to the fire again and paused as Maeve grabbed his wrist. He sat perfectly still and listened to Maeve's words, registered her compassionate tone, looked at her kind face the fire light flickered in a way that mixed shadows and glowing that multitude her compassion and kindness tenfold. It was calming and reassuring at the same time. The tension in his body slowly released and his muscles relaxed along with the frustration, anger and feelings of helplessness.

He took a deep breath and released it slowly, feeling weeks of negative thoughts and feelings disappear in his exhale. He smiled, a genuine smile that showed appreciation. She understood what he was he was feeling, because she was feeling the same things too. He knew this momentary peace wouldn't last indefinitely, but he felt reassured Maeve would help him get through his own doubts and fears. He set the stick down and reached up to give Maeve's shoulder a squeeze. "Thank you."

Drew glanced at the cave. His gaze turned North in the direction of the castle, the castle that looked like it ate children. His gaze turned back to Maeve's, this time with a resolve and determination that hadn't been there before. He squeezed her shoulder again. "We are going to find your sisters, we are going to rescue them, get them home, along with all the others...and we are going to make sure whoever is responsible is not going to ever do this to anyone else ever again." Drew wasn't making a promise, he was making a statement of fact as if the near future was already set in stone.

Maeve looked at him for a moment, caught off guard by the certainty in his voice. Then she gave a small nod and covered the hand on her shoulder with her own.

“Aye,” she said quietly. “We are.”

She wanted to believe it the way he did. Needed to, really. Amelia and Saoirse home. Angela waking. All of them walking back through that portal together, bruised and filthy and alive. For one small second beside the fire, it didn’t feel impossible.

The howl tore through the night.

It came from somewhere beyond the forest, low at first, then rising until the sound seemed to roll through the trees and shudder under the stone beneath them. It was too deep for any wolf Maeve had ever heard, too large, carrying a weight that made the fire tremble and sent a cold pull through her stomach.

Maeve’s hand tightened over Drew’s.

“Tell me that was Varo,” she whispered, already knowing it wasn’t—because Varo was Skjoldr’s bear.

Drew's thoughts raced at super speed the instant the howl started. He had already thought about six different strategies to confront the unknown threat by the time she spoke. "That’s not Varo. Make a ditch at the edge of the tree-line and use the dirt to build a defensive berm on our side. I'm going to climb the berm and hopefully get a look at what the heck it is." He reached into his pack and pulled out a package of chem lights and what looked like a 3-ball tennis ball tube filled with steel ball bearings.

Maeve was already moving before Drew finished.

She planted both hands against the ground. The earth split along the treeline, sinking into a rough ditch while the soil and stone it displaced rolled up on their side into a waist-high berm. It came too easily here. One hard pull, and Avalon opened itself for her.

“There,” she said, breath catching. “That’ll slow somethin’ down.”

Then two yellow eyes opened between the trees.

They sat too high above the ground and too far apart, perfectly still beyond the reach of the firelight. Maeve felt no step against the earth, no scrape of claw or shift of weight. Only the watching.

“Drew?”

The voice came softly from the dark.

Angela’s voice.

“You left me in there.”

Maeve went cold.

“It’s so cold, Drew. I can’t move. I can’t wake up.” The eyes seemed to drift backwards between the trees, inviting him after them. “You said you were savin’ me. You said you’d come back.”

Maeve’s hand shot out and caught Drew’s sleeve.

“Don’t,” she whispered.

The voice trembled, hurt and frightened in exactly the way it needed to be.

“You ran off while I was still dyin’. Please, Drew. Don’t leave me alone again.”

Maeve tightened her grip, eyes fixed on the yellow glow.

“That’s not her,” she said, louder now, forcing the words between him and the forest. “It knows what you’re afraid she’d say. That’s all.”

Drew felt his blood run cold when Angela's voice called out his name. His breath caught in his chest and he took a step forward subconsciously despite knowing that the voice was not Angela. He was acting on emotion, not logic. He felt a hand grab his sleeve and Maeve’s warning. He turned to Maeve, but all his mind could comprehend were Angela's accusations of him abandoning her, her pleas to return. He looked at Maeve as she told him those eyes weren't Angela's. Tears welled in his eyes and he began to cry freely. "I know it isn't Angela, but...I have abandoned her. I...."

The yellow eyes stayed fixed on Drew, but the voice changed.

“Maeve?”

Her breath stopped.

Amelia.

It came softly from deeper among the trees, close enough to sound frightened, far enough that the dark swallowed any shape that might have made it.

