Title: Missing 1/? Birthday Surprise
Author: sharonmjl47
Rating: NC-17
Category: Movieverse.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and no one. Sad, isn’t it!
Feedback: Please, bad or good. If no one tells me it’s bad, I won’t know!

**********************

She ran down the stairs the instant she heard the doorbell ring, her dark black hair waving around her. Her good physical shape helping her rush the stairs two at a time. She tucked her hair behind her ears once she had the door open.

“Morning, Miss. Joint delivery for Louise and Liam D’Ancanto?”

“I’m Louise D’Ancanto.” The delivery man smiled at her, taken in by her intense hazel eyes.

“Sign here, please.” She signed and passed his clipboard back to him. Then he handed her a heavy, rectangular-shaped cardboard box with a small letter taped to the front. “Thanks, have a nice day.”

She said an absentminded thanks as she closed the door. “LIAM! WE GOT ANOTHER PRESENT!”

She jostled the parcel in her arms as she walked into the living room and set it down on the coffee table. Liam came in, followed by her aunt and uncle. Liam was roughly the same height as she was give or take an inch, 5ft 8in. His hair was black like hers, but he liked to keep it cut short. He was very broad-shouldered and muscular and had the exact same set of piercingly clear hazel eyes

“What is it?”

“I don’t know, do I? I just got it through the door. Delivery guy said it was a joint delivery for you and me.”

“Come on then, sis. Break it open.”

“There’s a letter on the top. Better read that first.” Liam sat next to her on one plush couch, while her aunt and uncle sat on the other, looking on with growing curiosity. She ripped open the letter and began to read.

"Dear Miss Louise and Mr Liam D’Ancanto.

Please find attached with this letter a box of personal effects belonging to your mother, Ms. Marie Anne D’Ancanto.

Your late mother left instructions with us that this box be kept in our office safe and delivered to you both on the day of your eighteenth birthday.”

She looked around at the shocked faces with her before she carried on.

“Within the box is a video tape marked with an ‘X’. It was her extreme wish that this video be watched before opening the suitcase (the key to which you will find in this envelope).

If there is anything I can assist you with in the future, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Regards

Philip Turner
Attorney at Law
Smith, Wright and Partners.”


She passed the letter to her aunt’s outstretched hand and tipped up the envelope. A small silver key fell out.

Louise exchanged looks with Liam, and they both dove to open the box. Inside was a small metal silver suitcase and a video box marked with an ‘X’.

Liam grabbed the video and walked over to the tv. “Liam, Louise, wait. Your mother never told us that she had done this. I don’t know if you should watch it. Maybe your uncle and I should watch it first.”

“Aunt Carla, with all due respect, if Mom hadn’t wanted us to see this, she wouldn’t have sent it.”

“But there are things, things, that we’ve never told the two of you. Marie never left us any instructions on whether or not we should tell you these things so we never have. She told us that you were to stay in school, take self-defence classes and stay safe. That - that was it. What if this tape…” Her husband put his hand gently on her arm.

“Sit down, honey. Let them watch. Marie knew what she was doing. We always trusted her judgement before, I think we should now.” She nodded as Liam hit play and sat back down on the couch, instantly holding his twin sister’s hand.

The first image was of a large double bed in a small room. They recognised it as one of the bedrooms upstairs. Marie walked out from behind the camera and sat on the end of the bed. She had on jeans and a hooded sport top, bare feet, bare hands and her tags around her neck.

She waved and smiled. “Hi. Um, ok, how to start? Be honest. Ok, there are two ways that you two could be watching this tape. One is that I’m sitting with you laughing and fending off bad jokes about the state of my hair or listening to a million ‘What are you wearing?’. Or the other option is – that - is that I’m not with you guys anymore.” She sighed. “Personally, it’s the more likely. I’m sorry. I really, really am. I’m going to tell you everything I can so that you understand, so that you know the only reason I left you, the only reason I died, was to save you, to save your future. It’s April 4th, your seventh birthday, but you’re watching this eleven years from now. Huh, that’s weird. You’re in bed, tired out. I’ve read you a story each, tucked you in, kissed you both, and told you I love you.”

She sighed again. “You see, kids, Mommy has a past and not all of it is as straightforward as, ‘Hi my name’s Marie, and I’m from ‘Ole Miss.’ I ran away from home because of my mutation, you knew that. I lived at a school in New York and got a good education, you knew that. Whatchya don’t know is that that school was a school for mutants, and it was the secret base of a mutant crime-fighting organisation called the X-Men…”

Liam hit the pause button. “Wait. Mom was an X-Men?” He glared at his aunt.

“Eleven years ago, the X-Men were a secret, rather than the active and well known group they are now. Mutants were feared and hated, not like today. I know there’s the FoH, but it’s not like it was. Mutants are just normal people now. You both went to a normal high school, with humans and mutants. When your mother was an X-Men, the government was trying to introduce a compulsory registration program. As far as they were concerned, mutants were a disease that needed to be wiped out.”

Liam still gaped at his aunt. “But mom!” Louise giggled at him.

“Come on, Liam. Let’s just watch the rest of the tape, shall we?” She took the remote out of his hand and pressed play.

“…which I was a part of once. God, there are so many things I want to tell you. In an hour, I’m meeting an old friend, and we’re setting out to try and foil a government plot to kill every single mutant on the planet with a biological virus called ‘Clemency’. My friend’s name is Remy LeBeau, a.k.a. Gambit. He’s an X-Men, or at least, he was. He fell in love with this woman from New Orleans and left Xavier’s years ago. Personally, she struck me as a bit of a gold digger and was after his family’s money, but hey, would he listen? No.” She shook her head. “Anyway. He found me about a month ago and told me what he and some of his crew had found. ‘Clemency’ is a biological virus that can target a certain genetic group. For example, let’s say you have an area that’s filled with roughly a hundred people. If someone wanted to wipe out every single person in that group with brown eyes and leave the others safe and well, you would program the virus to attack those with that specific marker gene. It’s a skin-contact virus, so it can only spread by skin-to-skin contact. Humans can carry it on their skin and spread it, but it has no effect on them. It’s aggressive with no outward signs. You feel like you have the flu, and then drop dead 12 hours after contact. It can be, let’s say, ‘tinkered’ with to single out a range of different genetic markers, the mutant gene being one of them.”

She blew out a breath and ran her hands through her hair. “The lab where this has been developed is in DC, and they’re planning on releasing it tomorrow at lunchtime. As far as we can tell, the president has no idea what’s going on and hasn’t sanctioned this. It’s like Stryker all over again! In a wide open space, like a suicide bomber, they’re sending an infected person into a crowd of lunchtime shoppers to ‘touch’ as many people as possible. Remy has a scientist friend who estimates that within an hour the possibility for infection and spread is ridiculously scary. When we went over this a few days ago, all I could think was how long would it be before it spread to the two of you. Before this got to our little neighbourhood or someone you go to school with.”

She looked away from the camera and wiped her eyes, then looked back at the camera with determination on her face. “We’re raiding the lab, destroying the virus and all the research so no one else can try this. As for the guy who’s developed it, Remy wants to dump him, bound and gagged, on the White House lawn, but we’ll see. So you see, I have to go and do this. And, you know, even if someone said to me right now, you’re not going to come back, and you’re never g… going to see your children again, I would still have to do this. I agreed with Clara, that if I didn’t come back she was to tell you it was a car accident. Lou, Liam, I am so sorry that I’ve missed so much, but I wanted the two of you to have a future. I didn’t want to watch you die. I couldn’t. You’re probably angry with me for leaving you, and I don’t blame you. I’d be angry, too, but I don’t mind, just as long as you understand why I’m doing this.” She chuckled. “Ok, that’s the hard stuff over with. Other stuff to tell you. Clara and Fred, they’re… not technically your aunt and uncle, but they may as well be. They’re the best friends I could have ever wished for when I left New York and came back to Crestwood, Meridian. Xavier’s, the School for the Gifted…” She fiddled with the white streak in her hair. “I kept in touch with a couple of them - the Professor, Scott and Jubes…”

Liam paused the video again. “She can’t be talking about THE Professor Charles Xavier and Scott Summers. She can’t? Can she?”

“Liam, just watch the damn tape!” Louise took the remote and played it.

“…but the others, I didn’t really want to stay in touch, too many risks. I mean they’re my friends, you know? I’m doing this for them as well, but the risks of being in contact with known mutants is just to dangerous and the schools ‘image’ is way too public. They might not say it, but everyone knows it’s a school full of mutants. If you have mutations I hope that you can control them and you enjoy them, but be careful. I’d love to know what they are, how special you guys are. I just hope that you don’t have to hide them like I did, I really hope the world is a better place.” She smiled. “Xavier is right: they are a gift. I hope you’re both happy, and God, I hope you’re safe.” She looked at her watch. “Right, time’s a tickin’. Last subject. Oh fuck! Sorry, you shouldn’t swear. Swearing is bad. So is smoking. Don’t ever smoke. Or sex. Sex is very, very bad! Ok, here goes nothing, your father.”

She blew out another long breath. “I expect that you’ve badgered Clara with questions. Truth is she doesn’t know anything about him because I never told her anything. To be honest I shouldn’t have gone off without telling her anything because I’ve left you no way of finding him and that… that simply isn’t fair. He’s - he’s a good man, on the whole. Has a few bad points, but then who doesn’t? You’ve never seen him, and that’s my fault. We, I mean, I, no… uh crap! We’d been together for nearly three years, living in the same room, sharing our lives. I love, I mean ‘loved’ him so much, and he loved me. But what you have to understand about him is before me, he’d always been a bit of loner. Kept himself to himself, never gave his heart away so he didn’t get hurt. Then with me, we got kinda heavy, and I asked him to marry me. What can I say? Impulsive, I know, but I got fed up with waiting for him to do it so…. I expected him to say yes, sweep me off my feet and yell to sky, but instead I got an argument. He said that he couldn’t do it, couldn’t commit like that. What if we got married, and I decided that he really was no good for me and left? What if I didn’t love him anymore? What if I got hurt and died? He said he couldn’t cope, that it was all too much, and he was better off on his own. He said that way there was less chance of him fucking something up! I can understand him being a little scared of commitment, but, idiot! He stormed out, went and got drunk.”

They watched as she fiddled with her gloves. “Unfortunately I found him at three o’clock in the morning in bed with another woman. I walked into her room to see if she hadn’t anything to help me sleep, and there he was, flat on his back with her on top in nothing but her undies. She was such a bitch about it as well, telling me it was only a matter of time before she stole him from me anyway, and all he did was slur and plead that it wasn’t what I thought. Yeah right! So I told him to Foxtrot Oscar and left.

“For the first couple of weeks, he called my cell about thirty times a day, but after I made it perfectly clear that I wanted nothing to do with him ever again and he needed to just leave me alone, he stopped calling. I’m not surprised. I said some awful things to him, things that I didn’t really mean and had no right to say, I shouldn’t have said them. I said some really cruel things. A month later, I found out I was pregnant. I met Clara and Fred around the same time, we bought the house together and they helped me with the pregnancy. I don’t know why I never told him about you. Bitterness, or the fact that seeing him with you would have made me forgive him. Jubes says that he still travels around a bit, but he still teaches though, which is good.” She wiped her eyes again. “He hurt me, and I hurt him, and in turn, I’ve hurt the two of you, because I kept away a man that, to be honest, would have been a fucking brilliant father and I am so, *so* sorry for that. I took him away from you because I was selfish and you didn’t deserve that, neither did he.

You have to understand, it wasn’t just ‘cause of my stupid wounded pride. A lot of humans hate us. The government hates us. They especially hate your father, because to them he’s more of a threat than the rest of us put together. If the word found out what they did to him, what they put him through, the pain, suffering, the loss. He’d be a symbol to whole world of just what the government is capable of doing to a person simply because they can. Trouble follows him. He can’t help it, and he doesn’t mean for it to happen, but it’s just the way it is. That kind of life isn’t safe for you. I hope you understand that, and I hope he does too. I did this because I was scared for my children. Jesus, I’m still scared for you.

I’d like you to go to Xavier’s. In the case, you’ll find an address and directions. Tell him who you are. He can help you with your mutations if you have any problems. He can also introduce you to your father. Get to know him. You deserve to and, fuck, so does he. He’ll be able to tell you about how we met, how he saved my life. He’s the only one who truly knows me, even though I haven’t seen him for seven years. But don’t be put off. He’ll be angry at first, not with you, with me, and he has every right to be.” She got up and knelt in front of the camera close to the lens. “No matter what, give him a chance, please, for me. Show Xavier this tape. He needs to know about Clemency, make sure we did everything right tonight, and it really is gone. Trust him. If no one else, trust him and Jubes. And trust Logan, trust your father. He is a good man, and… I still love him, even though he’s a jerk.” She got a little teary-eyed, but held it back. “I love you both so much. I’m sorry I did this, sorry that I kept him from you and you from him, but I did what seemed right at the time. I wanted to hide, be normal, be safe, keep you two safe, and at the time with the government the way it is, Xavier’s wasn’t safe for you. God, the government thinks that the X-Men are terrorists.

Be safe, and take care of each other. Do what you want to do, go where your heart takes you, listen to your gut, {chuckle} be happy, have adventures, *live life*. I love you, happy birthday.” She got up walked around the back of the camera and turned it off.

They all sat in stunned silence, watching a crackling screen. Louise began to cry, and Liam hugged her to him, his hazel eyes shining with tears he was determined he wouldn’t shed.

Fred held Clara’s hand and stood up. He shooed Clara out of the room and turned to the twins before he spoke. “Whatever you decide we’ll always be here for you.” They both looked up and nodded.

Louise wiped her face and pointed at the silver case. “Do you want to open it?”

“Do you?

“Hell yeah.”

“Then let’s do it.” He picked up the silver key and opened the case. It smelled a little musty, but everything inside was in perfect condition.

The first things on the top were photographs. Mostly of Marie with Kitty and Jubilee. She had written on the back who everyone was. There was one with the entire X-Men team. Liam pointed out the Professor and Scott Summers, because he had seen them on the news. Louise rattled off the names on the back of the photo, and they matched them with faces. “That’s Jubilee. Mom said to trust her.”

“Look at this one.” She handed a rectangular photo to Liam. It was a sunny day outside, she was being held from behind by a man, and he was tickling her and laughing at her. Her hair fell all over her face. Liam studied to picture. The man was tall, huge in fact, dark unruly hair and piercing hazel eyes that were happily matching the smile on his lips. He turned it over. ‘Me and Logan.’ “That’s him isn’t it? That’s our father. I mean, look at his eyes. They’re *our* eyes Liam!”

“Yeah, he looks like the kind of guy that would cheat on his girlfriend!”

“Liam, we have to give him a chance. For mom.”

“I know.” He said it quietly. “She kept him from us and that’s… crap, but we don’t know him, he could be a real bastard. ”

They continued to root through the case, finding odd bits and bobs – a letter from Jubilee and Scott. By the sounds of things, no one knew about the twins. They found a cap with an ‘X’ on it, Marie’s spare leather uniform, and a Xavier School for the Gifted sweatshirt. They found her graduation diploma and several art and photography certificates, along with her teaching certificate; she had qualified as a teacher in photography and creative animation. They found the address for Xavier marked on a map, but they didn’t need it. Everyone in the world knew where it was. There were newspaper clippings and magazine articles on the mutant ‘problem’.

The last thing that was taken out was a small jewellery box. Louise opened it and pulled out the old metal chain from inside. She held it up. They were the metal dog tags that her mother had worn everyday she had even seen her, but she had never had a chance to look at it closely. They glinted in the light. She frowned. “What kind of a name is Wolverine?”

*********END OF PART ONE

Title: Missing 2/?
Author: sharonmjl47
Rating: NC-17
Category: Movieverse.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and no one. Sad, isn’t it!
Feedback: Please, bad or good. If no one tells me it’s bad, I won’t know!

**********************

Liam pulled his battered old Sedan onto the side of the road about 300 yards from the entrance to Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. “Lou, are you sure we should do this?”

“Which part? Meeting our dad or checking to see if our mother died in vain?”

He sighed at her flippant attitude. “Believe what you want about mom, but the government came clean about the plot in the senate, and no one's been infected...”

“Yet,” she interjects. “What? You believe everything aunt Clara tells you? There's also been a lot she hasn’t *known* about this whole business, or our father.”

“I guess, but what if he hates us because she never told him? He could take that out on us.”

“Then it’s his loss. Anyway, you heard what she said. We have to give him a chance. Aren’t you even a little curious?”

He leaned his head against the car window. “You know what curiosity did!”

“Lighten up will you. I want to meet her friends, Xavier. See where she came from, what kind of life she had. Liam, I’m finding it hard to remember her. And I want to meet my father. Even if he turns out to be a miserable old bastard, and I hate him, at least I can say I know who he is.” She poked him in the side and smiled. “You know I’m right.”

“Yeah, I know.” She smiled triumphantly as he pulled back onto the road and headed for the large double gates of the most famous and prestigious school in the world.

He parked the car outside the main doors and got out. Louise got out as well, but stayed by her door. She put her hand in the pocket of her jeans and fiddled with the dog tags that were her mother’s. She had no idea why, but it made her feel better. He walked around the car to her. “You ok?”

“Yeah, just looking at it. It’s huge. All the window’s. Which was hers do you think?”

“God knows.” He sighed with nervousness. “Come on.”

They walked past some students sitting on the grass talking and up the steps to the door. It pushed open easily, and they walked in. There were students of all ages milling around. Louise looked down the large hall and could see a small desk tucked neatly in the corner next to a large oak door. A small plaque on the desk read ‘Reception’. She recognised the woman sitting behind it from one of her mother’s photographs. Her name was Kitty Pryde.

Louise pulled Liam along behind her. “Excuse me?”

“Oh hello, welcome to Xavier’s School for the Gifted. Can I help you?” Liam smirked at her tone, it was the stereotypical, I’m-here-to-help-but-how-quickly-can-I-get-rid-of-you-tone.

“Yes, we, we wanted to see Professor Xavier.”

“Um, do you have an appointment?” She glanced down at her diary spread out on the desk.

“No, but, it’s really important.”

Kitty sighed and Louise sensed that she was slightly irritated. “I can see if he is free, but I won’t make any promises. Can I take your names?”

Louise swallowed. “I’m Louise, and this is my brother, Liam D’Ancanto.” She waited for the girl to gasp and proclaim that she knew their mother, but she didn’t. She simply nodded and knocked on the office door behind her.

