"The X-Advisors..."

"The X-Advisors..." Part XXXI...

Disclaimer: All is Chuck's...

Part XXXI...

Penny shaking...The world literally in jello beneath her feet...

"It's only transitory...It will pass." Dr. Francis' voice reached her. She tried to look, vaguely seeing forms. Then suddenly...

Wham!

"Ohhh." She groaned, picking herself up. In a field, a muddy one near a dirt track. A train whistle off in the distance.

She looked to see Xavier Francis, or at least, his twin, rising carefully from the field, about six feet from her.

"Where are we?"

"The more important question is, when." Francis noted. "Yes." He looked about. "Susan's deceived me. It's wrong...This isn't..."

"You..." she glared, charging at him, knocking him to the ground. "You did this! You! And that bitch!"

She found a brick on the ground and raised it... Fury in her face.

"Tell me..." she insisted.

"Yes." He nodded. "Penny, everyone you knew is dead."

She slammed the brick down on him, he trying to block...Groaning. She lifted again.

"Tell me where we are, when...And I'll make it quick!" she cried. "Cause I can bash your face, chest, every part of you all day long!"

"If you kill me...There's no chance to restore what's gone. Stein should have come with you. The coward."

"He couldn't, he didn't have enough power, he said."

Francis, bleeding heavily, but amused... "He thought you'd be more persuasive?" smile.

"He can't kill his own daughter. I guess." Cold glare, shrug at end. "Tell me quick, how? How can you restore things?"

"Time's not written yet, that gives us...You...A chance." He looked up at her. "The chance I should have had, in 1955."

"She cheated you." Penny eyed him as he tried to feel the gash her brick had left. She remaining on top of him, brick poised at the ready.

"Probably. She may have had no alternative after you appeared in the lab."

"Me..." pause. "The other me, the real me..."

"Original, for that universe...Yes, she died too." Francis nodded. "As did I and Susan and everyone in that world."

"And she cheated you..." stare, harsh laugh. "Almost makes me wanna let you live..."

"Only for a few months or a year or two if I get lucky and synthesize some drugs that don't exist." He smiled faintly. "But I wasn't lying, Penny. You can still restore what your alternate lost."

"So that's it. You were dying." She eyed him, still holding brick over his skull. "You were dying so it was ok to kill everyone to get what you wanted...Revenge on your old friend."

"In part..." he shrugged. "But mostly to save the woman I loved from at least a terrible waste."

"He was trying..." she began.

"I know what Francis Stein was 'trying' to do." Dr. Francis, coldly. "And I know who Susan is."

"He didn't betray you! She wasn't..."

"He killed Margaret. Do you think I care that he donated her some sperm? He killed her."

"And you killed everyone else...Or helped her to do it."