“You left us once already.”

A second voice joined it, smaller and trembling.

Saoirse.

“We waited for you.”

Maeve’s grip on Drew’s sleeve went rigid.

The thing in the woods shifted without touching the ground. Branches bent somewhere above the watching eyes.

“We’re here now,” Amelia called. “Just past the trees.”

Then Saoirse, beginning to cry.

“Please, Maeve. Don’t run away again.”

Drew's tears abruptly stopped when the thing in the forest began to target Maeve. His arm she was holding came up and his hand took hold of her upper arm firmly. He turned his head from the glowing eyes to lock onto Maeve's. "Don't listen to it. Those voices aren't your sisters. That thing is just playing mind games with us."

He turned back to the glowing eyes. His voice grew harder and as menacing as he could make it. "Leave now and you won't be hurt." His free hand opened the tube and pulled out a half dozen steel ball bearings. He was not under the illusion he could probably kill what was taunting them, but Maeve was one of the, if not the, most powerful of the X-Men. He was sure she could kill this thing with a single wave of her hand.

The yellow eyes narrowed.

Then they closed.

Darkness swallowed the creature so completely that it was as though nothing had ever been watching them at all.

For several seconds, the forest said nothing.

Then Angela laughed.

It was only one small breath of sound, soft and familiar, before the voice stretched lower and deeper until something ancient spoke through it.

“Leave?”

A branch creaked somewhere high above the treeline.

“You stand beneath my boughs, little swift thing, and bid *me* leave.”

The voice moved without footfall, seeming to come first from ahead of them, then from somewhere off to their right. Maeve’s fingers tightened around Drew’s sleeve as she searched the darkness for any shape against the trees.

“I hunted here before men gave this island a king’s name. I have watched armour rust beneath the moss and proud knights sink screaming into roots. I have called children from warm beds with their mothers’ voices, and mothers from their doors with the cries of children long buried.”

Something scraped slowly along the bark overhead.

“And you promise I shall not be hurt.”

The Hollow Mother’s laughter travelled through the canopy, too deep and wide to belong inside any human chest.

“Come into the trees, then. Bring your little stones. Run as fast as you can.”

Angela’s voice returned, trembling with hurt.

“Or stay with her, Drew.”

The yellow eyes opened again, farther along the treeline than before.

“You are very good at leaving sisters behind.”

Maeve went utterly still.

Then the ground beneath them gave a low, answering growl.

Loose stones skittered across the earth. The new berm cracked along its crest, and somewhere beneath the camp a deeper tremor rolled through the soil before fading into the forest.

Maeve’s jaw tightened.

“Say that again,” she whispered.

Drew couldn't help it. He looked at Maeve and grinned. The grin remained on his face as he turned to the forest. His voice took on a different tone. Equal parts challenge and mockery. "My friend here can have the earth open, swallow you and crush the life out of you before you could blink. Pretty sure if you repeat your last comment...that's exactly what she is going to do to you. I'm going to recommend you do as she said and leave...before you really piss her off." He glanced back at Maeve with admiration.

The thing in the trees did not answer Drew’s threat at once.

Leaves stirred somewhere beyond the berm, the sound heavy enough to suggest a body moving through them. Before either of them could find it, two yellow eyes opened high among the branches to their left.

Then closed.

“Listen to you.”

Angela’s voice came from directly ahead, warm with fond amusement.

“Standing so tall because there is a stronger girl beside you.”

A branch cracked behind the camp.

Maeve turned sharply, but there was nothing there. No weight pressing into the soil. No footfall through the roots. Only darkness and trees.

“And what a mighty protector she is.”

The voice changed, older now, roughened by a smile that could be heard without being seen.

“Go on, little earth-child. Stamp your feet. Make the stones jump. Shake Avalon until every root knows you are angry.”

Something brushed the ground beyond the ditch, just enough for Maeve to feel it.

Then vanished.

A low laugh moved through the canopy, passing from one tree to another until the whole forest seemed to share it.

“You reach down and find strength beneath you, Maeve MacKenna. Men have mistaken that feeling for dominion since the first crown was hammered from stolen gold.”

The yellow eyes appeared near the forest floor.

Maeve lifted one hand.

They closed before she could strike.

“But you are not the one boasting.”

The words came from somewhere above them now.

“You threaten me with her hands.”

Angela’s voice softened around the accusation.

“Her anger. Her strength. Her earth.”

The Hollow Mother laughed quietly.