Louise heard a voice through the expensive wood panels. “Come.” Kitty Pryde walked inside and closed the door behind her.

Liam nudged her. “Shouldn’t she have known mom?”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, maybe she changed her name when she left.”

Kitty came out of Xavier’s office, looking a little puzzled. “Um, the Professor would be happy to see you now.” They both smiled. “You’re lucky. He normally doesn’t see people without an appointment.”

They followed her into the office. Xavier wheeled around from his desk and shook both their hands. “Good Morning. I’m Charles Xavier.” He looked behind them. “Kitty, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Yes, sir.” She left and closed the door quietly.

“Please have a seat.”

“It’s an honour to meet you, sir. We’ve heard a lot about you.” Liam’s voice was a little shaky, for as long as he could remember he’d read everything he could on this man and now finally he was in front of him.

“Really...” He wheeled himself back behind his desk and smiled. “From whom, your mother?”

Louise gasped. “You know who we are?”

“Yes, the second Kitty said your name. I’m one of the few people who know your mother’s real name...” he paused slightly, briefly skimming their minds for any signs that they were lying about who they were and when he found none he smiled. “Although I never knew about the two of you. Twins?”

“Yes, sir.”

His brow furrowed. “How old are you?”

Liam squared his shoulders a little. “Eighteen today. Look, there’s a reason why we’re here...”

“A couple of reasons, actually.” She glared at her brother. “Please, watch this.” She rose from her chair and took Marie’s video out of her bag and gave it to him. “Mom had it delivered by her attorney to us this morning. She asked us to bring it here to you.”

Xavier took the tape from her. He glided over to his bookcase, which, with the touch of hidden button, pulled apart to reveal a widescreen tv with a built-in video and DVD player. Liam looked envious of the size of the tv. Xavier pushed the cassette in and glided back to watch it.

After watching it, he turned it off and stayed in front of his desk by Liam and Louise’s chairs, both looked at him as though expecting some amazing revelation, theirs minds projecting their fears of trust and uncertainties. “I’m honoured that one of her first thoughts was for you to come to me.” He linked his hands together in his lap. “I’m very sorry you lost your mother. She was a good friend and an excellent student and an even better X-Men.”

“Personally, I’m having a little trouble imagining my mom as an X-Men!”

“Oh young man, she was exceptional. Hot-tempered and reckless at times, but in a mission situation, absolutely perfect.”

“Hot-tempered and reckless. Well, at least we know were you get it from, Lou.”

She hissed under her breath at him. “Bite me!”

Xavier chuckled. “The rest of the team will all want to meet you when they find out, especially Jubilee. She was your mother’s best friend.”

They looked at each other and nodded. “We’d like that. Um, sir what about...”

“Your father? Logan. Yes, well. This is going to come as a bit of a shock. I dare say he will be more than a little angry with your mother’s choices, but I understand her reasoning.” They nodded. “With Logan, the easiest way to do things is to just come right out and tell him. Most of us left taming the Wolverine to her.”

“Wolverine. Logan is Wolverine.” Again Louise thought about the tags in her pocket. He must have given them to her.

“Yes. I can ask him to come in now if you’d like?”

She looked at Liam. “Whatchya think?”

Liam grumbled. “May as well get it over with.” Xavier smiled at his tone of voice, exactly like his father’s.

Xavier wheeled behind his desk and picked up his phone, dialling a three-digit number quickly. “Scott, would you and Logan kindly come to my office right away. Bring Jubilee with you. Yes, thank you.” He put the phone down ands looked at them again. “Are you two alright?”

“Nervous. What if he hates us?” She rubbed her hands together feeling them getting hot, her stomach knotted and she really felt like she wanted to be sick.

Liam pulled her hair gently, like he used to when they were kids. “Then it’s his loss.” She smiled, but it faded at the knock on the door. Liam rose from his chair and stood behind Louise, putting his hands on her shoulders.

“Come.”

“You wanted to see us, sir?”

Jubilee pushed past Scott into the room. “Whatever it was, I swear I didn’t do it!” Xavier chuckled.

“Yella, that line stopped working when you were a 17-year-old brat!” The gruff voice followed her into the room. He strode in and perched on the edge of Xavier sofa.

All three of the X-Men noticed the visitors. Logan looked them up and down, and his eyes narrowed slightly, and his nostrils flared. Something familiar bugged at him, but he couldn’t place it. The girl - she looked - she looked like Marie. Dark hair, huge eyes, wrong colour, but huge. He dropped his head and decided it would be better for him to look at his feet and not to go there. He could smell fear and nervousness coming off them both and somthing about their scent still bugged him.

“Scott Summers, Jubilation Lee and Logan, I would like you to meet Liam and Louise.” Scott stepped forward and shook their hands as did Jubilee. Logan simply nodded. “They are Rogue’s children.”

Scott looked like he was about to fall over. Jubes squeaked and put her hand over her mouth excitedly, and Logan stood up, his hands on his hips. “Bull! Prove it!”

“Logan, don’t be so rude, dude!”

“No way. If she had kids, she would have said something.” He paced a little in front of the others, steaming angry. He knew he didn’t need them to prove it; they looked like Marie, smelled like her, his Marie. No, he recognised the scent. It had a slight variation that was their own, but now that it had been pointed out, he knew they were hers.

“Ok. I’ll prove it.” Louise stood up and held out her hand to him. “Give me your hand.”

“Excuse me?”

“Lou, don’t.”

“It’s fine, Liam. I said, give me your hand.” He just stared at her. “Ya want to know, don’t you? So gimmie your damn hand!” He huffed and held out his hand palm up. She took it in hers and stared into his eyes, concentrating on pushing her empathic ability and giving him the proof she thought he wanted.

~FLASH OF LIGHT~

Logan was standing on the front step of a house he didn’t recognise. A pale green car pulls into the driveway. He gasped as Marie stepped out. He wanted to run to her, but a little girl in front of him does it first, followed by a little boy. Marie hoists them into her arms, raining kisses on their happy faces.

~FLASH OFLIGHT~

He gasped and was back in Xavier office breathing heavily. He snatched his hand away from her. “Mom’s mutation pulled, I’m an empath by touch, but I can push it out as well.” She steadied herself then fished around in her pocket for the tags, letting her fingers feel the metal.

“Logan I think maybe you should sit down for a moment.” But Logan only shook off Scott’s hand.

“I can’t believe she got pregnant. She went off, and God, you two are what – 17,18? Didn’t waste must time finding someone else, did she? Jesus! No wonder she told me to get lost...” He sat down again. “Oh God, she must... she must have already had someone else when she left, so she... she was cheating! God fucking damn!”

Liam pushed in front of his sister. “Don’t talk about my mother like that! Who the hell are you do judge her?”

Logan stood up, squaring up to Liam. “And who the hell are you to get in my face, boy!”

“Logan, that’s enough. There is more to this...” Xavier tried to help, but neither man would step away.

Louise pushed on her brother’s huge chest and then faced Logan’s equally huge chest. “There was never anybody else, never, because she loved you. Never, not even one date, not one night out, ever.” She brought her hand out of her pocket and tossed the tags at him. “You want to know who we are to get in your face, Wolverine? We’re your children!”

He caught the chain high in front of his face. The metal glinted at him. It held a faint scent of Marie. He stepped back from the angry girl in front of him, suddenly realising the words that she had spat at him. “What?”

“She kept us a secret, because she thought it was the right thing to do, to keep us safe, out of the way, pretend to be normal. She left us a message, told us the truth. We only found out today about her being part of the X-Men and having a life we knew nothing about, not to mention you!”

“No, no way! She wouldn’t do that... she... you’re my kids?” Scott sat down on the couch with Jubilee, in shock. Logan ran his hands over his face and groaned.

Liam could tell that he was genuinely shocked and backed off, feeling a little sorry for him.

Logan met his eyes. They were filled with fear, of him, of rejection? He didn’t know, but he knew he needed to calm down.

Now that Logan looked properly at the two of them, he could see it - the dark hair, the eyes, the build of the boy, and the attitude of the girl. “I, ...shit!” He glanced at Xavier for help, but the bald man only smiled. “I’m sorry. I have no idea what to say!” He chuckled slightly. The whole serene situation suddenly seemed funny. “I have kids! Fuck! I have a son and... and a daughter! Shit!”

Liam took a deep breath. His mother’s voice floated into his mind about giving Logan a chance. He stuck out his hand. “Pleased to meet you, sir.”

Logan smiled despite his shock, shaking his hand, and Jubilee noticed that it was the best smile she had seen him give since Marie left. “Cut the sir crap. Liam, right?” Liam nodded.

“And I’m Louise.” She held out her hand with a brilliant smile, just like her mother’s. She was shaking slightly.

“Louise. Nice to meet you.” He had a sudden urge to hug her but held it back, fearing she might push him away.

She gestured to the tags in his hand. “She... she wore them all the time. Around her wrist mostly. Sometimes round her neck, but mostly her wrist. They were left with a box of things, photos, knickknacks, and a leather jump-suit with an ‘X’ in the centre.”

He let his old tags weigh in his hands. He remembered the day he gave them to her, the way they fit perfectly into her little gloved hand, the feel of those brown gloves, and the way the material felt against his rough fingers. {I’ll be back for this.} Of course, he hadn’t meant the tags. He’d meant her.

“Um, I... I can’t believe I have two kids. When, I mean, how old are you?”

“We’re eighteen today.”

“T...today!” The time seemed to suddenly dawn on him. “I’ve missed eighteen years of your life! Why the hell would she do this?”

“I… I think you need to watch the tape.”

He shook his head. “Tape, what tape...?”

Xavier put on the tape again, and they watched it. Jubilee smiled, so did Scott, when Marie’s face filled the screen. Logan sighed and rubbed his hand over his face.

“Hi. Um, ok, how to start. Be honest. Ok, there are two ways that you two could be watching this tape. One is that I’m sitting with you, laughing and fending off bad jokes about the state of my hair or listening to a million ‘What are you wearing?’. Or the other option is that - is that I’m not with you guys anymore.” She sighed. “Personally it’s the more likely. I’m sorry. I really, really am. I’m going to tell you everything I can, so that you understand, so that you know the only reason I left you, the only reason I died, was to save you, to save your future. It’s April 4th, your seventh birthday, but you’re watching this eleven years from now. Huh, that’s weird. You’re in bed, tired out. I’ve read you a story each, tucked you in, kissed you both and told you I love you.”

Logan couldn’t register all of the situation, watching her. Seeing the emotions play on her face. Looking at her hair and her smile, hearing her voice, it was almost too much. He would give anything to hear her voice.

She looked at her watch. “Right, times a tickin’. Last subject. Oh fuck! Sorry, you shouldn’t swear. Swearing is bad, so is smoking, don’t ever smoke. Or sex, sex is very very bad! Ok, here goes nothing, your father.”

She blew out another long breath. “I expect that you’ve badgered Clara with questions. Truth is she doesn’t know anything about him because I never told her anything. To be honest I shouldn’t have gone off without telling her anything because I’ve left you no way of finding him and that... that simply isn’t fair. He’s - he’s a good man, on the whole. Has a few bad points, but then who doesn’t? You’ve never seen him, and that’s my fault. We, I mean, I, no... uh crap! We’d been together for nearly three years, living in the same room, sharing our lives. I love, I mean ‘loved’ him so much, and he loved me...” Logan could feel the lump in his throat when she said ‘love’. She meant it. She had loved him.

“Unfortunately I found him at three o’clock in the morning in bed with another woman. I walked into her room to see if she hadn’t anything to help me sleep, and there he was, flat on his back with her on top in nothing but her undies. She was such a bitch about it as well, telling me it was only a matter of time before she stole him from me anyway, and all he did was slur and plead that it wasn’t what I thought. Yeah right! So I told him to Foxtrot Oscar and left...”


Logan turned his face away from the rest, heard the words she spoke, begging her children to give him a chance, and finally admitting that she still loved him. But he couldn’t look at her. When Scott shut off the video, and the cabinet silently whirred and moved back into a book case, he got up and stood in front of Louise and Liam.

He rubbed the back of his head. “It wasn’t like that. I didn’t cheat on your mother. I love her, and I would never have done that to her. I did take off, and I did get drunk, really, really, really drunk, and Marie did find me in bed with another woman on top of me... but... it wasn’t like that.” He glanced at Scott, who stepped forward.

“He’s telling the truth. The woman your mother found him with was my wife. Logan was extremely drunk, and she used her mutation, telekinesis, to hold... to hold him in place while she tried to... um...”

Xavier hid his amusement at Scott’s awkwardness. “I think they get the idea, Scott. I’m afraid at the time, Jean, the woman in question, made a lot of wild accusations with regards to her supposed relationship with Logan. Your mother was understandably upset and refused to listen to any reason, and she left. She made it perfectly clear that she didn’t wish to return and agreed with me that there would be no contact from any member of the team or school, except, because of the severity of mutant hatred at that time, for in an extreme emergency. Even when I did speak to her, she refused to listen or even speak about the situation. If I had known she had children, I would have forced her to listen. I am truly very sorry.”

Louise sat down in the chair again, her eyes filing with tears, but she refused to let them fall. “So, this was all a mistake, compounded by fear?”

Charles wheeled in front of her and touched her hand lightly. “Fear for one’s children is an extremely powerful thing. She so desperately wanted you to be safe, and she was right. The situation with humans and mutants at the time was more than volatile. You were in danger every day that you were out in the open, hiding was the only option she had.”

“At the time, children were at even more risk, as some were trying to stamp the problem out before it even arose. Children of known mutants were being killed, and the authorities weren’t making much of an attempt to help mutants.”

She nodded at Scott, and Liam rubbed her arm. “What about Clemency?”

***************END OF PART TWO

Title: Missing You 3/?
Author: sharonmjl47
Rating: NC-17
Category: Movieverse.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and no one. Sad, isn’t it!
Feedback: Please, bad or good. If no one tells me it’s bad, I won’t know!

**********************

Logan looked at his son and gave a bitter chuckle. “Nothing was worth it.”

Xavier sighed and then spoke to them. “Rogue and Gambit’s mission was a success, but it was kept a secret by the government, only letting a basic amount of information out to the general public, but thanks to a few contacts we managed to get full details. The Clemency virus was destroyed along with the research and the lab. Documents, evidence of certain government officials’ involvement were presented to Congress and the President. The virus’s creator, a Dr. Martin Crawler, was found dead. How or why was never discovered, and I doubt many cared. That’s where it ended, really. The government members involved were sent to prison, apart from one who committed suicide. The Mutant Registration Act was forgotten, and the President had all Civil Rights Act’s and Discrimination laws amended to included mutants, as you probably know from school it took four years, but it was done. Soon after, other world leaders followed suit, and now we have a very tolerant society.” As he finished speaking, Xavier wheeled behind his desk. “There is, of course, the Friends of Humanity, but they have been less active the last three or four years, and we hope that they are silently bowing out of the situation.”

“If the mission was a success, what happened to mom and Gambit?” Liam glanced at his sister, then at Logan, who was still looking at his feet, obviously thinking about Marie.

Scott stood up and leaned on the Professor’s desk. Logan rolled his eyes as the ‘I’m-the-fearless-leader’ look appeared on his face. “Remy/Gambit was shot, several times. His body was found in the main foyer of the facility they raided. My guess would have been that he held off as many guards as he could so that Rogue could get through to the main lab. She took out as many people as she could and set fires around the building, destroying research and equipment. But she had a complication in the lab itself and was infected with the virus before she escaped.”

“So the one thing she was trying to destroy killed her?”

Louise watched as Jubilee and Logan exchanged guilty glances, and Scott frowned and turned to Xavier. “Sir, I thought you would have….”

“No, Scott. I afraid I haven’t explained.”

“Explained what?” Louise uncrossed her slim legs in the chair and leaned forward, staring at Xavier with a gaze that matched her father’s for intensity. Liam stood right behind her, his hands on his hips waiting for Xavier to carry on.

“Your mother contracted Clemency, she was wearing a bio-hazard suit inside the main lab, but dropped several glass virals containing a concentrated form of the virus. The glass ripped her suit and the virus directly entered her bloodstream via a cut in her palm. Luckily she was able to put on another suit inside the lab stopping the spread of infection, she had a car and was able to get from Washington to here without passing on the virus.”

“Wait a second…” Liam looked around at the people in the room. “She came here?”

Xavier face remained calm. “Yes, she did. She called us for help, when she was on her way. Hank, our resident doctor, Dr. Hank McCoy, he’s a genius geneticist and biologist. She hoped that he might be able to help her, but he wasn’t able to.”

“So she died here?” Louise hoped that there was a headstone or some kind of memorial that they could visit.

“No.” All heads turned to Logan.

“Logan, I’m not sure that now is the time…”

“So when is the time, Chuck? They are her kids. Christ, they’re… my kids, and they need to know - everything… they need to know everything now. You can’t keep this from them.”

“What the hell is going on?” Louise stood up and faced Logan. She reached behind her. Liam took her hand giving it a squeeze to try and reassure her. “What do we need to know so badly?”

“Your mother, she, she’s… she’s not dead.”

“WHAT!?!” Louise’s hand flew to her mouth, muffling her gasp, and Liam sat down in the chair.

The Professor drew their attention back to him and spoke softly to them. “You have to understand, we didn’t know about the two of you. Otherwise we would have contacted your guardians immediately. Your mother’s condition…”

“She’s alive. Is… is she here? Is she all right? What…? I don’t understand!”

Xavier raised his hands to stop Liam’s questions. “She is here, she is alive.” He turned to Scott. “Would you and Jubilee go and get Hank for us? He will be able to explain the…”

Louise stepped in front of Scott and leaned on the front of the Professor’s desk. “I want to see her, right now!”

“Louise, let Dr. McCoy come and talk to you about this.”

“No, she is MY mother. I thought she was dead! God, how could you not tell us the second we walked through that door? We want to see her right now!”

Logan walked to her and took her elbow gently. She spun on him, angrily wrenching her arm away from him, but once she saw the pain in his face, she let her anger fade. “Come on, I’ll take you.” Logan put his hand up to Xavier to stop him from saying anything. “You can’t keep them away. It’s not fair. Hank can explain everything while they are with her.” Xavier only nodded. Louise nodded at Logan, and Liam rose out of his chair to go with them.

They didn’t speak again until the elevator opened to the main corridor of the lower levels. Liam stepped out first and looked around. “So this is where the whole X-Men thing happens, huh?”

“Something like that.” He stopped in front of them. “Maybe later or tomorrow or whenever your ready, do you wanna - we could, you know, talk or something.” He rubbed the back of his neck, unsure of what else to say.

