crack_van | Nor all your tears by Dark Mirage (PG-13)

Fandom: MUTANT X
Pairing: Mason Eckhart/OC, Jesse Kilmartin/Emma deLauro
Author on LJ: kincsem
Author Website: Matters Masonesque & More
Why this must be read:

Dark Mirage is known in the Mutant X fandom for her love for the character Mason Eckhart. She’s been praised over and over again for writing Mason fanfiction so convincingly, because she knows him. She knows what moves him, what makes him tick. She’s also been accused of forcing her Mason onto other fans, but I see little difference in CANON Mason and her AU Mason.

Nor All Your Tears is a wonderful, lengthy and brilliant piece, and it has everything you want when reading fanfiction. Humor, drama, good characterisation… Dark Mirage almost makes you forget it’s not canon, but a Mason based on the canon facts of the now gone faux Mutant X websites and logical thinking. Due to Dark Mirage’s background in science, all the science in this piece seems to fit. It sounds logical. She balances the well-known characters of the Mutant X universe perfectly with her original characters.

Dark Mirage writes everyone as three-dimensional human beings. Of course, there are actions in this piece that will even startle, if not scare the hell out of, die-hard Jesse/Adam/Emma fans. There’s feeling in this piece, not just platonic mention of the emotion, but you can feel it.

Nor All Your Tears is part of Dark Mirage’s ‘Impure stories’, simply put as the life of Mason Grey Eckhart. She explains it herself perfectly here

It’s been 4 years after the flooding of Sanctuary. Jesse and Emma now work for Mason and Genomex. Shalimar has 3 Martial Arts studios and Brennan is in prison, just like Adam Kane. New Mutants have escaped the Underground and started to live above grounds, and Genomex only captures the New Mutants gone awry. Mason Eckhart built St. Katherine’s, a hospital on the Genomex site, specially for curing New Mutants from deceases, and stop them from falling apart.

And then everything is falling apart.

Emma had come a long way. I liked her as soon as Mason introduced us. Emma was warm, genuine, and she had saved Mason’s life, and in a sense, my own. To her innate qualities, she had added a degree in psychology and was well along on the way to a graduate degree.

Jesse had matured into Mason’s ablest lieutenants. Mason never said as much to Jesse, but he confided to me that Jesse would have a significant role in the future operation of Genomex/GSA, possibly taking his position. Jesse’s intelligence and unique understanding as a Genomex mutant himself made him uniquely suited to the job. I doubted Jesse would ever have Mason’s singular dedication, but the main mission of Genomex no longer required such resolve and single-mindedness.

Nor All Your Tears