“You offer me mercy as though Avalon ought to fear what you might do.”

A tall shape passed between two distant trunks. Firelight caught the edge of something long and crooked before it became bark again.

“Poor little swift thing. Always so fierce when a woman stands between you and the dark.”

Angela spoke next, close enough to feel intimate.

“I did it first, didn’t I?”

Her voice came again from somewhere farther away.

“I was strong, so you never had to be.”

The yellow eyes opened behind Maeve.

When she turned, they were already watching from much deeper among the trees.

“And now you have found another.”

The Hollow Mother hummed, savouring it.

“Maeve catches your hand. Maeve quiets your tears. Maeve shakes the world when something hurts you.” Its laughter passed through Amelia’s voice, then Saoirse’s, then Angela’s. “And you bare your little teeth from behind her.”

The eyes disappeared.

For several breaths, there was only the fire.

Then Angela whispered from the darkness at the edge of the camp.

“What happens when Maeve closes her eyes?”

Another whisper answered from somewhere behind the trees.

“What happens when the earth-child is taken?”

The Hollow Mother’s true voice emerged from everywhere at once, deep with delighted cruelty.

“Will you threaten Avalon with her again?”

A pause.

“Or will you finally discover what remains of Drew Williams when there is no strong woman left to hide behind?”

Drew stood still as the Hollow Mother's taunts and brief amber eyes showed for a fraction of a second, disappeared opened a few seconds later in a different place. The eyes only revealed themselves for half a second, not with enough time for Maeve to perceive and react. Drew's perception and reaction time wasn't the same as Maeve's however. From his point of view, those eyes revealed the Hollow Mother's location for plenty of time to react and react multiple times if need be.

Drew's expression tightened as he stepped forward before Maeve could restrain him. He reached the top of the berm, his face a mask of rage, but it was only a mask. Drew just needed the Hollow Mother to open those eyes one more time and he could launch 6 steel ball bearings at a speed of Mach 2. A shotgun fired a swarm of 12-18 pellets with about 5% the mass of a steel ball bearing. Half a dozen ball bearings traveling at the same velocity would cause significantly more damage.

Drew had run the calculations in his head. He just needed to hurt the creature, slow it down so Maeve could finish it off or put the fear of God into it and force it to retreat. He clenched his fist tightly. He did something he didn't normally do. He spoke with conviction, defiance and profanity. "I'm not hiding behind Maeve now bitch! You think I'm a coward, someone who is going to hide! You're the one hiding! You think you're more dangerous than me you pathetically scared little shit! Then fuck around and find out!"

The Hollow Mother laughed.

Not from one place.

The sound slipped through the trees on every side of them, low and pleased, carried in the groan of trunks and the whisper of leaves. No eyes opened this time. No branch bent beneath hidden weight. The whole forest had become her mouth.

“There you are.”

Her voice stroked the anger in Drew’s words with obscene tenderness.

“I wondered how deep I would have to cut before the little swift thing showed his teeth.”

A dry scrape travelled around the clearing, circling them without ever drawing nearer. When she spoke again, Angela’s voice lingered beneath her own, threaded through every word.

“Six iron seeds clenched in your hand. Fast enough to break flesh before the cry has left it.”

The trees creaked with her amusement.

“You thought I had not seen how quickly you move?”

A child giggled somewhere beyond the ditch.

“Fear makes children run. Anger makes young men stand exactly where I want them.”

The Hollow Mother inhaled slowly through a hundred rustling branches, savouring him.

“Such a pretty rage. Sweet enough to hide the terror underneath.”

Her voice softened into Angela’s once more.

“You still need Maeve to finish it, though.”

Then Amelia whispered from their left.

“You always need someone stronger.”

Saoirse answered from their right.

“And they always leave.”

Something small came tumbling out of the darkness.

It struck the berm, bounced once, and landed beside the fire.

A child’s shoe.

Old leather, muddied and split along one side, with a little brass buckle dulled almost black by age.

The Hollow Mother’s true voice passed through the forest one final time, no louder than breath against the bark.

“The Queen Beneath the Apple Boughs has asked for the earth-child.”

A pause followed, long enough for the fire to crack between them.

“She did not say the swift one must arrive whole.”

The woods exhaled.

“Run quickly, Drew Williams.”

A child’s laughter receded into the trees.

“We shall play again.”