Louise smiled at him, recognising the gesture as one her brother did quite a lot. “I’d like that.” She looked at her brother.

“Me too. I - I mean we, well, no me! Before I watched mom’s video, with no one ever being able to tell us anything about you, I kinda just expected you to be a bit of a bastard that took off and left her with two kids…” He shrugged. “Sorry.”

Logan laughed. “Get to know me before ya apologise, kid. I ain’t a nice guy sometimes. Even though this whole thing has thrown me more than a little, I do want to get to know you two.” They nodded, and he took a couple of steps and then stopped again, looking at Liam. “What’s your mutation?”

“Um…” Louise almost laughed as Liam scratched the back of his neck.

“What? Don’t you have one?”

She nudged him. “Show him.”

“It’s kind of weird.”

“Can’t be any more weird than mine, so go for it.”

“Um… ok.” Liam put his hands down by his side and balled his hands into fists. Logan almost smiled when three pointy bone spikes appeared out from in between his knuckles, then frowned in confusion as they grew, weaved and spiralled around his closed fists and kept on weaving and spiralling up around his forearms until the points disappeared into his elbows.

“Ok, that is weird. Don’t mean to be rude, but what do they do?”

“Just *that* really. I mean I’ve hit stuff with them, bashed my way through a wall once, so I know they are pretty strong. I can control how far up my arms they go. The farthest point is in my shoulders. Pretty useful in a fight.”

“Not that you’ve used it, *have you*!” His sister ground out.

“No! No, not that I’ve used it.” He uncurled his fingers, and the spikes retracted back into his hands, the wounds healing over instantly.

“You heal!”

“Yeah, so does she.”

“You both heal? Really?” He sighed with relief, glad he could at least pass on something to help keep them safe. “What about your senses: hearing, smell?”

“Nothing extra, just the healing. Why?”

“That’s my mutation. I heal, from virtually anything, and I have enhanced senses, smell, hearing, touch the whole lot.” He didn’t want to tell them about the metal and the claws. He figured that he could go over that when they felt a bit more comfortable with him.

“Cool!” Liam beamed at him.

Logan chuckled again. “What about you? Is it only memories that you can project?”

She smiled. He smiled back; it was just like her mother’s. “Um, no, if I touch skin to skin, I can sense what a person’s feeling, like empathy and get the gist of their intentions, but I can turn it on and off. I can also, like, push emotions out in a wave, but I have to admit I haven’t explored that too much. It’s um, kinda scary, and I don’t really like the pain it causes.”

“I get it. Come on, it’s this way.”

He walked into the main med lab, and as usual, he found Hank sitting in front of a large microscope, looking over glass slides. “Hey doc, I gotta couple of people for you to meet.”

“Mmm… one second, my friend. This slide is an excellent sample. I think I might be another step closer…”

“Hank! It’s important.”

Hank turned in his seat and looked at Logan over the rim of his glasses. “Logan, I really must… oh! Hello, my apologies.” He rose from his seat and looked at Liam and Louise, smiling at their slightly shocked faces. “I’m guessing that you haven’t seen another mutant with quite such a pronounced mutation?” They both nodded silently. Logan smirked. “That’s alright. You get used to me in the end. What can I do for you? New students?” He turned back to the desk, picked up his coffee and turned back to Logan, taking a generous mouthful.

“Hank McCoy, this is Liam and Louise. They, um, they’re Rogue’s kids.”

“Spprruuuuffff! Cough cough… excuse… cough… me! Did you say Rogue’s children? Rogue has children?” Logan nodded as Hank frantically wiped coffee off of the front of his lab coat. “Well, I must say that is a bit of a shock!” He walked to them with his hand out. “Welcome, welcome. It’s a pleasure. Rogue’s a good friend and colleague.”

They both shook his hand and couldn’t stop themselves from joining in with his infectious smile. “You really are *blue*!”

She nudged him. “Liam!”

“What? He’s friggin’ blue!”

Hank laughed. So did Logan. “Your mother’s favourite colour, or so she always told me. I must say, young lady, you do look remarkably like her. Darker hair perhaps, but your features are very similar. And you, my boy, are… are…” His eyes darted from Logan and back to Liam again. “Oh my stars! Logan, why didn’t you say anything”

“I only found out about half an hour ago, so it’s… new.”

“Well, this is extraordinary. I must say. Congratulations, Logan, and I am honoured to meet the two of you, really I am, although I am quite surprised that Rogue kept you a secret. I had no idea that…”

“Hank, they want to see her.”

Logan and Hank stared at each other for a beat or two, and then Hank nodded, frowning and looking at his feet. “Yes, I would have thought that they would want to.” He put his coffee mug back on his desk and smiled at them brightly again. “There are a couple of things I should explain before you see her, because once there I doubt anything will sink in. I don’t know how much the Professor or Logan has explained, so I will start from the beginning. Your mother contracted the Clemency virus while attempting to destroy…”

“Hank, they know all about the mission. They just need to know her condition and what to expect…” He gestured to a large circular door behind Hank. “In there.”

“Right, yes, well. The virus attacks a specific gene marker, in this case the mutant gene. Rogue contracted it by touching the virus directly, which unfortunately accelerated its effects, and she was quite weak when she arrived here. Your mother was a very smart lady and managed to bring with her some research on the virus that might help me in finding an anti-virus or at least slowing its effects. Unfortunately, there was no time to analyse the data, even though I have done so in detail since. I made her as comfortable as I possibly could, pain killers and such, and performed as many tests on her as I could in the time. Blood samples for a full count, blood culture, blood chemistry, liver function. Also X-Rays, ultrasound, MRI, skin samples, urine, saliva, hair, cardiograms, etc etc, anything I could do.”

“Then what?”

“You have to understand that your mother had literally only hours before the virus shut down all her internal organs and she died. The tests took nearly three hours, and her blood results wouldn’t have been ready for 48 hours at least. She was unconscious for the majority of them, and other times, she was incoherent and babbling from fever. I guess that’s why she never said anything about the two of you. We were going to put her on a life support machine but that wouldn’t have stopped her organs from failing, so we placed her in an H2O Stasis Chamber.”

Liam frowned. “A what?”

“It’s a large, vertical cylindrical chamber filled with water. The subject, in this case your mother, is placed within that chamber, and we chemically induce suspended animation or hibernation. Certain chemicals are added to the water, filling her lungs and this decreases the core body temperature by several degrees Celsius. Her metabolism, carbon dioxide production, and oxygen use decrease 10-fold, stopping her bodily functions, thus *suspending* her life as well as the spread of the virus.”

“She breathes the water?” Louise looked horrified, but Hank smiled reassuringly.

“Yes, of sorts. It’s a very complicated process that would, no offence, take thirty minutes to explain and a lifetime to understand. It is a little similar to a baby in the womb, this *water* works in the same way.”

Liam frowned a little. “So she’s been in a fish tank for eleven years?”

Hank chuckled, making his blue fur shake. “Hardly a *fish* tank, my boy! But yes, she has been there for the past eleven years. There are few studies in this type of life suspension. Long-term effects aren’t known, but I monitor her extremely closely, and her physical appearance is exactly the same. There is no deterioration in her body, bones, skin or muscles. Apart from the virus, she is in perfect health, and as far as her mental state of mind, it is simply as if she were asleep.”

Louise stared at the door behind Hank and his desk. “So, she’s just through there?” Her voice was quiet, and she chewed on her bottom lip.

“Yes. Would you like to go through now?”

She nodded, stepping forward, but Liam stopped her. “Wait… wait. I, um… is she, is she ever going to come out of it?”

Hank pushed his glasses slightly further up his nose and frowned. “I have been working on the virus, every day since your mother arrived. I have made progress in identifying how it was made, what was used, method, that kind of thing, and I have also been able to produce several serums that slow down its effects, the same way that doctors use anti viral drugs to help HIV suffers. Also, I have produced an anti-contagious serum to stop it spreading any further, so the threat is gone. But as yet, I haven’t found an anti-virus or vaccine. I’m close, very close. The ‘slow-down’ serums prove that I’m only a step away from finding it.” He looked around the notes and papers on his desk. “At the rate I’ve been going, another few months, maybe a year, and I could have it.” He sighed. “But you can’t put a time limit on these things, I’m afraid. After all, it’s taken eleven years to get to this point. You see, the madman that created this, and let me tell you, he *was* a madman, didn’t even consider trying to develop any kind of vaccine or counter virus. He simply made it to destroy.”

Logan moved towards the door at the back, he took a slim card out of his back pocket and slid it down a keypad slot. The pad beeped and a detached female voice spoke. “ACCESS GRANTED.”

He stood in the doorway and looked back at the faces of his new-found children. Both were pale, and both looked like they wanted to cry or run away or both. He felt for them. He remembered the first time he saw Marie in the chamber. He’d wanted to smash it, bang on the glass, scream, none of which he did. He jerked his head, and they moved slowly forward, Liam first and Louise behind holding his hand tightly. Hank followed after them, taking with him his clipboard and notes.

The room glowed blue from all around. Soft county music played quietly somewhere off to the left of them, but as they walked in, their eyes were immediately drawn to the enormous cylindrical column of water in the centre of the room.

It was at least eight feet high, five feet across and filled with perfectly clear blue water. Small delicate bubbles rose from the bottom and floated up to the top, which was sealed tight. Small circular lights fitted on the inside at the bottom illuminated the chamber, giving an angelic glow on the still and silent occupant.

Her eyes were closed, and her face was calm, arms by her sides, but carried slightly away from her body by the water. Her hair drifted around her, and the water made her white streak shine brilliantly white. The only clothes she wore were a black tank top and black shorts. She had a small tube going in her nose and heart monitor pads were on her chest, abdomen, and all other pulse points.

A large cable carried the heart monitor leads to a set of monitors and computers off to one side of the chamber. They beeped and chimed in time with the gentle rhythm of the bubbles, regulating them to keep the water temperature constant. One monitor had a virtual picture of a person, and it showed her heart, but no beat was present, she was still and silent and technically dead.

Logan walked to the chamber and ran his hand lightly over the glass, feeling its cold surface beneath his fingers the same way he had every day for the past eleven years.

Louise froze where she stood. “Oh my God!” She looked at her mother as she serenely floated in the centre of the chamber.

Hank put his large arm around Louise and rubbed her shoulder. Liam walked forward closer to the chamber, his hand hovering next to the glass. Logan could see he was shaking, but just didn’t know what to say to either of them. “Mom?”

***************END OF PART THREE

Title: Missing 4/?
Author: sharonmjl47
Rating: NC-17
Category: Movieverse.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and no one. Sad, isn’t it!
Feedback: Please, bad or good. If no one tells me it’s bad, I won’t know!

**********************

“Sorry…. I…. um… don’t touch… skin… can’t help….it.” Hank had sat Louise on his desk chair out of the chamber room and was kneeling in front of her. He leant her forward and was helping her blow slowly in and out of the paper bag. He kept having to shake his head to clear the flow of emotions and images that came from Louise whenever he accidentally touched her face to help her. “I… can’t control… it…. when….”

“I understand, my dear. There’s no harm done. Just breathe, concentrate on your breathing. In an out, in and out… that’s it.”

“Li… Liam?” Hank noticed how pale her face was. He had to keep touching her hands and face to help her with the bag because she was shaking so much. The push of emotions and images wasn’t painful, but the strength of them made it hard to concentrate. “I need… Li- Liam… He…”

“Logan will fetch him. Just keep going, in and out, in and out.”

Hank glanced towards the pale blue chamber and shook his head, no wonder neither of them had been able to cope. They hadn’t seen his mother since their seventh birthday, and then suddenly they are confronted with her seemingly lifeless body.

Glancing back top Louise he hoped that Logan would come back quickly with the boy. Normal panic attacks only lasted for around 2 to 3 minutes and h hoped that given the emotional nature of her mutation it would last too much longer.

Logan caught up with Liam at the other end of the lower levels. Liam was trying to find the elevator but couldn’t and was now standing in front of eight X-Men uniforms in glass cabinets.

“Liam, wait… you can’t get out through this end.”

Liam gestured to the cabinets. “This is why. This is why she’s stuck in a fucking tank, and she’s missed everything in her own damn life!” He hit the nearest cabinet with the palm of his hand, making the uniformed dummy inside shake slightly before settling again.

“We had no idea about Clemency until she called Hank for help, Remy got her involved. *I* had no idea what she was doing. Otherwise I would have stopped her. You have no idea how much I love that woman and what I would do, what I‘ve done, to keep her safe!”

Liam whirled on him. “So that’s why you let her go, is it? That’s why you didn’t see her for, what, seven years! If you loved her so damn much, why did you let her go? Why didn’t you try and find her, explain…”

Logan grabbed his jacket and shoved him violently against on of the cabinets. “I DID! I tried to explain, but she wouldn’t listen. She said things. She said a lot of… *bad* things, made it perfectly clear what she thought of me. I *tried* to find her after, but Xavier was the only one who knew where she was, and he wouldn’t tell me. *She* made him promise. I threatened to kill him, rip him apart, and he still wouldn’t tell me!” He let Liam go and stepped back a little, trying to calm himself down. “You’re right. It is my fault. I brought her to this place.”

Liam wiped his face, trying to hide the tears that had spilled, his anger easing along with Logan’s. “When?”

“She was sixteen. We met on the road.”

Liam sat down on the bench in front of the uniforms. “On the road?”

“She ran away from home, and I was… travelling around. We met up, one thing led to another, we ended up here.”

“So, if she was sixteen, when did you start… you know…”

“Dating her?” Liam nodded. Logan leaned against the wall, hands casually in his pockets, and chuckled. “About three minutes past midnight on her eighteenth birthday.”

Liam frowned. “She was eighteen? Why her?”

Logan shrugged. “I dunno. There were woman before her, beautiful woman like she is, but she, I don’t know, had something. She carried herself differently, a strength she always got from somewhere to just get on with it. Never complained, never wished for what she couldn’t have. She’s a special woman, beautiful and kind and just, I don’t know, *her*. She’d always find the good in people, even the ones that were trying to kill us. Don’t get me wrong, we had our problems and we argued, a lot, but we fit somehow.”

“That’s why you love her so much, ‘cause you do love her don’t you?”

Logan locked his gaze with his son’s. “Yes, yes I do love her and no, I love her so much because she’s never been afraid of me. She knows me. She knows every single moment of my life, where I’ve been, who I’ve seen, and, most importantly, what I’ve done. Absolutely everything.” He could see Liam confusion and tried to soften his tone. “Look Liam, the majority of my life I can‘t remember anyway, but the rest… well wasn‘t good until I met her. I didn‘t live very well and I wasn‘t a nice guy. I’m being honest with you because I’m common knowledge around here and I don’t want you hearing the bad stuff from someone else and getting the wrong idea. Your mother wanted me, even knowing all of that shit, and it changed me, really changed me.”

There were a few moments of silence between them before Logan sat on the bench next to him. “I know that the *tank* is a lot to take in. It’s not nice. I hate it, hate seeing her in it, but Hank won’t give up.”

Liam nodded grimly. “Do you talk to her?”

He chuckled again. “Yeah, I don’t know if she can hear or not. I bet she’s tired of listening to me gabble on about a lotta shit everyday.”

“On the tape, she said that you saved her life?”

Logan stood back up and shrugged wandering by the glass cabinets. “Yeah, kinda.”

“Well, how?”

Logan looked at him and frowned. “Um, you ever heard of Magneto?”

“Yeah, really powerful. Didn’t he die a couple of years ago?”

“Yeah, he did. He built this machine that would mutate normal humans and turn them into mutants. He put your mother in it and tried to mutate the world leaders. Machine basically killed her, and I touched her skin. She couldn’t control it back then. She took in my healing, and well, you get the rest.”

Liam nodded slightly, too awe-struck to say anything. This was his dad, a superhero, a real hero. Liam had never been in any kind of situation where he had to give his own life for another’s. He hoped that he never would be but also hoped that if he were, he would be as brave as his father obviously had been and still was.

“I’m sorry. That things… you know, with mom. We missed a lot of her too, but at least we had her for a while.”

He gave a small sigh. “I’m sorry too, I mean I understand, you know, she was right this place wasn’t anywhere to bring up two babies. What students we could we sent back to their families and those that couldn’t go anywhere we had to keep on the grounds and protect them. So I understand her I really do, but… doesn’t make the fact that I’ve missed out on my own kids any easier.”

Liam stood up in front of Logan. “We’re here now.”

He slapped him on the shoulder, a large smile on his lips. “Yeah, you are and you have no idea how pleased I am about that. When she comes out of that tank, and it is ‘when’, not ‘if’, we’ll have a few words. Knowing Marie, she’ll put me through a wall before I can open my mouth!”

Liam laughed feeling completely at ease and in awe, he suddenly saw what he’d missed out on, this ma, his father and a hero on top of all that. He consiere Logan’s words and frowned. “I doubt she’d manage to get you of the ground, let alone through a wall. You’re as big as I am!”

It was Logan’s turn to frown. “What exactly do you know about her muta…” Liam turned his head towards the med lab, felt something like panic towards his sister, like a connection or a sixth sense and his face paled. “What? What is it?”

“Lou!” He took off in a dead run towards the med lab, and Logan followed him. When they got into the med lab, Hank was still on his knees in front of Louise, trying to help her breath in and out of a paper bag. “LOU! Damn it!”

“I’ve been trying to calm her, but nothing seems to work.” Hank stood up and let Liam crouch in front of her. He put his hand on her knee and held the bag with the other. Her breathing didn’t ease, and her colour didn’t improve either.

“Hank, what the hell is wrong?”

“Panic attack, poor girl. I would say she suffers with them rather a lot, given the severity of it.”

Logan wanted to be next to her like Liam, but knew he shouldn’t push, he ran his hand over his face. He had known them less than a couple of hours and already he wanted to protect them, keep them safe, love them. He briefly hoped that they felt the same and vowed to get to know them properly. “Can’t you help her?”

Hank didn’t have a chance to answer as Liam cut in. “No, he can’t, but I can.” He turned back to his sister. “Lou? Look at me. Let it go.”

She shook her head. “Not… fair. Hurt… you. We …agreed… no more.”

Hank and Logan exchanged concerned and confused looks. “Lou, you’re gonna pass out if you don’t, and you know you get it worse when you wake up. Come on, just let it go.”

“B… but…” Liam knew that she would pass out soon. Her skin was almost translucent, her lips blue, and her breathing was if anything getting more panicked.