Drew listened to the Hollow Mother retreat into the distance. He stood there for a full minute after things had gone quiet. The sound of crickets resumed. He let out a long breath, he hadn't been aware he was holding. He slowly turned and hopped down from the berm. He walked back slowly towards Maeve as he pondered the things words. He finally reached Maeve by the fire. No look of anger or fear, just a tired, empty expression. He hugged Maeve without warning and a second later tears fell onto her shoulder as his body shook from the overwhelming emotional release.

Maeve kept her eyes on the treeline long after the laughter had faded. The child’s shoe lay beside the fire, small and filthy and far too real, while the woods settled back into an innocence they had not earned.

She watched Drew come down from the berm. Whatever she might have said disappeared when he reached her and pulled her into him.

Maeve went rigid.

Her arms stayed caught awkwardly at her sides for a second, surprise plain on her face. Then his body shook against hers and something in her softened. She wrapped one arm around him, the other settling uncertainly between his shoulders before drawing him closer.

“Ah, Drew…”

His tears warmed the shoulder of her coat. Maeve looked past him towards the silent trees, jaw tight, but she did not let go.

“Aye, all right,” she murmured. “Just stay there a minute.”

Her hand moved once over his back, clumsy but gentle.

“I won’t tell anyone.”

Drew held Maeve tight as sobs made his body tremble. His mind replayed all of what the Not Angela had said to him. It didn't matter. Some of what Not Angela had said was true. He had spent any free time in the last week not teaching or tutoring students with Doctor Reyes. He didn't understand most of what she was doing in her laboratory. He was just an extra pair of hands to prepare equipment, take notes and file paperwork as Cecilia directed. He had spent hours his first week in the Stasis Chamber talking to Angela despite knowing she couldn't answer back.

Drew had been having nightmares about Angela and the Not Angela had given a voice to those nightmares. It was slowly eating away at him and it had lead to sleepless nights. He wanted comfort, to hear words reassure him that things would be better. His sobs and shaking stopped after a minute and he finally, consciously, registered the hug. A warm, feminine presence providing comfort and compassion. He was grateful for the measure of comfort, though part of him felt he didn't deserve it. He said two words while his face was still buried in Maeve's shoulder. "Thank you."

Maeve’s hand stopped halfway across his back when he thanked her.

“Aye,” she said, a little awkwardly. “Well.”

She stayed where she was, one arm still around him while the other rested between his shoulders. The embrace had caught her completely wrong-footed, but now that Drew had settled there, she was not going to be the one to pull away first.

For a few seconds, she watched the fire over his shoulder.

“You don’t need to thank me,” she murmured. “Just... take a minute.”

Her hand gave his back one uncertain pat, as though she was still working out what people were meant to do in situations like this.

Then her eyes moved towards the child’s shoe lying beside the flames.

“And don’t listen to that thing,” Maeve added, her voice tightening. “It was only sayin’ whatever it thought would hurt.”

Drew lifted his head from Maeve's shoulder and looked at her. He realized in that moment that she understood what he was going through. What he had been going through all week. She understood something about him nobody else could. His need to save Angela. He understood her need to save her sister's. This watch had seen him open up to someone else and bond with them, then have that bond reinforced when an external threat appeared that tried to destroy their hope.

Drew caught Jennifer's sleeping form out of the corner of his eye. He realized in a millisecond that someone watching might infer something was going on between Maeve and him that didn't exist. He disengaged from Maeve with a sudden jerk and looked away towards the darkness surrounding the camp. His voice came out shaky as he focused on the darkness and not Maeve. "Um, you feeling any other vibrations in the earth that might indicate any other nearby threats?"

Maeve’s arms dropped when Drew pulled away so suddenly. She looked at him for a second, caught somewhere between confusion and mild offence, then followed the brief flick of his attention towards Jennifer.

Understanding settled in.

Maeve said nothing about it. She only rubbed at the shoulder where his face had been and crouched beside the fire, placing her palm flat against the earth.

The response came at once.

Avalon pressed against her senses from every direction. Movement deeper inside the cave. Small bodies skittering over stone, with something heavier shifting behind them. Farther out, the forest crawled with life she could not name, some of it close to the ground, some moving through the branches beyond her reach. Other disturbances pulsed faintly through distant hills and buried places, too far away to threaten the camp yet, but impossible to ignore.

Maeve grimaced and lifted her hand.

“Aye. Plenty.”

She looked towards the darkness surrounding them, irritation edging out some of the fear.

“I can feel half the bloody island now, apparently. Everything movin’ over stone or diggin’ through the ground comes knockin’ at the inside of me skull.”

Her gaze returned to the cave mouth.