“Ya can’t hurt me, never have yet. Please, just do it.”

She took another few short pants and nodded. “S… so… sorry!”

Suddenly her eyes shone pure white. Liam grabbed both of her hands in his as the light from her eyes spread in a glow around her face, slowly down her neck, down her arms and into her hands. Then it engulfed Liam, spreading over him, making him gasp. He looked like he was trying to walk headlong into a strong wind that pushed him back, but he held on. Logan could sense the pain coming off of both of them as he and Hank watched dumbstruck at the sheer power they were witnessing.

As suddenly as the light had appeared, it vanished, leaving the air crackling with hot emotion. Liam stood up and leaned on Hank while he got his bearings back, breathing heavily, but calming quickly.

Louise got up and stood by his side, running her hands up and down his back. Her cheeks were rosy again, and her breathing normal. “Liam, I am so sorry. Seeing her like that it was just such a ….”

“Shock!” They said it in perfect unison and then laughed together.

“Seriously, you ok?”

He straightened up and smiled at her, then held out his hand, extending his pinkie finger only. “Marko.”

She smiled and linked her own finger with his, tugging on it a little. “Polo.”

Logan threw his hands up in the air. “OK, what the merry fuck just happened here?”

Both the twins looked at Logan and Hank. They disentangled their fingers. “I get panic attacks, and I can’t control my mutation. It builds up and up until…” She shrugged. “It does that. I… I have to have an outlet, or they just keep coming worse each time. Liam is…”

“The outlet! Funny, I could have sworn I was your brother.” She laughed at him and slapped him playfully on the arm.

Hank checked Louise’s pulse, smiled, and then immediately turned to her brother. He got a small flashlight out of his breast pocket and held Liam’s head still as he looked into the boy’s eyes, not really knowing what he expected to find or even what he was looking for. “I’m fine, really. The healing takes care of it.”

Hank harrumphed. “You heal. Why am I not surprised? Yes, you appear to be ok,” He picked up Liam’s wrist and looked at his watch to measure his pulse. “… but I have to say this cavalier attitude towards your healing factor…” Hank peered at Logan over the top of his glasses, “is rather reminiscent of someone else’s and as the years go by, increasingly annoying. You may well heal, my boy, but you’re not immune to everything.”

Louise fiddled with the hem of her jacket. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Liam smiled at her, and she smiled back. Logan watched on, marvelling again at how much she looked like her mother.

“Can I see her again? I’m calm now and…”

Hank put his huge hand on her arm. “Both of you can see her whenever you wish,. There will never be any question about that.”

She smiled at him as Logan took his swipe card got of his pocket and gave it to her. “Hank’ll take you in.” She nodded at him and followed Hank to the circular door.

Liam went to go as well, but Logan held his arm and silently asked him to wait. Once Louise and Hank were through the door, Liam turned to Logan. “What?”

“You sure you’re ok? It wasn’t just emotional pain. I could smell it on both of you, especially you.”

He shrugged. “I’m ok. She can’t help it. We’ve just, I don’t know, learnt to deal with it, I guess.”

“How long?”

“She’s had panic attacks since mom died… well, since we *thought* she died. When Lou’s mutation came out, they got worse. Used to be about once every other month, but the last year or so, it’s more like once a month, a couple sometimes. She just can’t breath like earlier, and she has to let it out or it won’t stop, and…” He rubbed the back of his knuckles, unsure whether to tell Logan about it. He hadn’t ever mentioned it to anyone before, but for some reason, he felt an instant bond and trust with him. “Couple’a times a week, she wakes up in the middle of the night shaking, like some kinda epileptic fit. Once, she was shaking so hard the room was shaking along with her. It’s… it’s all I can do to hold her still. It’s worse if she’s been stressed. She never wanted to tell anyone how we dealt with it. She doesn’t like using me like that, but if she just let it go without anything in its path, I… I don’t what it would do.”

“Does she know it hurts you that much?”

“No. And I don’t want her to. Like I said, she can’t help it.”

“Hank and probably the Professor can help her…”

“She won’t let anyone help. I’ve tried. Most of the time, she even tries to keep it from me, but I can hear her shake at night. I think she was always afraid that Clara and Fred wouldn’t understand and not want us or something.”

“Why would anyone not want you? That’s ridiculous.”

He looked at his feet and sighed. “Look, you have to understand, neither of us took moms *death* very well. We were kids, and she *left* us. We don’t have many friends, any really, and it’s, just, kinda, …people always leave. Pathetic, I know, but…”

“Not pathetic. Realistic. That’s exactly how I was when I met your mother, never letting anyone in. But this place, these people…” He chuckled. “They won’t let you get away with any of that and trust me, it’s a good thing.” Liam smiled, and Logan decided not to resist the temptation any longer - he hugged him.

Louise took her time this time and looked around the room. Its walls were covered with ‘get well soon’ cards, birthday cards, balloons. Teddies were scattered around along with notes of love and how much people missed her, all obviously from members of the team who knew she was there and by the looks of things, someone placed fresh flowers in a huge vase quiet often. She read the card. “Miss ya ‘kid. L.”

She smiled and looked at the wall behind the tank. It was white and covered with hundreds of notes scribbled on it in permanent marker pens. Most were about how much people missed her, some of thanks for what she had done, and a couple of silly jokes that were obviously private between her mother and the writer.

Walking back in front of her mother, she smiled and touched the glass. “Come back to us soon, mom. We’re here for you, and hang in there ok, just keep fighting it.” Then she finally let her tears fall.

******************END OF PART FOUR

Title: Missing 5/? Author: sharonmjl47
Rating: NC-17
Category: Movieverse.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and no one. Sad, isn’t it!
Feedback: Please, bad or good. If no one tells me it’s bad, I won’t know!

**********************

EIGHT MONTHS LATER……

“…the Neanderthal was a species of the Homo genus that inhabited Europe and parts of western Asia. The first proto-Neanderthal traits appeared in …”

Liam leaned in close to Louise and whispered. “Are you bored yet?”

“…although they did not reach extinction in Europe until 33,000 to 24,000 years ago, perhaps 15,000 years after Homo Sapiens had…”

She smothered a chuckle. “Oh, I was bored the moment she opened her mouth!” She whispered back, her arms still crossed over her chest as they stood behind the group of teenagers listening to the tour guide.

“…such as large braincase, short but robust builds, and large noses — traits selected by nature in cold climates. Their brain sizes have…”

“You agreed that we would help ‘Ro with the museum trip.”

She turned to look at him, disgust on her face. “I agreed to look out for the kids. I *did not* agree to stand and listen to a robotic tour guide that looks like Barbie with a tanning addiction.”

“…although such estimates have not been adjusted for their more robust builds. On average, Neanderthal males stood about 1.65 m tall…”

“I think she’s pretty.”

Louise rolled her eyes.

“…tools in the Middle Paleolithic is called the Mousterian Culture, after a prominent archaeological site …”

“How do you know if she’s pretty or not? Your eyes haven’t gone above her neck!” she hissed at him.

“Near the end of the time of the Neanderthals, they created the Châtelperronian tool style, considered more advanced than…”

“Jealous much!”

“…either invented the Châtelperronian themselves or borrowed elements from the incoming modern humans who are thought to have created the…”

“Of what - looking as brown as a breakfast waffle! God, I just hope she listened when the bell rang and someone shouted ‘Brown on one side, then turn over!’” Liam tried to smother his chuckle at her joke.

“Now onto ritual behaviour. Intentional burial and the inclusion of grave goods is the most typical representation of ritual…”

“No, jealous of the size of her…”

“Ok, this conversation is getting more than a little weird.”

“They’re only breasts.”

“…Croatia and Grota Guattari in Italy have all been cited as bearing cut marks made by stone tools. However, results of technological tests…”

“A subject not typically discussed with your *sister*!”

“…comparisons to contemporary butchered animal remains and recent ethnographic cases of excarnation mortuary practises have…”

“I can’t very well talk to one of the students about it now, can I!”

“They’re fifteen years old, Liam. You can guarantee a couple of them are talking about the woman’s breasts. If you’re that desperate, you can talk to Logan about them when you get home.”

“…the apparently purposefully widened base of the skull, for access to the brains, has been shown to be caused by carnivore action, with hyena tooth marks…”

“When are you gonna call him dad?”

“…fragments of bones from Krapina show marks that are similar to those seen on bones from secondary burials at a Michigan ossuary, 14th century AD, and are indicative of removing the flesh…”

She sighed and carried on watching the children in front of her, most scribbling notes while others drew pictures of the model Neanderthals in front of them. “When mom tells me I can.”

“…the marks on the bones found at Krapina are indicative of cannibalism, although whether this was for nutritional or ritual purposes cannot be determined with certainty.”

He frowned. “Why? Do you think she’ll mind?”

“…cannibalism was practised here. Cut marks are concentrated in places expected in the case of butchery, instead of defleshing. Additionally the…”

“No, I think that once the whole *other woman* situation gets explained, I don’t think she’ll mind.”

“But?”

“…treatment of the bones was similar to that of roe deer bones, assumed to be food remains, found in the same…”

“But, in her mind, he cheated on her, betrayed her and I don’t feel comfortable calling him dad and forgiving him when she should be the one to do it and can’t. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure she will, but, at the moment, she just can’t.”

“And if you would like to follow me through to the next section, we’ll be discussing the Native American: habitats, traits, traditions and…”

Liam held her arm as the group slowly started to follow the tour guide. “Do you mind that I do?”

She smiled at him and rubbed his arm. “No, I love it that you do. You calling him dad, getting so close to him, getting close to anyone, is great. It means we did the right thing. I mean, I know Clara and Fred weren’t too happy about us moving into Xavier’s, but if we’re honest, we’ve never really gotten that close to them either.”

They started to follow the group. Liam nodded and smiled. “Everyone at a distance.” They stopped again, and the tour guide stood in front of a display of tepees and Native American statues.

“It’s just safer that way.” Liam chuckled at her. “What?”

“And here we find the Native American. The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-European inhabitants of the Americas. Their…”

“Something dad said the first day we saw mom. He said that these people wouldn’t let us get away with not getting close, and that it was a good thing. He was right.”

“Yeah, he was. The last eight months we’ve been living there has been, I dunno…”

“Right.”

She smiled at him. “Yeah, right.” She watched the kids as they fidgeted with their pads and pens, trying to concentrate on the tour guide, but now getting bored as their young attention spans began to wander. “Like that’s were we should have been all along.”

“…hundreds of culturally distinct nations and tribes. According to the oral histories of many of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, they have been...”

“I get why she did it though.”

“Application of the term "Indian" originated with Columbus, who thought that he had arrived in the East Indies. This has served…”

“Yeah, me too. Doesn’t make it any easier though, does it?”

“We’re lucky, Louise. We live in the most amazing and famous school in the world. You’re taking correspondence teaching degree , and I’m doing part-time media at Purchase Uni. Our mentors are the X-Men. How frigging cool is our life?”

“…was codified in law, religion, and politics. The unitary idea of "Indians" was not originally shared by indigenous peoples, but many now embrace the identity.”

She chuckled. “Pretty frigging cool.”

“One day it will be even cooler.” They both smiled, knowing that the other was thinking of their mother.

“…world is a testament to their time and work in reshaping, taming, and cultivating the flora indigenous to the Americas. Some societies depended heavily on agriculture while…”

Louise rolled her eyes at the tour guide, coughed, and said ‘Bimbo’ at the same time. A couple of students turned to look at her while trying to hide their giggles. If the tour guide noticed, she showed no sign and carried on with her speech about the Native American. Liam put his arm around her shoulders, and she leaned on him, giggling quietly.

*********

Louise sat in the pale glow of the stasis camber, her legs stretched out on the floor, her History Teacher’s Guide in her lap partially covered by her almost full notebook and her ipod plugged into the small radio in the room.

She had been studying there for the past three hours, the soothing sound of bubbles floating to the top of the chamber to regulate the temperature, somehow mixed in with her dance music and made it easy to concentrate. She cast the chamber a glance every now and then, but its appearance never changed. Neither did the appearance of the occupant.

The chamber room door slid open, but Louise didn’t notice. She kept on scribbling notes and frowning at her textbook. Logan stood in the doorway, waiting for her to notice him. Once he realised that she was too engrossed in her books, he stepped into the room.

He ran his hand lightly over the glass of the chamber and sighed, then turned to Louise. Leaning back against the chamber, he folded his arms over his chest and watched her.

“How long have you been in here?”

She jumped, dropped her pen, and clutched her book to her chest with a yelp. “GOD! Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

He chuckled. “What ya up to?” He moved over to her and slid down the wall to sit next to her.

“Trying to write a History paper.” She put on a pompous voice. “‘How best to demonstrate the key elements of the civil war and make learning it fun’.” She sighed. “I have to write 5000 words, but so far, I’m on about 400, and my mind has now gone completely blank.”

“You could always suggest a fight re-enactment.”

She laughed. “I don’t think I could fight my way out of a paper bag.”

She watched him frown. “Can you? Fight, I mean?”

“Um, no. Aunt Clara always wanted us to go to self-defence classes, but I didn’t. Liam did. I’ve never had the need. My school and where we grew up was quite quiet, you know, considering its redneck country.”

“Would you like to?”

She raised her eyebrows at him. “Learn how to fight? Hitting people?”

He chuckled again. “There’s no need to look so horrified. Being able to protect yourself is always a good thing.”

“Well I guess, but it’s not really me, you know. I have an extremely bad attitude sometimes. I’m the first to admit it, and I don’t deal well with people in authority, but fighting? It’s just not me. I’d rather talk my way out of it, you know.”

He raised his eyebrow and chuckled. “I asked your brother if…”

“Oh, he’ll be straight in there!”

They both smiled. “Yep, he was. Um, I wouldn’t be the one teaching you if that makes any difference.”

“Why would that make a difference?”

“I don’t know. In case you felt uncomfortable with it being me.” He looked straight ahead at his outstretched legs.

“Logan, I don’t have a problem with you.”

He nodded. “Ok.”

She sighed, realising what it was about. “Is this about calling you dad?”

He shrugged and frowned. She knew full well that that is what it as all about. Liam called him dad, and she didn’t. They had never discussed it before, but she had a feeling they were about to, and she was glad. She didn’t want him to feel bad about it, because it wasn’t anything bad.

“Give me your hand.” She held out hers, waiting for him to put his in it. He did, and she held it in her lap. “Let out your claws.”

He pulled his hand away, but she stopped him. “No, Louise. I could cut you.”

“And I would heal. Please, for me.” She watched him sigh and knew she had him with that.

He held his hand away from her and let his claw slid out very slowly. She watched as they broke the skin and eased out. The first time he had showed them to her and Liam and explained about what had happened to him, they had both been more than a little shocked, but as far as they were concerned, it was just another part of their father.

She reached for his hand, and he pulled back a little. Frowning at him, she held his wrist and turned his hand over, placing it gently in her lap, the dull edges of his claws on her legs.

“Look, me and Liam… our mother *died* when we were seven, so we grew up, really quick and we grew up not trusting most people, but I… I trust you.” She watched him smile as her words sunk in. “I just think that when I call you dad for the first time, mom should be there too.” She looked at his hand and shrugged, unable to meet his gaze. “Like it would have been if we’d have lived here from start. You both would have seen stuff together, first steps, first words, everything.”

He took his hand away and put his claws back in. Then he stroked her dark hair as small tears began to slip down her cheeks. Logan hated to see her so upset and pulled her to him for a hug. She went easily, pressing her face into his shoulder while he stroked her hair slowly.

“She’ll come out of this.” Hearing his words, Louise wrapped her arms around his waist and began to sob in earnest.

Logan looked up as the door opened, and Scott walked in. Scott put his hands up and mouthed ‘Sorry, it’s important.’ Logan nodded and untangled his daughter. She wiped her eyes as he pulled away, and she smiled briefly at Scott, then went about picking up her book and putting them back in her backpack.

Logan joined him in the corridor. “What’s up?”

“We have a mutant in Xavier’s office. She...”

“The whole place is full of mutants, Scott, or hadn’t you noticed?” He chuckled.

“This is serious. She, uh, she had been taken prisoner for about a week she thinks, but has managed to escape. She needs some minor medical attention, so Hank’s up there with her.”

“Where was she?”

“Ohio, some abandoned chemical plant. The Professor’s checked it out. It’s all genuine, so he wants us to take the jet for a look around once he’s finished talking to her. The others are teaching, and Remy, Bobby and Jubilee went on a pick-up this morning, so that leaves you and me. Apparently, it’s quite a large facility so we’ll need more. Xavier suggested we take Liam and Louise with us.”

“Liam yeah, not Louise. I don’t think it’s her thing.”

“We need the manpower on this one. Two or three of us aren’t going to be able to search safely, especially if we split up to cover more ground. Ask her.”

“I don’t know.”

Scott smirked. “Daddy’s little girl, huh? It’s only a look-around Logan.”

Logan harrumphed. “Fine, I’ll ask her, but if she doesn’t want to go, then she doesn’t go.”

“Ok.” Scott didn’t go anywhere or do anything, and Logan noticed how he looked slightly guilty. “Was there anything else?”

“Um, yeah. This woman, it’s, um, it’s Jean.”

“No way! She needs medical attention? Tell her to find a vet! I don’t want that bitch anywhere near this place!”

“Logan, I know, but…”

“But nothing, Scott. She ruined my life. She ruined *your* life. How can you stand there and say you’re going to help her?” He paced in the corridor, unable to even comprehend seeing Jean again.

“She thinks that they wanted her for information on the Mansion, tortured for it. By the sounds of it, someone could have been planning an attack on us.” He shrugged. “She’s pretty beat up, Logan. We need to know what she knows. She’s too weak to keep a hold on any of her mental blocks. The Professor has everything under control. God, you think I want to see her again? I don’t!”

Logan shook his head. “She never finds out about Marie. She *never* goes in that room, and she never goes anywhere near my kids. You got that, Scooter?”

“Yes, I got it.”

“Chuck better keep her in check, or I’ll… I’ll…”

“I know, Logan. Get in line.”

***********************END OF PART FIVE

Title: Missing You 6/?
Author: sharonmjl47
Rating: NC-17
Category: Movieverse.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and no one. Sad, isn’t it!
Feedback: Please, bad or good. If no one tells me it’s bad, I won’t know!

**********************

Liam did the zip up to his throat and tried to stretch the leather around his shoulders. It was new and wouldn’t give. As he walked down the corridor to the jet he stuck his forefinger in between the collar and his neck and tugged on it with a pained face.