“Nothing else is comin’ straight for us. The things deeper in there are still where they were, and whatever’s out in the woods is keepin’ its distance.”

Maeve sat back beside the fire, leaving a little more space between them than before.

“For the moment, anyway.”

Drew had spent a moment looking at the mouth of the cave and an even longer moment looking to the forest where the Hollow Mother had taunted them from. He took a seat and thought hard about what had just happened. He glanced at Maeve as she sat back down. Before the arrival of the Hollow Mother they had been sitting nearly shoulder to shoulder. Now, there was nearly an arms length between them. He glanced at Jennifer still sleeping and subconsciously shifted a few inches further away from Maeve. He decided that a discussion about the hug should be addressed later, when they were off the island and not in mortal danger from any number of strange creatures the stuff of nightmares were made from.

Drew’s thoughts then went back over the encounter step by step he looked at Maeve seated a meter away. He picked up the child's shoe and examined it before passing it to Maeve. "Whatever that thing was left a lot of clues. One it uses some form of telepathy. It's words were exactly what was needed to rattle both of us. It's not as invulnerable as it claims to be though. I was planning on giving it a face full of ball bearings at point blank range next time it opened its glowing eyes." He looked at the others for a moment then back to Maeve. "We also no that it considers some of us expendable like me and others it's been sent to capture alive like you."

Maeve took the shoe from him and turned it slowly in her hands. The leather had gone stiff with age, the little buckle darkened almost black.

Her eyes wandered towards Jennifer for a moment, then back to Drew.

“She wouldn’t have thought anything of it, you know,” Maeve said quietly. “Jen’s me friend too. She’d have known you were upset, that’s all.”

There was no judgement in it. Maeve looked down again before the moment could grow awkward, rubbing her thumb over the worn edge of the sole.

“Could be telepathy,” she said after a while. “Or somethin’ near enough to it.”

Her brow furrowed as she searched through half-remembered stories, old warnings passed around fires and kitchens until no one quite knew where truth ended and the frightening bits began.

“There were things in stories back home that could find what you were most afraid of. Or what you felt guilty over. They’d wear a voice you trusted and call you somewhere you shouldn’t go.” She glanced towards the trees. “Never said how they did it, mind. Stories usually skip the useful part.”

Maeve turned the shoe over once more.

“And maybe those ball bearings would’ve hurt it. It certainly seemed to notice them.” Her eyes narrowed slightly as she thought it through. “Once it worked out what you had, it stopped givin’ you anything to aim at. No eyes. No proper voice to follow. Just the whole bloody forest talkin’ at us.”

She set the shoe carefully beside the fire, far enough away that the heat would not damage it.

“As for what it said about the Queen...” Maeve hesitated. “She wants me. That bit feels true enough.”

Her gaze stayed on the shoe.

“The rest might be true as well. Or it might’ve only wanted us thinkin’ it was.” She gave a faint, uneasy shrug. “Suppose that’s the worst of creatures like that. Even after they’re gone, you’re still sittin’ here tryin’ to work out which part was the lie.”

Drew nodded. There was a lot the creature revealed. It had called him a coward, but when he stepped up and called it out it had hid. Slipped around in the dark, changing positions constantly. "The thing wanted me to believe I couldn't do anything to it. Yet when I came up with a plan it hid itself. If it truly wanted me to feel helpless against it, it would have revealed itself to prove I was helpless against it. It also knew that if I could hurt it, then you could kill it. You're easily the one of the most powerful of the X-Men. Maybe I am just being a little over confident, but I believe we scared it." He paused in thought for a moment. "Okay, maybe I just made it a tiny bit nervous, but you...you put the fear of God into it. That I have no doubt about."

Maeve kept her gaze on the fire. Drew’s certainty ought to have been reassuring, but the words sat uneasily against her ribs.

“Maybe,” she said after a moment. “You made it change what it was doin’. Soon as it saw those bearings, it stopped showin’ you its eyes. So it knew you could hurt it. Or thought you might.”

She turned the little shoe over in her hands, studying the cracked leather.

“That’s not nothing.”

Maeve’s brow furrowed as she looked towards the treeline.

“But scared?” She breathed out softly through her nose. “I don’t know, Drew. That thing sounded older than half the trees out there. It’s probably played the same game with knights and kings and God knows what else.”

Her thumb moved across the blackened buckle.

“Could’ve been tryin’ to goad you into attackin’. You got angry, and it liked that. Maybe throwin’ those bearings would’ve only given it another thing to use against you.” She gave a slight shrug. “Or maybe it had its fun and decided it was finished.”