“Little tight?” Liam turned to see Scott catching up.

“Yeah. I could have sworn I was roughly the same size as dad.”

Scott almost laughed. “That’s not your dad’s spare suit.” He went on as Liam frowned and craned his neck in an eerily familar gesture. “Your dad doesn’t have a spare suit. He has a new one nearly every time, because he wrecks them, burns them, shreds them or just generally destroys them.”

“So whose is this then? Pete’s?”

Scott opened the hanger door. “Pete’s doesn’t have arms - it’s mine.” His footsteps echoed as he walked to the jet, Liam staring at him in disbelief.

“Well no wonder it doesn’t fit. I’m like - way bigger than you!”

There was a slightly aggravated look on Scott’s face that Liam found hard to read. It seemed to have nothing to do with his remark… Logan, had he seen it, would have found it familiar. He slapped his son on the back as he walked up. “What ya hollering at him for?”

“I’m wearing his suit and its like *five* sizes too small, I can barely breathe!” They began to walk towards the jet.

Logan chuckled and was about to say something when Louise ran past him tugging on her gloves. “What is it with guys and the size of everything.”

“It’s cutting off the goddamn blood supply to my balls!” Logan, Louise, Scott and Liam all laughed.

Then Logan noticed Louise and just stared at her. “You’re sure about this?”

“Yeah.” She pulled her hair off her face and bean to tie it in a tight bun at the back of her head.

He slowly looked her over, she was so much like Marie, the way she moved, pulling her hair up with graceful movements. It was almost too much, he had spent everyday for the past eleven years looking at Marie, lifeless and pale and then all off a sudden he saw her, in front of him and full of life, only this wasn’t Marie. “Because if you don’t want to go then I’m fine with that. Like I said earlier you don’t want to go, you don’t go.”

Louise looked down at her hands and then her suit, sighing in realisation. “I look like her don’t I?” He nodded. “Well…” she shrugged. “Get over it!”

She walked up the steps into the jet as Logan broke into a laugh. “Got that same stubborn ass’d attitude as well!”

During the flight Logan rolled his eyes as Scott barraged the twins with procedures and the do’s and don’ts for a mission, trying to squeeze two years of training into the short flight. After an hour Logan told him to shut up as he could sense that both the twins were nervous enough.

When the jet was landed and was silent, Scott pulled up a holographic map of the chemical plant, deciding who was going where they headed out and split up into two teams. Scott and Logan both agreed it would be safer if Liam and Louise stayed outside the main facility and checked the out buildings, while Scott and Logan went into the main building.

Scott and Logan had scanned the area using the jets equipment and discovered that somewhere within the facility was a jamming signal that blocked their usual hi-tech communication devises. They had to use walkie talkie’s, but only having two on board, Scott had one and Louise had the other. Louise and Liam seemed relaxed as they headed off to the out buildings.

*CRACKLE* “You two ok?” *CRACKLE*

*CRACKLE* “Yes, we’re fine. It’s been two seconds, I can still see you for heaven’s sake, what trouble could we have possibly got into in that time?” *CRACKLE*

*CRACKLE* “Sorry.” *CRACKLE* Scott wandered into the main doors as Logan chuckled at him closely behind.

“And I thought *I* was paranoid.”

“I heard that!”

“You were meant to, One-Eye!”

Louise blocked the door to the building open with an old oil drum as the outside spotlights flooded in. There was a jeep at one end - most of the engine had been stripped out on a nearby bench and sawdust was all over the floor with patches of oil drips. There were several crates with dried or tinned food in them.

*CRACKLE* “There are a load of food supplies, I guess they were planning on staying a while.” *CRACKLE*

*CRACKLE* “Yeah, we’ve found sleeping quarters for around eight people so far. Keep us informed.” *CRACKLE*

*CRACKLE* “Will do.” *CRACKLE*

Liam was looking over the engine of the jeep. “Hey, throw me the walkie, I want to tell dad about this engine.”

“Why?” She stared at him.

“It’s the same model as Pete’s, I could snag some parts. Throw me the walkie.”

“Boys and their toys.” She unhooked the walkie talkie from her belt and threw it to him underarm. He missed and it hit the floor with a loud metallic clank.

Frowning he looked at Louise. “Isn’t this building wooden?”

“Yeah.”

Liam knelt down and scraped some sawdust out of the way to reveal a huge metal hatch. Louise helped him and after about five minutes of sweeping sawdust with their hands they discovered that the hatch was the width of the building. It had a large chain that was connected to a small winch on the back wall.

“Lets open it.”

“I dunno, we shouldn’t…”

“Oh come on!” She ignored her brother’s worried look and pushed the green button. After much clanking and whirring the hatch pulled back, opening into a large sloping tunnel that could easily fit a large car or jeep.

They stood at the entrance staring at it and then each other. Liam could practically hear her mind deciding that they should go down it before she even said anything.

“We need to call dad and Scott first.”

“Ok, you call them and I’ll be going this way.” She pointed down the tunnel and started to walk down it.

Liam huffed and rolled his eyes. “See, impulsive and reckless!” He ran to get the walkie talkie and then stood at the entrance. “Lou, wait!”

“Catch me if you can!” Her voice echoed back to him through the wide tunnel.

He ran after her and grabbed her arm. “We’re supposed to stay together.”

“Stop fussing already. They wanted us to look around, so we are.”

He shook his head as they walked from the gloom of the tunnel into another huge underground room. It looked like the large foyer of a hospital or community centre, corridors leading off to different places, all sign- posted with colour-coded lines on the floor to tell you the way. Painted on the floor was a large symbol reading ‘FoH: A Pure Life For All Humans’. Dim failing emergency lights lit the room and corridors, making it look creepy.

Louise walked over to what she assumed was the ‘reception’ desk,

*CRACKLE* “Scott, I… mean Cyclops?” *CRACKLE*

She smirked at him. “You just love that ‘Ooh we’re on a mission’ thing don’t you?”

“So you don’t like it?” She gave a nonchalant smile and shrugged. But she did, she never thought she would, she practically guaranteed that she wouldn’t, but she honestly did find it exciting and exhilarating.

Scott and Logan had split up to look around the chemical plant and had just joined back up, both scratching their heads.

“I don’t get it, there’s fuck all here.”

“I know. Two rooms that would sleep about eight people each and that’s it. This faulty is huge; you can’t tell me that there were only 16 people running it. And where are all the labs, holding cells, papers, documents and medical research offices that Jean told the Professor about?”

“There has to be more here.” He put his hands on his hips and shook his head, then took the walkie from Scott.

“Yes, but where, Logan?”

Logan shrugged as he put the walkie talkie to his mouth, he was about to speak when it crackled at him.

*CRACKLE* “Scott, I… mean Cyclops?” *CRACKLE*

Logan chuckled at how Liam was slowly getting into the whole mission situation. *CRACKLE* “Hey it’s me. Found anything?” *CRACKLE*

*CRACKLE* “Yeah, some kind of underground hospital. It’s definitely the FoH by the big logo on the floor.” *CRACKLE*

Scott and Logan exchanged knowing looks. *CRACKLE* “We’ll be right there. Stay in the same position, don’t wander any deeper without us.” *CRACKLE*

*CRACKLE* “Ok.” *CRACKLE*

Louise was standing in front of Liam virtually bouncing on the balls of her feet. “So which way do we go first?”

He shook the walkie talkie at her. “He said we have to stay here.”

“Yeah, I know, but…” She turned on the spot and pointed to the far corridor. “I vote this way.” And she jogged in that direction.

“Lou!” He watched her disappear down the corridor and looked back at the entrance, torn on whether to follow her or wait for his father and Scott. “Shit, he’s gonna kill us.” He ran off towards the corridor she had taken. “Lou, wait!”

He found her hunting through a desk, opening drawers and rummaging through the contents. Once she had finished she moved on to the medical cabinets lining the walls. “You going to stand there and watch or help?”

“We should go back and wait for the others.”

“They’ll find us. There’s no one and nothing here.” She shrugged and turned back to the cabinets.

He huffed and started looking around himself. “They must have taken everything when they cleared out. There’s no records, computers, data files, nothing.”

“I know, the only things they left were stuff that was easy to replace, like small surgical equipment and stuff like that.”

They left the cabinets and moved through an adjoining door into what looked like Hank’s med lab. Again all the major equipment like monitors, computers and large life support machines had been taken and easily replaced things were left where they lay.

The cabinets were open as if things had been taken out in a hurry. A large metal syringe lay on the floor and she bent to pick it up, turning it over in her hands - it was huge and she couldn’t imagine what kind of animal would need to have this used on them.

Looking around close to where it had been dropped she saw an open drugs box. It only had one large vial left in it, the others broken or taken. She stood up with the vial in her hands. “What the hell is tileta…tiletamine-zolazepam-xylazine-bu.. butorphanol?”

“Do I look like a chemist?” He walked over to her to look at the label, he raised an eyebrow. “It’s a large exotic animal tranquilliser.”

“If that means that any second now we’re going to come face to face with an elephant, I’m leaving!” She said laughing.

“No Lou. It says its for big cats, you know tigers and lions.”

“Oh, ‘cause that would be so much better to run into in a dark, dimly lit corridor!”

“*You* wanted to wander off and look around.”

“Come on Mr-Whiney-Pants, there’s nothing else in here.”

They left the syringe and tranquillisers on the floor where they found them and went back into the corridor and further down it. The lights flickered slightly, but thankfully stayed on, even though it was only dim light.

The corridor came to a set of spiral stairs leading down. Louise began descending them before Liam could even open his mouth to stop her. A dark, narrow passage met them at the bottom, with dank cells opening on either side. Louise stopped after a few paces and turned back to Liam.

Her voice was a whisper. “What’s that smell?”

“I think it’s… you know… dead people!” He whispered, then frowned not knowing why. She took another step forward, but he held her arm to stop her. “We shouldn’t…”

She whispered back. “What if there’s someone left?”

“Not without dad and Scott.”

“Ok, call them.”

He nodded and raised the walkie talkie. *CRACKLE* “Dad, Scott?” *CRACKLE*

*CRACKLE* “…ere…. you… ver…” *CRACKLE*

“Shit, we must be too deep under. We’ll have to go back, Lou.” While he had been talking he hadn’t noticed that she had moved further down the corridor looking in and out of the cells. “Lou?”

She had stopped near the end cell her face close to the bars. “Eww! There’s a body in this one. Oh my God that’s just *so* gross!” Even though her revolution was obvious she still kept her voice quiet. “By …by the look of all the flies and… yuk… maggots, they’ve been dead for a …long time.” She put her hand over her mouth and nose to cover the smell and stared at the dead and decaying body at the back of the cell. “Why, why do people do this? It’s not right, it’s not fair.”

He walked towards her, the smell getting brought to him by a slight breeze in the corridor and getting more pungent the closer he got. He could hear the rustling of the maggots as they burrowed into the dead meat of the body. But before he could get anywhere near Louise, the bars of the neighbouring cell burst open and the small corridor echoed with a loud growl, showering dirt and dust and metal all over them. Both Liam and Louise ducked and rolled to the floor. Liam was closer to the spiral staircase and Louise had fallen back against the far wall out of the way.

A huge figure stood crouched on its hunches assessing them both. Shaggy hair was all over it like it hadn’t been cut in years, clothes hanging off in shreds and tatters - Liam thought that he looked like one of the Neanderthal models they had seen at the museum.

He stood up to full height and growled, pure black eyes full of menace stared back at Louise. His hands uncurled to reveal long yellowed claws, his lips parted slightly to reveal sharp canines and he let out a snarl like some big cat. Louise flinched backwards, but the wall stopped her from going any further.

“LOU!”

The huge man turned to Liam, his hair fanning out around him. “GET DAD!” Liam took half a step forward not knowing what to do - if he left Louise with the thing hulking over her, he could only imagine what would happen, but they needed help. “LIAM, RUN!”

And he did, turned and ran up the spiral stairs as quickly as he could, his legs and arms pumping wildly in the restrictive leather and he kept running and shouting for his father, his mind full of his sister and her fate.

He caught up with Logan ad Scott in the main foyer. He was out of breath and trying to talk, but not making much sense. “Louise, she’s, a big cat thing…”

“Ok, slow down.” Logan stood him up straight so he could breathe better.

“Louise and me, we got ambushed by some weird cat like man, it’s got her cornered.”

“Shit! Which way?”

“This way.” They all ran back the way Liam had come, pushing themselves just as hard.

“Why the hell didn’t you wait for us like I told you to?”

“Huh, have you ever tried to stop her from doing something? Its impossible!”

The beast in front of Louise made to run after Liam, but she jumped to her feet and her sudden movement brought his attention back to her. She swallowed and flattened herself against the wall. He was much bigger than her brother or father and she thought that he should be in Pro-Wrestling, not locked in a cage in a weird dark corridor.

He moved in front of her and breathed heavily, but he made no attempt to touch her or hurt her. She stepped slowly to the side and tried to edge round him, but he growled.

“O-kay, get a grip girl, you’re the mouthy one, you’re the one who’s not afraid of anything, you’re… oh crap!” She moved back to the wall again. “Your going to rip me limb from limb aren’t you?”

He growled and grabbed her by the arm and hauled her in front of her so his face was close to his. She watched his nostrils flare as he brought his hand up to try and touch her face. She panicked and did the only thing she could think of: kneed him in the groin and ran for the stairs as he doubled over. As she reached the top and dived into the med room that her and Liam had looked around before, she could hear him snarling as he ran behind her, his heavy steps pounding the floor.

She locked the steel door and pushed a metal table in front of it, hoping it would hold, then started to look around for the tranquilliser they had seen. She fond the huge syringe on the floor, now realising what it had been used for in the first place. Louise could hear him begin to snarl and pound on the door. She scrambled to get the vial of tranquilliser out of the box, she couldn’t and had to rip her gloves off with her teeth to finally get a hold of the vial.

“Why no Logan, I don’t want self defence lessons! Why on *earth* would I want any! Stupid stupid stupid girl! Why can’t you ever just wait and do what you’re told Louise!! Scott’s anal for a reason!!” She tried to get the needle into the end for the vial bottle, but it wouldn’t fit, then noticed that you had to put the vial into the other end of the syringe and it worked by itself like a big dart.

She spun round and dropped the syringe as he exploded through the door with an immense roar. She watched the syringe roll away from her as he backed her against the far wall, getting close to her face again. Louise put out her hands to try and stop him, they were on his chest and where his shirt was ripped open and hanging off they made contact with his skin.

In her fearful and panicked state she couldn’t control her mutation and his confused emotions flooded her. White light engulfed them as she realised that he didn’t actually want to hurt her, he too was confused, scared and... alone. He had no idea where he was or, more importantly, who he was, how to speak or communicate fully, nothing about the world outside of his cell, nothing.

Their eyes met and she could feel all of him. His power and dominance, his savagery born out of years of abuse and torture, his need for freedom, a purpose, but mostly she could feel that he so desperately didn’t want to be alone anymore. He wanted human kindness, softness of skin, that’s why he had wanted to touch her, he wanted comfort instead of beatings and torture and being constantly left drugged in the darkness of his cold cell.

She calmed and tried to shut off her mutation, but she couldn’t, she had opened the connection with him and now didn’t want to shut it off as the sheer scale of his emotions making her judgement so clouded. His power flooded her like a drug, making her dizzy with adrenaline and testosterone, her breathing got heavy and she could feel sweat begin to pool in the centre of her back. But she did, she did shut it off and he sunk to his knees in front of her.

Kneeling as well she held his face his her hands, meeting his black eyes head on. “It’s over now.”

His expression seemed to soften and she briefly thought that under all the hair he was probably quite handsome. But the moment didn’t last long as his nostrils flared again and he rose quickly to his feet, shoving her behind him roughly, holding her in place with his arm.

Logan, Liam and Scott ran into the room and spread out in from of Louise’s would-be protector. “Holy shit! Creed!” Scott raised his hand instantly to his visor.

“Get away from her bub! We have a score to settle.” Logan spread his arms and let his claws fly out with a familiar metallic ring.

Louise jumped at the sound; she’d seen his claws go in and out, but never quite like this. She was inadvertently touching Creed’s skin again and could feel that he had no idea who they were, he only wanted to do protect the girl. The girl. HIS girl on some basic level.

She gasped and let go of his arm, shaking free and standing in front of him, in between him and her father, Scott and Liam who had let his spirals out, ready for a fight.

“Wait! He doesn’t want to hurt anyone. Please just…”

“Louise, darlin’, get the fuck out of the way, you don’t know who you’re dealing with. He’s an old friend of ours. One I thought we put in the ground a long time ago.”

Victor Creed sensed the girl’s fear of him getting hurt and quickly wrapped his arm around her waist pulling her against him and letting the intruding men see his claws, he growled - hoping they would leave them alone.

“Let go ‘a her you bastard or I’ll…”

“Dad!” His eyes snapped to his daughter’s. She knew that calling him dad would make him pay attention to her and not Creed. “I trust you, so trust me, please, he doesn’t know where he is, who he is, how to speak, anything. He has no clue, he’s been abused and tortured and he needs help. Please. Back off.”

“Louise, this is completely ridiculous. He’s dangerous, what the hell do you want us to do? Take him home?”

She stared at Scott for a beat or two. “Well…”


***********END OF PART SIX

Title: Missing You 7/?
Author: sharonmjl47
Rating: NC-17
Category: Movieverse.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and no one. Sad, isn’t it!
Feedback: Please, bad or good. If no one tells me it’s bad, I won’t know!

**********************

Logan had watched as Scott had agreed to take Victor Creed back to the mansion. He had watched while Louise had constantly touched Creed using her mutation to re-assure him and guide him to the jet, all the flight home and then into the lower levers where he was now with Hank. Creed hadn’t wanted to let her leave him, but after a little bit of gentle talk from Louise he had stayed and nervously let Hank tend to his hair and clothes as he had no visible injuries.

Logan knew that Louise and Liam were showering and he wanted a very serious talk with Xavier and get Creed put out of the way. He charged into the Professor’s office only to find Jean sitting in front of his desk. He looked her over for the first time in eighteen years - she had aged well and was still a beautiful woman. Only now a large partially healed bruise marred her face around her left eye and a cut ran across the corner of her mouth. She also had some small burns down her neck, obviously from a cigarette.

She gave him a tight smile. “Logan.”

He didn’t acknowledge her, just set his gaze on Xavier. “I want him out of here…” he pointed to Jean. “Along with her.”

“Logan, Jean has provided us with detailed information. We don’t know how the FoH set up this facility, but they obviously fled after Jean’s escape knowing she would inform us of their plans. We need to investigate the facility more and try to figure out what their plans for Sabertooth were.”

“Who the hell cares?”

“I care.” He turned to find Louise in the doorway. He had been so consumed in his anger he hadn’t noticed her come in. Liam was behind her and so was Scott. The twins filtered into the office. Scott stood behind Xavier and ignored Jean completely, not even sparing her a glance, which irritated her enormously.

Logan looked at his feet, then at Jean, then jerked his head towards the door. “Ya mind, *team* business.”

She stood up gracefully and gave him a hateful look. “I was part of the team once.”

Logan got close to her face. “Yeah, till ya fucked it all up! Get out!”

Jean looked at the professor, awaiting his instructions. “I’ll speak to you later, but if you wouldn’t mind, we have things that need to be discussed.” She nodded, glared at Scott and left quietly.

“Chuck, I want them both out!”

Liam pointed towards the door. “Who was that?”

Scott cleared his throat. “No one you need to worry about at the moment.”

Louise moved forward. “You can’t throw him out. He needs help.”

“He’s an animal, a nasty bastard who’s killed a lot of people, kid, and he doesn’t deserve help.”

“O’ what like you, you mean.”

His eyebrows shot up. “*I* am nothing like him!”

“What about all those years ago when you woke up in the middle of nowhere? Didn’t know who you were, where you’d been, what had been done to you? It’s not that much different, Logan.”

He noticed that she had gone back to calling him Logan and it hurt him a little. “It was different, I…”

“How, how was it different? You told us yourself, how you lived, how you killed because in the beginning you didn’t know the difference and then how you killed even after you did know the difference, simply because you could. Travelling around beating up dumb rednecks too stupid to realise that they were practically throwing their money at you. You told me that you got a second chance when you met mom and you grabbed it with both hands. Doesn’t he deserve a second chance?”

“No.”

“Why?” Logan put his hands on his head and turned away from her in exasperation. She looked at Xavier for help. “Why?”

“It is difficult with him. He was a member Magneto’s Brotherhood. They were basically mutant terrorists, the exact opposite of the X-Men and what we stood for and still stand for today. Sabertooth killed a lot of people for Magneto, he was part of the plot to use your mother on the Statue of Liberty. I can understand why Logan is reluctant, but in this case I have to agree with you Louise. I think that given his reduced mental state it would nothing short of cruel to hand him over to the authorities.”

“You’ve *gotta* be kidding me!”

“Logan, you have to admit that if he doesn’t know who he is or what he has done, it’s not really fare.”

“You too Summers? Just great.” He shook his head, his hands resting on his hips.

“What would mom say?”

He sighed. “Don’t bring her into this.”

“Why not? You *know* she would agree with me!”

“Fine, ok, just fucking fine! But she doesn’t go nowhere near him ever again and that’s final!” He pointed at Louise while looking between Liam, Scott and Xavier.

Louise was up again in a second. “Hang on, I’m the only one he really trusts and with my mutation he can kind of communicate. So I need to see him and I will see him.”

“You listen to me young lady…”

She got in his face and jabbed a finger in his chest. “NO you listen to me. Just because he has a past, just because he’s dangerous and just because he has a violent nature… ooh remind you of anyone! None of that means that he doesn’t deserve a second chance, just like you. Look a little closer Logan, the similarities are endless.” With that she stomped out of the office.

“Told you, you couldn’t stop her doing anything.” All three of the older men glared at Liam until he sunk lower in his seat and became really really quiet.

By the time Louise made it down to the main med lab her anger had faded and all she could think was that her mother would want her to at least try and help this man, no matter what his faults.

She walked in and had to stop at the door. Hank was finishing helping Victor dress in a pair of plain black sweats. Hank had cut most of his blond shaggy hair away. It looked like a Tom Cruise: Mission Impossible two kind of style. She smiled: it suited him. Hank had also thrown away his tattered clothes and washed him. His was sat in the middle of the room on a small stool.

She had been right, he was handsome and his body was amazingly muscular (like her brother and father), but less tanned and each muscle even more defined. Her eyes lead down and were stopped by the waistband of his sweats.

“Hey, how’s it going?”

Hank walked to his desk and read off his notes. “Fine, yes fine. By the looks of it he’s suffering from some kind of regression or more likely amnesia from prolonged use of animal tranquillisers and a rather potent alpha-adrenergic blocking agent…”

“A what?”

He chuckled. “He urinated in the corner of the lab and I took a sample to see if there was anything to find and there was… it’s called Phenothiazine, I found traces of it, it blocks the production of adrenaline, more specifically alpha-male adrenaline. One large dose can last for up to four days, so I suppose that’s when the lab was abandoned. It would have been used to make him docile, pliable… easy for experimentation.”

Louise looked over at Victor and he simply stared at her blankly. “That’s just horrible. Nobody deserves that Hank.”

“No my dear, they don’t, no matter what they’ve done.”

After a beat or two she wondered: “Why have you got him there in the middle of the room?”

Hank’s expression lightened immediately. “Well my dear, I was trying to give our visitor a shave.” He gestured to the razor, foam and water on the small side table. “But he growls at me, refuses to let me touch him and takes rather an aggressive stance that personally I don’t want to challenge.”

“It’s getting late, why don’t you go and grab some dinner, I’ll give him a shave.”

“I think maybe I should stay, he may well be docile at the moment, but there is no telling what…”

“I can handle it.”

Hank sighed reluctantly realising that there would be no arguing with her. “If you’re sure, I suppose you do have a certain, way, with him”

“Very.” Hank left and she walked over to Victor, his dark eyes watching her every move. “Hey.” She picked up the foam and rubbed it lightly between her fingers letting him see. “See, its fine.” She put it lightly on his face, he flinched at the new sensation of it, but let her.

The she picked up the razor and he stood up sending the stool sailing away. “Hey, hey, easy. Its fine.” She held out her hand and when he took it, her mutation opened up gently to let a feeling of safety flow from her to him. Then she picked up the stool and sat him down again. She started off very slowly, rinsing the razor out after nearly every stroke over his skin.

She stood by his side, but needed to do under his chin, so she gently slid one leg in between his open legs, so intent on her task that she didn’t notice how slowly she slid her knee along his leg and up his thigh.

His eyes watched her all the time, his fists clenched tightly at his sides, but after a while he lessened his grip and relaxed. She nearly jumped when she felt his hand on her leg just above her knee. She glanced briefly at his eyes, but their blackness only ever showed amazing intensity, never allowing her to see what he was thinking.

Moving to the other side of his face she slid her other knee in between his legs, this time enjoying the feel of it rubbing against his leg and up his thigh. She noticed that her breathing had got a little heavy along with his and meeting his eyes again, even darker than before, she realised that she was getting more than a little turned on by the sheer magnitude of him and she knew she was playing with fire.

She managed not to look at him while she finished his jaw and then his top lip. She rinsed off the remainder of the foam and wiped his face with a towel. Stepping back she smiled at him, but gasped when he grabbed her waist with both hands and pulled her to him, not wanting to let her go. She had to brace herself against his shoulders and their eyes stayed locked.

One of her hands decided to act completely on its own as it slipped gently from his shoulder and down onto his chest, his skin feeling smooth under her fingertips. She came to her senses and stepped back from him again just as Hank came in.

“Well well, what a good job you’ve made of that. If I ever fancy a shave, I’ll call on your services!” She brushed some of her hair behind her ear, using the action to cover the slight blush on her cheeks, then giggled at the thought of Hank having no facial hair. Hank walked over to Victor and handed him a bowl piled with bread, cheese and a selection of cold meats. “I though you might be hungry, friend.”

Victor snatched the bowl and immediately went over to the corner and began to wolf down the food like he hadn’t eaten in a year. She leaned close to Hank. “That wasn’t the corner he peed in was it?”

He chuckled. “No, hence the mop bucket and wet-floor-sign over the other side. Poor fellow, he was famished.” Hank went to him and crouched in front of him and left a bottle of water on the floor next to the bowl of food. Victor growled and picked it up. He sniffed it, shook it and tried to bite it. “Ah… never had one of them, had you.” He took the water back and walked back to Louise inspecting the bottle. “Not sure how to make him understand about drinking it.”

Louise almost laughed hysterically. “And I thought you were supposed to be a genius!” She fetched a kidney dish from the surgical cupboard and poured the bottle of water into it, then placed it in front of Victor, who immediately dropped his food and lapped at the water like a big cat.

“O’! My physics Professor always said that a lack of common sense wouldn’t do me any good in later life.” Both he and Louise laughed.

“I think you make up for it.” She watched Victor eat for another minute or two then followed Hank over to his desk. “Where is he going to sleep?”

“There is a small store room next to the Blackbird hangar, I’ve had it cleared out and put a bed, chemical toilet and lots of blankets and such in there. Both myself and Charles agreed that it wouldn’t do for him to be wandering around with the children. I saved his shirt and put it in the room, so he at least has one familiar scent. I’ve shown him the room and the toilet. I think he understands.”

“Will he be on his own?”

Hank smiled. “No, I have some work to finish and I doubt I will finish much before morning, you know me. I’ll be here.”

“Ok, but, um... leave the door open and the lights on.” Hank looked momentarily puzzled, but nodded anyway. “I’m gonna go see mom and then go up.”

“Alright, I will see to our guest. Good night, my dear.”

Victor caught her eye and she smiled at him before leaving the med lab and swiping herself into the chamber room. She immediately rested her head against the cold glass of the chamber and sighed. “What am I doing? What the *hell* am I doing? He’s Victor Creed! He’s from the Brotherhood for Christ Sake! A terrorist, a killer… he pees in the corner! Why him? There are a truck load of handsome and amazing men in this building, a couple of them actually interested in me, *but no* I have to feel attracted to the one that my father hates and tried to kill my mother, oh and not to mention that he’s a apparently a homicidal maniac. Yeah I know how to pick ‘em.”

She lifted her head and looked at her mother’s face. “Help… but your not going to, are you? O’ mom!”

She kissed the chamber and left the room, walking slowly up to her room. It was in between her fathers and Liam’s. As she walked past Logan’s room she could hear him moving around and smell his cigar. She wanted to knock and talk to him, apologise for running off on the mission and nearly getting herself killed and yelling at him, but simply couldn’t face it. She didn’t want him to be angry with her or shout at her, so she went to bed.

*********

Logan woke up with a start, he sat bolt upright in bed. His dream of a tall water-filled chamber drifted away from him. It was the same dream most nights, he would wander the mansion halls until arriving at Marie’s chamber only to find it empty. As his mind cleared he got out of bed and put his jeans on, he was searching for wherever he had thrown his shirt when his hearing picked up a soft knocking noise.

It was coming from Louise’s room. He walked out of his own room and knocked on her door. “Louise?” There was no answer so he let his nostrils flare, fear and pain met his superhuman senses and he leant back kicking in the door with a load crash.

Louise was sat on the floor next to her bed, blankets thrown in all directions and her back against the wall. Eyes and mouth open, but unable to move as she shook uncontrollably. The slight knocking noise he had heard was the back of her head as it rattled against the wooden panelled wall.

He was next to her in an instant, he said her name repeatedly, but all she could do was stare at him open-mouthed while she convulsed in his arms. He turned his head towards the door and shouted for help as Liam ran into the room. He had obviously heard Logan crash through Louise’s door. Liam was on his knees next to his sister. He cradled her head against his chest and put his hands in hers, allowing her to grip him as the fit continued. Jubilee came running in and immediately said she would run off to fetch Hank. ‘Ro appeared at the door, but instead on intruding into the room she shoed away the others who had filtered out of bed in the commotion.

Logan locked eyes with Liam. “Is it normally this bad?”

“No, but she’s been getting worse lately.”

He growled. “Why the fuck didn’t you say anything?”

Liam grimaced as she shook against him. “Because I promised I wouldn’t. You know what she’s like, she won’t ask for help. She thinks that Hank should be concentrating on helping mom, not her!”

An hour and forty minutes later Louise woke up to the bright lights of the med lab. The first thing that she saw was the bare back of her brother, closely followed by the equally bare back of her father. They were talking to Hank next to his desk. She sat up and shook her head.

“What is it with you two and not wearing a shirt?” Liam was the first to get to her and he hugged her hard.

When he pulled away she found Logan’s hand stroking her hair and then her cheek. “You ok?”

“Yeah. Did I pass out?” She looked slightly confused.

“No, Hank had to give you something to stop the shaking. Louise, why didn’t you say this was getting worse?”

She looked at her feet, unable to stop her voice from showing her emotions. “Everyone has other things to think about, the school, classes, students, this FoH facility thing, Victor, mom… and… and I didn’t want you to think that I was just baying for your attention or something, ‘cause I know you and Liam get on and I didn’t want you to think I was just being a jealous kid and...”

“Baying for my attention? What the fuck! You’re my daughter! You can have any part of my attention whenever the hell you like, either of you can. Where the hell has this come from?”

She glanced at Liam then Logan and shrugged. “I don’t know, I just… I…” she wiped her eyes as tears began to fall. “I don’t know how to do this, people and emotional crap. It’s always been me and Liam, you know, just us and we don’t have to try, we just are. I don’t know how to get close to people, I can trust people kind of, but I can’t let them in… I just… its hard.” Liam hugged her close again and kissed the top of her head.

Hank, who had been standing back a little from them, cleared his throat and stepped up to the examination bed, put his hand lightly on her arm and gave her a bright smile as she wiped her face again.

“There is some good news.” He looked at Logan and Liam who both beamed brightly. “I think I have finally found the correct formula to counter-attack Clemency.” Louise wiped her face and gave a small laugh. Hank put up his hand to stop her from saying anything. “It will take another 3 to 4 months to actually develop, but I have it. Finally I have it.”

She moved away from Logan and Liam and hugged the big blue doctor, nearly knocking him off his feet. “God! You beautiful, beautiful blue man!”

He chuckled and untangled her from him. “Like I say it will take a few months to get right, but the basic formula is there. In the meantime, I think we need to take a closer look at you my dear.”

She shrugged. “I’m fine, some times it’s just worse than others, that’s all.”

“Poppycock! Your blood pressure was through the roof and you this close to having a stroke! This needs to be looked at, Louise, and I won’t take no for an answer.”

“What do you mean - a stroke?” She looked horrified. “Old people have strokes!”

“If there is too much pressure on the cells and blood vessels inside your brain then yes, you may well have a stroke or if the pressure builds around your heart, even a heart attack. My dear, this is very serious.”

Suddenly realising that she should have said something earlier she started to cry again and looked at the three concerned faces in front of her. “I’m sorry. I This time, Logan held her close.

“Go back up to bed, get some sleep and tomorrow we’ll run some tests and see what we can come up with.” Hank rubbed her arm again and she smiled at him, then allowed Logan to carry her back up to her bed.

**************END OF PART SEVEN

Title: Missing 8/? Author: sharonmjl47
Rating: R language.
Category: Movieverse.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and no one. Sad, isn’t it!
Feedback: Please, bad or good. If no one tells me it’s bad, I won’t know!

**********************

Christmas at the mansion was amazing, but the thoughts of their mother always clouded the fun slightly for Louise and Liam. As far as Louise was concerned the time went by painfully slow.

Hank had her in the med lab every other day, running tests and constantly monitoring her health. Her shaking continued most nights, but Hank had started giving her sleeping tablets to try and stop them. At the moment it was working and she had had about three nights so far without a fit. Hank said that as far as he could make out it was some part of her mutation that for some reason couldn’t manifest. He was stumped - he hadn’t admitted it to her yet, but he was no closer to telling her why it happened.

She had agreed with Xavier, despite her father’s protests, that she would help Hank to rehabilitate Victor. They started off slowly, giving him children’s phonics and picture books and by the end of the second month he was communicating well, with nods, grunts and growls, but he wasn’t speaking yet. He still spent most of his time in the lower levels with Hank, but she took him for walks around the grounds a couple of days a week. Hank was pleased with the way he took notice of his surroundings and other people, but thanks to Louise’s calming mutation he didn’t act on his impulse to run and hide, or attack anyone that approached. Not that Logan liked any of it, complaining constantly and making sure he kept a close eye on Creed from afar. She had also agreed to let Logan and Scott train her for the team - Liam had already been accepted and she now knew that she wanted to be a part of it as well.

Somewhere in the middle of all of that and her normal mansion chores, she saw her mother for an hour every day and managed to study for her teaching finals. She, Liam and Logan were stressed, but everyone was coping.

The past four months however had worked at least in Hank’s favour: He had made progress with the Clemency counter virus. He was ready to try it. As it was now March, winter finally creeping away. Most of the students were lazing around in their rooms, shooting pool or playing foosball in the rec room or out with their friends.

Jubilee was late up as usual on a Sunday and was making herself a large pot of coffee to wake up. Hank came in from the garage and went through the kitchen. “Hey Hank.”

“Good morning.” He continued through the kitchen and Jubilee looked him over - he had obviously just been out.

“Hey, what’s that? Oh my God! It’s so cute!” Jubilee crouched down to the cage that Hank had been carrying and poked her finger in trying to stroke the large chocolate--coloured rabbit inside. “What’s his name?”

Hank chuckled nervously. “Ur, it doesn’t have one. Right - must be off.”

“Hank, slow down!” She held onto the cage so he couldn’t go anywhere, then took it from him and placed it on the kitchen table. “I think Brownie, you know as in chocolate brown… hey! Why do you have a bunny?”

He adjusted his glasses. “Jubilation, my dear, dear friend, I have many… many important things that I need to be getting along with. So, if you don’t mind, I’ll take… the rabbit and be off.”

Jubilee stepped in front of the cage. “Hank, no offence, but you don’t strike me as the kinda guy who just one day wakes up and decides to buy a pet rabbit. So, the furry dude stays until you can tell me why you *have* said furry dude!” Hank sighed.

Walking back into the mansion from their run together, Liam and Logan were both sweating. Logan stopped by the stairs as Louise came trotting down with Scott.

“Hey, good run?”

Scott nudged her. “Yeah, you can tell, they’re all high on testosterone.”

She giggled. Logan growled. “A least I *got* testosterone One-Eye!”

“Hey, I’ve got testosterone!”

“Yeah, in your big toe!” Liam and Louise laughed at them and Louise was about to say something when they all turned to hear shouting coming from the kitchen. “What the hell’s going on in there?”

All four of them crowded into the kitchen to find Jubilee guarding a cage and yelling at Hank. “There is no way in hell that I’m going to let you commit bunny-cide!”