The claim about her power made Maeve’s shoulders tighten.

“And don’t go callin’ me one of the most powerful X-Men like that’s been decided somewhere.” A crooked smile appeared, but it did not quite hold. “I can move more here than I could at home. That doesn’t mean I know what I’m doin’ with all of it.”

The firelight caught against the little brass buckle.

For an instant she remembered wet boards beneath her feet. Stone breaking. The terrible stillness afterwards.

Power and control were not the same thing. Maeve had learned that once already.

He sees what you are becoming.

Her fingers closed more tightly around the shoe.

“Power’s only much use if you trust yourself with it,” she said, quieter now. “I’m not there yet.”

Maeve placed the shoe carefully beside the fire and looked back towards the woods.

“Maybe we made it wary. I’ll take that.” Her expression darkened slightly. “But I’d rather assume it left because it chose to. It knew exactly what it was doin’ from the moment it opened those eyes.”

She glanced towards Drew.

“And it’s gone, but we’re still sittin’ here talkin’ about every word it said.”

Maeve looked back into the trees.

“Maybe that was all it wanted.”

Drew was silent as he thought about Maeve's words. He tried to remember what little he knew of Arthurian Legend. His mother and sister were the ones who loved old tales. His only experience was from being forced to watch the movie Excalibur from time to time on family move night growing up. Movies were produced to entertain people and earn money and those based on another source such as a book or books left a great deal out.

He wondered if some of the key aspects might hold true though. He turned to Maeve and seemed to struggle for a moment on whether he wanted to ask a question. "That thing, it mentioned a Queen. If this place is really Avalon, does that mean this Queen is, oh what's her name, Morgan, Morganna. Could this Queen be her? She'd be like fifteen hundred years old or something."

Maeve stared into the fire.

The name landed too neatly. Morgan. Morganna. The woman beneath half the old stories, sometimes healer, sometimes witch, sometimes queen. Since they had crossed into Avalon, the voice inside Maeve’s head had grown clearer, no longer a murmur easily mistaken for memory.

“Could be,” she said at last. “Morgan le Fay. Morganna. Depends which story you heard, and how much the person tellin’ it wanted her to be the villain.”

Her thumb moved over the blackened buckle of the shoe.

“In some, she brings Arthur here to heal him. In others, she rules the place. Some say she was trapped on Avalon, or bound to it somehow.” Maeve gave a small shrug that did not match the unease tightening her shoulders. “So if there’s a queen here, she’s the obvious guess.”

Trapped is such an ugly little word.

Maeve’s fingers stilled.

She lifted her eyes towards the trees, though nothing waited there now but darkness.

“But that’s all it is,” she added. “A guess. Could be Morgan. Could be someone usin’ the name. Could be somethin’ older that ended up in the stories because people needed a face for it.”

She set the shoe down beside the fire.

“Still... when we tell the others, say Morgan. Better they’re ready for her and we’re wrong than we keep quiet and find out the hard way.”

Drew nodded as he added another log to the fire. He looked at his watch, an old-fashioned windup that had belonged to his grandfather. There was ten minutes left until waking up the next shift. They had come here to rescue children and a SHIELD team. He glanced at the forest. Their presence wasn't a secret and he had the feeling the hunters had now become the hunted.

Maeve watched him feed the fire, then glanced towards the face of his watch.

“Ten minutes,” she said quietly. “We’ll wake them a little early.”

No one taking the next watch deserved to settle beside the flames without knowing what had stood beyond them. The voices. The eyes. The shoe. Morgan’s name, spoken carefully and without certainty.

Maeve wrapped the child’s shoe in a spare piece of cloth and set it beside the fire where it would not be mistaken for rubbish or lost beneath someone’s boot. Then she pressed her palm to the earth one final time.

The cave still shifted with small, hidden movements. Something heavier remained farther within. Beyond the berm, the forest had returned to its ordinary nocturnal stirring, but Maeve no longer trusted ordinary sounds here. Every scrape against stone seemed to hesitate when she noticed it.

She lifted her hand and looked towards the sleeping camp.

“We tell them everything,” she said. “Let someone else decide which bits matter.”

Maeve remained beside the fire while the final minutes of their watch slipped away. The woods offered no further laughter, no borrowed voices and no amber eyes.

Only the voice already inside her.

They know my name now.

Maeve’s jaw tightened.

She reached for the shoulder of whoever was due to relieve them.

RSS Feed