“Bun… bunny-cide! This is preposterous! *It* is a rabbit and *it* is crucially important to my work. Now step aside.”

Scott stood in between them and raised his hands. “Guys... guys, what is going on?”

Jubilee pointed at Hank. “He’s going to kill Brownie!”

Confusion showed on Scott’s face. “Who’s Brownie?”

Hank huffed. “My lovely but rather *interfering* colleague Miss Lee has decided that the rabbit is now Brownie, but in fact the *unnamed* rabbit is in fact part of my laboratory equipment that I purchased this morning and she is now holding it hostage!”

Scott turned to Jubilee. “Jubilee if its Hank’s rabbit you really should give it back.”

“What! So he can just kill it! That’s what he’s going to do you know! Kill a poor defenceless animal!”

Scott looked at Hank. “Are you going to kill it?”

“Well, I do hope that I won’t, but there is the distinct possibility that the animal won’t survive, so well, yes it’s possible that I will inadvertently kill it.”

Liam stepped next to Jubilee and stroked the rabbit through the cage. “Hey, he’s kinda cute.”

“And he’s going to kill him!!!”

Liam smiled at Jubilee and Logan noticed how the boy’s pulse rate went up a little and his pupils dilated when he looked at her. He’d have to talk to him about that later, because Jubilee was the same age as Marie, even though she still acted like she was seventeen. “Ok, I’m with Jubes and the bunny.” Jubilee linked her arm with Liam’s, nodded defiantly at Hank and then stuck out her tongue.

Hank raised his huge blue arms, put them on his hips and huffed. “Oh well that’s very mature isn’t it!”

Louise and Logan leaned against the kitchen counter to watch and chuckle at Hank who despite his blue appearance was slowly turning purple with anger.

“Hank, I’d like everyone to calm down…”

“No! No Scott, I will not calm down. That is my rabbit and it is required for tests that I wish to carry out today.” He turned back to Jubilee and Liam. “Jubilee, Liam, I realise that the idea of testing on animals isn’t widely accepted by most, but it is a necessary evil. No doubt you wear make-up, obviously not you my boy unless there is something that you’re not telling us, but I seriously doubt it. But you do Jubilee, both of you wear some clothes and shoes made from animal products, use medicines tested on animals… neither of you are vegetarian for heaven’s sake. It’s a rabbit!”

“I wear non tested on animals make-up, expensive I might add but I wear it. I do not wear animal products, yes I eat meat, but *not* rabbits and as for him…” Jubes pointed at Liam. “Well, he doesn’t get sick, Dr Frankenstein! So there is no way in the world we’re letting you murder a bunny in the name of science!”

Hank had heard enough. “I am not killing it in the name of Science! I am doing this in the name of Rogue! I have developed the counter virus for Clemency, but I have to test it first! If I remove Rogue, your mother, from stasis and it doesn’t work there will not be enough time to place her back into stasis and she *will* die. I *have* to test it first, there is but only one chance to get it right and I will not be foiled because of a blasted rabbit! Liam, Jubilee I am sorry to shout, as you both know I rarely get angry, but… but this is simply ridiculous!”

Liam let go of Jubes and turned to look at the cute rabbit, happily sitting and cleaning its paws. Jubilee crossed her arms over her chest. “But, it’s defenceless, it can’t agree to this test.”

“*But* nothing, it’s Marie.” Logan stared at Jubilee with a cold glare - not surprisingly, she couldn’t hold his gaze.

“But this is something that I feel really strongly about. The medical and scientific testing of animals is wrong!”

Logan rubbed his knuckles to try and hold in the urge to let his claws out. “So you don’t feel strongly about getting your best friend back, you’d rather have a fucking rabbit?”

“No Logan of course not! I just…”

“Just what? Come on Yella, just what?” He was getting angry now, unable to believe that Jubilee could really think that the rabbit was more important.

“I… ur, I…” she stumbled unable to find any valid argument, but still not willing to accept that the rabbit should be used.

“Animal research has played a vital role in virtually every major medical advance of the last century. Jubilation, this is the side of this particular moral argument that all those people running around the countryside with purple hair annoying fox hunters don’t actually get to see. The calculation of life, the value of it. In this situation, can you honestly tell me that the life of this animal is worth more to you personally than that of Rogue? Surely you must understand why I need to test this?”

Liam smiled at Hank; the answer was easy for him. He rubbed Jubilee’s arm. “He’s right.”

Jubilee shook her head. “50 to 100 million animals world-wide are used annually and either killed during the experiments or euthanized afterwards. It’s not right!”

“No, it’s not. In the cases were animals are used unjustly and in inhumane and unstable environments, then no its not right, I completely agree with you. But forget about them, I’m asking you in this *individual* scenario, is the rabbit worth more to you than Rogue?”

She looked at the rabbit, then to Logan and Louise, then to Liam and finally back to Hank. She shook her head. “No.”

“Thank you. Now kindly, step aside.” She did and without another word Hank picked up the cage to head for his lab.

They all stood there for a minute or two looking at the floor, before Jubilee muttered a quiet sorry to Logan as she passed him on her way out the door. Logan shook his head and then found himself being looked at by his children. He knew what they were silently asking.

“Give Hank some time. He knows what he’s doing and if there’s anything to tell he’ll let us know.”

Both nodded and Louise got a wrapped sandwich out of the fridge and a small bottle of orange juice. “See ya later.” Her voice was quiet and her body screamed with frustration, she wanted to help Hank, watch or simply do something to help her mother.

Logan held her arm. “Where you going with that?” He knew the answer the minute she bit her lip and avoided his eyes. His face hardened. “Don’t forget what he is, ever!” She sighed not wanting to have the same argument with him again, so she simply nodded and headed off to the elevator. She didn’t want to admit that she was getting to the point where she *needed* to see him, needed to touch him and draw a little bit of his power, just a little bit more of his primal emotions.

Liam got two bottles of water out of the huge silver fridge and threw one to Logan. “Dad, she’ll be alright. Her mutation seems to keep him in check, not that I’m saying I like it ‘cos I don’t, but she seems to have a handle on him.”

“Look, I just have a bad feeling about it that’s all. Hank said the amnesia is only temporary and sooner or later he’s going to remember that he’s a homicidal fucker that gets a kick outta killing people…” he took a swig of water. “And if he so much as touches her I’ll rip his heart out!”

Liam took a swig himself and frowned. “Who’s the one with violent issues again?”

Logan rolled his eyes. “Don’t you start!”

“Come on dad, you can’t tell me that you haven’t thought about it. I mean you don’t know anything about your past, what do you know about his? His mutation is more than a little similar and, well, even you admitted that you used to be more than a little primal.”

“Yeah, and I can still be, but I choose to keep a hold on my humanity rather than give into the rage. I mean I’m not saying that a little red-flag bloodlust isn’t good in a fight, because it can be, but...” He took another swig of his water. “I met him in a fight, what, three times? And each time I never got the drop on him. I don’t like admitting that, but there it is. I could take him - if it was a choice between him and your mother or you kids then I *would* take him, but he’s in a different league. Bigger, stronger, nastier, healing factor that works twice as fast as mine. He ain’t too bright, but… sometimes it don’t matter.”

“So how come you thought he was dead?”

“I honestly thought Scott had killed him on the Torch. He got the full force of Scott’s mutation without his visor, straight in the chest. I don’t think I’d survive that, and I wouldn’t want to test yours or Lou’s healing on it. So, I thought he was dead. FoH or whoever must have picked him up, right outta the goddamn water and straight to that hell-hole.”

Liam smiled briefly. “You actually feel sorry for him, don’t you?”

“Yeah I do.” He tossed his empty bottle in the bin, thinking for a moment that yes, he really did feel sorry for him on some level. “Don’t change the fact that if he hurts anyone I care about, I’m gonna rip his ass to pieces.”

The door to Victor’s room was only half closed as usual and she pushed it open all the way. He was lying on his back, asleep on his bed. His size made the bed look flimsy and unstable, but it held his weight surprisingly well.

She put the sandwich and juice on the small table and then stood by his bed, knowing she shouldn’t be so close to him, but she couldn’t help herself. She was drawn to him in some way, on some basic level that when she touched him it set of a spark inside her she hadn’t felt before.

Hank had bought him various pieces of clothing recently and he, for some reason, liked to sleep in his jeans. Biting her thumb nail she looked at his bare feet, up his strong legs and thighs, biting her lip when her eyes ran briefly over his crotch, then to his naked chest. His muscles rippled slightly and he shifted a little in his sleep. She stretched her hand out to touch him, bringing it back once, but then unable not to touch him. His cheek first, her hand shaking, then down to his chest, her mouth running dry making her lick her lips.

Before she could register any movement she had a vice grip around her wrist, there was a loud growl and he slammed her against the far wall. His other hand around her throat, claws digging into her soft flesh, her feet dangling in the air as he pinned her to the wall with his body and his nostrils filing with the scent of her fear.

She gasped for breath as his eyes bored hatefully into her. “Vic… TOR!” His grip lessened a little and his black eyes seemed to clear ever so slightly, then he let go of her stepping back and looking at his hands, then around the room, snapping out of his temporary madness.

Louise gasped for breath, not understanding what had happened. He looked confused and scared. She reached out and briefly touched his chest with the connection of her mutation open; the brief touch giving her an untamed blast of his hyped-up emotions making her gasp instantly breathless again.

He felt it and slapped her hand away, pushing her shoulders roughly and slamming her back into the wall again. “Don’t touch me!” She gasped again at his growled words and opened her mouth to speak. “Get out!”

She frowned. “Victor, I…”

He grabbed her shirt and brought her close, her frightened wide eyes meeting his, then he kissed her forcing his tongue into her mouth roughly, giving her no opportunity to object. “I said get out little girl!” He shoved her and she fell to the floor, but scrambled to her feet and out the door. He slammed it shut after her and after a second of stunning silence, he roared and by the sounds of it began to completely obliterate the room.

***********END OF PART EIGHT

Title: Missing 9/?
Author: sharonmjl47
Rating: R
Category: Movieverse.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and no one. Sad, isn’t it!
Feedback: Please, bad or good. If no one tells me it’s bad, I won’t know!

**********************

Louise had called the Professor and Logan for help. Logan had instantly wanted to kill Victor when he’d seen the remains of the red handprint heal from Louise’s neck, but she had managed to convince him that Victor hadn’t known who she was, that she had woken him up and startled him. Only when the image of her mother dangling on the end of his fist flashed in his head had Logan backed down, yeah, he knew what that was like. She very carefully avoided mentioning the way that Victor had kissed her, or that he’d even kissed her at all.

Logan watched the bigger man pace around Xavier’s office like a caged animal, as Xavier gave him all the information he could about the world in the last twenty years or so that Creed had been locked away in a dark dingy cell. The only information that had seemed to affect him in any way was to learn that Magneto had died. He had been like a father and Creed had seemed saddened by his passing.

“So how quickly are you geeks throwing me outta here?” He scratched his head with his large claws.

“And where would you go?”

“I’ll find somewhere, old man, don’t ya worry ya-self about that. Somewhere I’m not a pet project for some dense little girl.”

“Watch your mouth, Creed.” Logan growled at him.

“Fuck you, runt!”

Logan sprung from his position by the wall and pushed on Victor’s chest sending him back a step or two. “Didn’t think I was your type!”

Victor grabbed Logan by the collar and snarled in his face. “You’re not, but your little girl is!”

Quick as anything Logan brought his head forward and butted Victor in the face, then both had their claws out, ready to kill each other. Xavier raised his hands and mentally held both men in place.

“I think that’s quite enough of that.” He released them and Logan growled as he flipped his wrists and his claws quickly slid back into place. Victor smiled and he backed away to sit on the plush couch, arms casually resting on the back of it: Baiting Logan was much more fun than leaving.

“Victor, I want answers about that facility, as I am sure you do. Who was behind it, their intentions and weather or not we are all at risk. I am happy to offer you a place to stay here while this is investigated and after that you can go where you please, but there have to be some ground rules.”

“Sure, Prof. Name ‘em.” He smirked at Logan, who simply just wanted to kill him, right there and then.

“You are to avoid the students’ questions - none of them are old enough to remember you or your affiliation with the Brotherhood, and I’d like to keep it that way. You may come and go as you please, but have consideration for others who live here. The lower levels are off limits, completely and no trouble.”

He smirked at Logan again. “Whatever. So are you gonna be a good little bell boy and show me to my room?”

Logan glared at Xavier and stormed out, slamming the door as he went. “Victor, I suggest you do not continue to bait Logan. My influence over him has always been limited and I do not wish anyone to get caught in the crossfire. There’s an empty room on the third floor, left hand side at the end of the corridor. It should suit you.”

Victor stood up and mock-saluted the Professor. “Whatever you say, *boss*.” He chuckled as he left.

Liam, sitting on his vantage point at the top of the stairs, watched Logan storm from Xavier’s office and head for the far corridor of the mansion, the one that held the secret elevator. A few moments later, he observed Victor Creed leaving the office and walking cockily up the opposite set of stairs.

Completely torn, Liam remained where he was, not knowing what to do. He wanted to confront Creed about the damage he had done to his sister, he wanted to be with her and comfort her, he wanted to talk to his father about the whole messy situation, and he also wanted to go to Hank’s lab and find out the test results.

But instead he stayed on the stairs until his backside was numb and his stomach growled painfully. After a while, he pulled himself up and wandered towards the small staff kitchen. Once he had the fridge open he stared again, frozen in indecision . Leftover pasta or make a sandwich? He closed the door and sank into a high-stool by the breakfast bar, elbows on the counter and his head in his hands.

“Rough day?” The soft melodic voice made him jump a little. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. Are you ok?”

She smiled at him and for a brief second his breath left him - she was beautiful. Then she smiled again, the action causing the cut on her lip to pinch and she winced a little. He frowned. It was as if he hadn’t seen the marks before. “Yeah, I’m fine, thank you.” He gestured to her face as she touched it almost shyly. “Are you?”

Sighing, Jean opened the fridge and took out a large carton of OJ. Liam watched as she gracefully fetched a glass and filled it. She instantly knew which cupboard to find the glass and if he’d have thought about it, I would have been a warning.
“It’ll heal in time. Want some?” She held up the carton, and he nodded before he knew what he was doing.

“How did it happen?”

She set his glass down in front of him and shrugged as she wrapped elegant fingers around her own glass. “I refused to tell them what they wanted to know. Sell out the people I care about and they thought that they could force the issue.” She licked her lips. “They were wrong.”

All he could think as she stared at him and blinked was how long her lashes were. He felt something like a slight tickle in the back of his mind, but shook it off. “Um, that’s very brave.”

She looked away and smiled demurely. “Not really. Stubbornness, more like it. Rogue used to say I was nearly as bad as her.”

He laughed. “You knew Rogue?”

She nodded over the rim of her glass. “Mmm, yes. A long time ago, she was a good friend. When I heard she’d died, ‘oh, I was a mess.” She took another sip of juice and locked her eyes with his. “Did you know her? Ah no, you’re far too mature to have been one of her students.”

Taken aback slightly, he smiled. “Um, yeah I knew her.” His head began to ache a little, but he put it down to the stress of thinking things over.

“Lovely lady.” She linked her hands under her chin and continued to smile at him.

He nodded. “Yeah, the best.” He fiddled with the rim of his glass, not meeting her eyes, his mind flashing an image of his mother in the stasis chamber.

“Did I say the wrong thing?” She reached across and touched his hand.

He blushed and smiled at her, pulling his hand back. “No, no, I um, it’s a long story. It doesn’t matter, really.”

“Long story, huh? We’ve all got one of them.” She touched her face and hissed. “I guess I’ve got a couple more now.” She dropped her head and put her hand over her eyes, her shoulders beginning to shake.

Liam looked around the room and then at Jean, not having a single clue what to do. He stood up, moved round the counter and sat next to her and lightly touched her shoulder to try and comfort her. “Don’t cry, it’ll all be ok, don’t worry.”

She wiped her face and smiled at him. “You’re so sweet.” Again for a split second it was as if the bruises and the cut on her face were gone and all he saw was her beautiful face. Her hand fell on his arm and she gripped his bicep. “Wow, you must work out a lot!”

He blushed again, smirked and shrugged. “Well, yeah.”

“I should really try and get back into the swing of exercising again I suppose, but I simply just don’t feel like much.”

“It might help you recover a little better.”

“It might.” She fiddled with her earring, making sure that it caught his attention. “I might feel even better if the Professor would give me some kind of inkling into who did all of this to me.”

She let her hand slip from her earring down her neck and slowly caressed her own neck, down her collarbone and finally coming to rest at the apex of her blouse. Liam watched the movement, watched her hand as it trailed down her skin to the top of her blouse and he saw the top of her bra as she fiddled with the material.

“Um, he’s investigating it.”

She smiled to herself as his adam’s apple bobbed as he watched her. “Really? Has he made any progress?”

“Just that it was the Friends of Humanity.”

She smiled and carried on fiddling with the edge of her blouse, all the while whispering in the back of his mind to trust and to tell her all he knew. “He doesn’t know anything else? If the FoH are working in conjunction with a hidden faction of the government or another mutant group?” Liam shook his head numbly and an almost silent ‘Good’ slipped from her lips as she stood up.

Liam shook his head again and rubbed the back of it. “I’m sorry - what did you say?”

“Nothing, just that I was tired and going to get a little rest. You should do the same, go to bed, *sleep* for a few hours.”

He took a deep breath. “Yeah. I’m sorry I never got your name.”

Jean held out her hand gently and looked him square in the eye, a perfect smile on her lips. “It’s Elaine.”

He shook her hand, smiling again. “Liam. Nice to meet you.”

“And you, thanks for the company… and the comfort.”

He couldn’t help but look at her ass as she left the kitchen, then once she was gone he couldn’t remember what he had been doing in there in the first place and went straight up to his room and to bed despite the fact that it was only half way through the afternoon.

Jean purposely strode through the familiar corridors until she came to a faded wooden panel on the third floor. With a small push it slid in and then up, revealing a hidden tunnel. She followed it out to the mansion garage, sparing a look over her shoulder every now and then. Once out into the garage she slipped her shoes from her feet and ran to the service road that lead out onto the main highway. A large black limousine pulled up and she gracefully climbed into the back.

“Well?” She turned to look at the other passenger as the car pulled off and she put her shoes back on. He was tall, handsome and wore the most expensive dark grey suit a man could buy.

“They have absolutely no idea, I played the poor defenceless woman routine perfectly. The most powerful telepath in the world my ass, his view of the world and stance on morals…” she laughed. “He only skimmed my mind enough to confirm my partial truths. I told you spraying the FoH logo on the floor would throw them, the cover worked perfectly.”

“What about Creed?” His accent was English, his words clipped and precise showing his good education.

“He’s in place. I took away the mental blocks this morning, the old man is happy to trust him for now and Creed has no idea what’s going on - he has neither the intelligence or mental strength to resist the mind suggestion. He can’t remember a thing that happened to him in Ohio and he wont be able to tell Xavier anything about our plans. When the time’s right we can activate the primal-aggression chip I inserted into his brain and along with 18 years of isolation, beatings and torture, he’ll happily kill anything he looks at, including Xavier.”

“What about the woman, is the intel right?” He inspected his well-manicured nails.

“I couldn’t get down to my old lab, but from what I picked up from the boy’s mind, she’s alive. They have her in some kind of stasis chamber, which means she’s still carrying the virus and is possibly a threat, but one that can always be eliminated later on. It also means that good old Dr McCoy was never smart enough to produce a vaccine…”

“So it’s unlikely he’ll be able to produce one for our little project.”

“Exactly.”

“Will Creed be enough?”

“I believe so. They all have history with him, their focus and investigations will be on him and the facility and a possible attack on their precious mansion. He’ll cause enough trouble just wandering around being Victor Creed, but when we activate the chip, they’ll have more than enough to keep them busy. The Professor would never probe his mind without permission and Creed would never let him, so there’s not a problem.”

“So by the time they realise what’s going on, Creed will have provided enough of a distraction and it will all be all over. When will we be ready?”

“Two days and thanks to us, humankind is well and truly screwed and there’s nothing the good Professor can do about it.”

“It’ll serve him right for showing you the door.”

She placed her hand on his knee. “It’s a good job he did, otherwise I would never have found you. I’ll still never know how Eric managed to kept you a secret from Xavier and the rest of the world.”

He smiled. “My father was a smart man.” He leaned across the car to kiss her.

“And he’d be proud of you.” He touched her lip and her eye, then trailed his hand down her neck.

“Sorry I had to give you all that.”

She kissed him deeply and bit his lip as she pulled away. “I enjoyed every minute of it and you know it.”

He pushed a button on a side console and the screen between them and the driver rose, then without any warning he backhanded her across the face. She hit the side of the limo with a little yelp, but didn’t have time to recover as he grabbed her hair and pulled her roughly into his lap, her face millimetres from his. “Then maybe I should give you a few more?” Her twisted smirk gave him all the answer he needed as he kissed her roughly and ripped open her blouse.

********

Louise had finally decided to leave her room as the light began to fade outside and the students began to move to their dorms for the night. She’d deliberately stayed out of Liam’s and Logan’s way - not that she knew where either of them were, anyway. She didn’t want a confrontation or an ‘I told you so’ from either of them.

As she walked out onto the back patio, the one that was reserved just for teachers and team members, Jubilee was coming inside.

“Hey, you ok?”

Louise sighed. “Yeah, I’m fine. Any news from Hank?”

“I went down about an hour ago and he told me to leave him alone - at least until the morning. Personally I think he’s still a little pissed with me about the rabbit.” She rubbed Louise’s arm. “Go to bed, if anything happens he’ll wake us.” Louise nodded and Jubilee left her outside.

Louise leaned on the wall by the railings staring out into the nights sky, watching the stars twinkle against the black blanket of night. She wished that things were simpler. That her mother was with her and that she and her brother could just be left alone with both their parents instead of everyone and everything working to keep them all apart.

“Funny, you never struck me as the stargazer type.”

She jumped and turned to find Victor standing beside her. “Where the hell did you come from?”

“Got the answer right there Princess. Hell.”

She moved to go back inside, but his hand shot out to the wall and blocked her exit. Not being able to look him in the eye she stared at her feet. “What do you want?”

He took his hand off the wall and lifted her chin so she could look at him. She wanted to turn her mutation on and let him seep into her a little, but it was different now, he wouldn’t let her so easily feed of him.

His gaze was as intense as ever and she could feel the heat rising in her already. She blushed, cursing her body and its reaction to him. With the back of his hand he caressed along her jaw and down her neck, lightly touching where the bruise had been earlier. She closed her eyes tight at the sensation, willing her body to stay in control of her mutation, to not let it slip, not give away her arousal at his closeness and his touch. “I’m sorry.” Her eyes snapped open and locked with his. “I remember everything you did for me. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“I… I know.”

He stepped closer causing her to bump into the wall behind her. His hand slid softly from her throat to the back of her neck and into her hair, holding her head firmly as his other hand joined it. His lips descended on hers. The kiss was surprisingly soft, but grew with need as their tongues met. He carefully kept his fangs from cutting her as she arched away from the wall and into him.

When he grabbed her bottom and growled, pulling her flush against him and rubbing his groin against her, her inexperience and nervousness flared. She pushed him and he allowed himself to go back a step or two. She touched her lips in confusion and then fled, embarrassed by her own actions.

“What’s the matter, aren’t I good enough for Wolverine’s little princess?”

She turned, her face still flush and her lips swollen. “How did you know he’s my father?”

“One whiff of you and I could tell that.” He shrugged. “And I only have to look at you to tell who your momma is.”

He watched her think for a minute. “Do you hate us?”

“Us?”

“Xavier, the X-Men.”

He shrugged. “Situation’s changed. Apparently mutants are *accepted*, on the same side, so I guess I don’t have to kill you people anymore.”

“You shouldn’t have had to kill people in the first place. Magneto was wrong to make you do it.”

“Magneto didn’t make me do anything.”

“Then why?”

He smirked. “What can I say, he pitches a good argument.”

She frowned a little and shook her head. “So, what, killing people is fun?”

“No, not fun, but it had a certain, *addictiveness* to it. A good fight with someone, when you’re evenly matched, that’s fun. I don’t like killing people, but when you’re only good at one thing, you don’t get many employment choices.”

“And what about now?”

“What about now? Like I said Princess, world’s different.” He shrugged. “Maybe this time round I’ll find some kind of place in it.”

She reached out and touched his hand. “Maybe I could help you.”

He looked into her eyes and found nothing but trust and cursed it. He didn’t need to have someone need him or pity him, he had never had anyone get close enough to care and he didn’t want to start now. No matter how good he felt when she was close, no matter how she made him actually feel something, something he couldn’t quite identify. Definitely no matter how she made him feel human and almost like he belonged, almost content. Almost.

She gasped in surprise when he grabbed the waistband of her jeans and pulled her to him. “I don’t do the whole ‘boyfriend’ gig, there’s usually only one thing I want.” He licked the edge of her ear as his nostrils flared, filling them again with nervousness and slowly building arousal as she shivered against him, her body begging him to touch her, just one more touch. “And I think you want it too.”

He took her lips again, silencing her gasp. He almost didn’t feel her small hand push on his chest and he shook his head as she stepped away from him and leaned herself on the wall with one hand. He smirked at her. “You really are a little prissy Princess aren’t you?”

She glared at him. “Don’t fucking call me that! I have a name!”

He laughed and it almost sounded genuine, which was what he wanted, he wanted her to back away from him, if she did it then it was her fault, not his. “Whoa! Steady there Princess.”

“Don’t laugh at me.” Her eyes began to sting, but she refused to let him see her cry.

He grabbed the back of her neck roughly and kissed her roughly, this time not caring about his fangs. She pushed away from him and smacked him as hard as she could across the face. “Finally I get a little bit of that Southern fire.”

“You’re a pig!” And then she turned and ran back to her room, slammed the door ran into her bathroom and climbed into the shower fully clothed, starting the water so that her father couldn’t hear her or smell her when he came back to his room and she cried.

***************END OF PART NINE

Title: Missing 10/?
Author: sharonmjl47
Rating: R
Category: Movieverse.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and no one. Sad, isn’t it!
Feedback: Please, bad or good. If no one tells me it’s bad, I won’t know!

**********************

Logan sat on the floor of the chamber room with his back resting against the cold surface of the chamber. He hated feeling so useless - he couldn’t help Marie, he couldn’t help Louise and he couldn’t keep a monster like Victor away from the ones he loved. The only one he seemed to have any positive effect on was Liam - and Logan wasn’t convinced that was down to him. The boy simply had a good head on his shoulders.

Shaking his head and rubbing his hand over his face he thought about Louise again. She had called him dad, just once and his heart had jumped at it, but now he realised that she had only done it to get his attention. He wanted her to be able to call him that and he wished that he didn’t understand why she couldn’t, but he did understand and he scolded himself that he shouldn’t be complaining.

Glancing at the chamber behind him, he sighed. There was nothing he could do for Marie, there had been nothing he could do for the last eleven years. He just hoped that when Hank brought her out of the chamber she would still feel the same way about him.

He felt so frustrated, so empty. He knew he should still be ecstatic about having his children around him all the time and the fact that Hank was so close to getting Marie back, but he just couldn’t shake the feeling that something else was going on that he didn’t know about. Before long he grew tired with thinking about his situation and fell asleep with his head resting on his chest.

~ Running through the mansion again, chasing something or being chased; he wasn’t sure. Glancing around, searching with eyes and senses, finding nothing.

Running to the elevator and pushing the button for the lowest part of the mansion. Panic strikes as the door closes, hands raised to stop it, but he can’t. When the door slides open he runs straight into the med lab, but once inside he freezes on the spot.

The chamber is dull, no bubbles, no lights. “Too late Logan, you are just too late.” Jean stands next to the medical computers holding a sledgehammer, smashing all of them into small pieces, laughing as smoke rises.

And in the chamber, Marie grasping at the inside; her small hands scratch at its surface trying to claw her way out. His hands on the glass in front of her.

"MARIE!"

Her eyes so full of panic as she tries to hold her breath in the icy water. Banging at the glass, trying to slice it with his claws, roaring, he grabs the sledgehammer from Jean but it makes no difference, the glass stays intact. Jean’s wild laughter echoes through the darkened room.

He dropped the hammer and sunk to the floor in front of the chamber. Marie sinks with him, the light in her eyes dulling. “MARIE… MARIE!” She presses her hand to the glass and he matches it, then her eyes close and her lifeless body floats away from him. ~

“NO!” He sat up right with a jolt, breathing heavily.
Only a dream.
He calmed himself a little, stood and looked at the chamber: Marie was still quietly suspended in the water as she was when he fell asleep. He rested his head against it with a sigh of relief.

The door opened behind him and Hank walked in. “Logan, I’m sorry I didn’t realise anyone was down here.”

“Yeah, I fell asleep. What time is it?”

“It’s a little after 5.”

“5, as in a.m.?”

Hank looked puzzled for a moment. “Yes, I’ve just come down myself. Don’t tell me you’ve been here all night?” Logan smirked and raised an eyebrow, making Hank chuckle. “Well, I have something to show you anyway.”

He went back to the main lab and after a smile at Marie, Logan followed him. “So, what’s up?”

Hank gestured to the brown rabbit who was eating a carrot in his cage by the door. “I was thinking of giving him to Jubilee.”

“But I thought you were…” Hank smiled at Logan as he watched the realisation of what Hank meant play on his face. “He’s alive… God damn it the fucking thing’s alive!”

“Yes. I gave him the virus, then waited for its effects to become apparent and then proceeded to give him the vaccine. This morning he is in perfect health, not a single trace of Clemency remains in his system.”

“Does that mean…”

“Yes, I’m gong to give it to Rogue. I will have to remove her from the stasis chamber and give it to her straight away. I was planning on doing it this morning. The professor is already up and I have discussed it with him briefly. My aid Justin will help, but I think it wise to keep yourself and the children out of the way. There could still be complications, but I will of course do everything in my power to ensure Rogue is brought out of this safely.”

“Um, yeah. Ok. Fuck. Is this really happening?”

Hank placed a large hand on Logan’s shoulder and smiled reassuringly at him. “Yes my friend, it is.”

*********

Liam woke up fully clothed and sprawled across his bed, his arm hanging limply over the side.. He was a little confused as he rolled over and sat up, he looked around the room and then at himself. He couldn’t remember coming to bed and couldn’t seem to shake the heavy sleepy feeling in the back of his head.

He raised his arm and sniffed himself, grimacing at the sweaty smell of his clothes - he immediately stripped them off and got in his shower. The water made him feel better, but he still couldn’t shake off the heavy sleepy feeling. He thought that he had obviously slept too well, hence the reason he couldn’t even remember going to bed.

Once dressed he sat on the edge of his bed and looked around the room. He could feel himself drifting off again when the door opened and Logan strode in with a grin on his face. “Hey, you missed breakfast and I need to talk to you and Louise… Liam? You ok?”

He stood up and looked at Logan a little dazed. “Um, yeah, can’t seem to wake up.” He finished it off with a rather impressive yawn.

“Whoa! Just sit there a second, will ya.” Logan caught him just and he sat down again and wobbled on the edge of his bed.

Logan went next door and knocked - a tousled Louise opened and smiled at him gently. “Morning.”

“Hey, can you gimmie a hand?”

“Sure.” She followed him back to Liam’s room, tugging her hoody sweater on over her head as she went.

When they got into Liam’s room he was flat on his back, snoring loudly. Logan shook his head and grabbed Liam’s arm to pull him back up into a sitting position. “Hey, come on sleeping beauty, get the hell up.”

“Wha…” He sat up and blinked at Logan and then Louise. “Sorry, dozed off.”

Crossing her arms over herself, Louise frowned. “Did you get plastered last night or something?” Logan gave a sharp frown and a quick shake of his head.

“No. I don’t think so. I can’t remember anything.”

Logan and Louise exchanged glances and Logan knelt on the floor in front of his son, resting his hands on his knees. “What’s the last thing that you remember, exactly?”

“Um, I was sitting on the stairs, heard you shouting at Creed in the Professor’s office…” Logan heard Louise huff at that, but decided to ignore it for the moment. “Then I went for something to eat and I… I don’t remember anything after that.”

Logan stood up as he noticed Scott walk past the door. “Scooter, in here.”

Rolling his eyes at the old nick-name and walking in, giving Louise a smile. “Everything ok?”

“Not sure - Liam’s gone all sleeping beauty on us.”

“What?” Scott laughed lightly.

Louise rolled her eyes. “He’s slept like a log, can’t wake up and can’t remember anything about last night either.”

“Drink?”

Logan shook his head. “No. He said he didn’t and he’s telling the truth.”

“Orange juice.”

All three replied together. “What?”

“She gave me orange juice.”

They glanced at each other and then Logan knelt in front of Liam again. “Ok son, who gave you orange juice?”

“Um, in the kitchen, she asked if I wanted some.” His eyes were glazed and he looked like he was struggling to stay awake again.

Logan held his face so that he couldn’t look away or fall asleep. “Who, Liam?”

“Ellen no, Ella… no…” Liam frowned as he tried to think sleepily.

“Elaine?”

Liam smiled lazily. “Yeah that’s it. She was pretty.”

Logan stood hands on hips and turned to a very serious Scott. “Who the fuck’s Elaine?”

“Elaine is Jean’s mother.”

“What the hell has Jean’s mother got to do with this? I thought her parents were dead?”

“When we had to use an alias on a mission she would always use her mother’s name. It’s the only person I can think of, there isn’t a student here called Elaine.”

“Shit.”

“Logan you go check her room, I’ll help Louise get Liam to the Professor. My guess is his sleeping is psychic induced.”

Logan took off out of the room at top speed while Scott and Louise tried to jostle a heavy Liam down to the professor’s office. “Scott, do you mean Jean as in your ex-wife Jean?”

“Yes.”

“Why is she even here?”

“Look, lets get him down the stairs and I’ll explain everything.” She nodded and dragged on the sleeping weight that was her brother..

Logan burst into the room Jean had been given and found it empty and neat as if she had never been there. Her scent lingered in the room, on the bed, faintly in the bathroom. He latched on to the scent and followed it. When he stumbled on a stronger version of it as he came past the end of a third floor corridor he sighed, knowing full well where she had gone.

He stalked to the wooden panel and hit it, it slid in and up, he continued to follow her scent to the garage and through to the main service road. Then after kicking the dirt around, letting his claws out and then back in and growling loudly he jogged back the way he had come and down the main stairs to Xavier’s office.

Xavier didn’t even look up from Liam when Logan walked into his office. Louise and Scott’s heads rose and he shook his in response to their silent question. Louise almost laughed when she heard a muffled ‘Fuck!’ come from Scott.

“Liam, you will be absolutely fine in a couple of hours.” Xavier looked at Logan. “I can’t sense her anywhere near the mansion. I trust you found nothing in her room?”

“Cleared out like she was never there. Followed her scent through the escape tunnels and out to the old service road. She must have been picked up by car.”

Everyone jumped when Xavier slammed his hand against his desk, then he smiled at them and raised his hand. “My apologies. I feel I must have grown into an old fool to miss all of this. She was doing it right under my nose and I never once thought to probe her mind a second time.”

“So everything she told us was bullshit?” Again Louise was surprised to hear Scott swear like that.

“Not all of it. I scanned her mind briefly while she told me about the facility and she was telling the truth, or at least partially, but I didn’t scan her again as her shields held no power, or so I thought. I should have realised - this is Jean, after all.”

Logan rested his hand on Liam’s shoulder. “You ok?”

“Yeah, I feel tired and, just… confused.”

“You’ll feel like that for a while I’m afraid.” Xavier turned to Logan and Scott. “She questioned him about what we knew, whether we believed the FoH story, then planted the suggestion of deep sleep in his mind. Jean also dug around for Rogue’s condition and Liam unwittingly let her know, but why that information would be of any use to her I don’t know.”

Louise looked at Logan, Scott and Xavier. “So why would she swing us a line like that?”

“I don’t know. I’ve had a contact of mine trying to find out who actually owns the facility. The chemical company sold it around 10 years ago to…” he looked at a brown file on his desk. “Belzec Magnes, a property developer, but he never did anything with the land. It’s obviously a dummy company, but my contact is having enormous trouble getting to the bottom of it.”

“What would be the point of getting us to investigate a place that’s faked? I mean we’ve been back to that facility twice and found nothing, not one single document, not one single thing.” Louise shrugged. “Well, except Victor…” Everyone turned to stare at her. “What?”

Xavier brought his wheelchair round his desk next to Scott. “He’s in the rear garden, bring him here please.”

“Yes sir.”

Scott left and Xavier smiled at Louise and Liam, who still looked more than a little dazed. “Why don’t the two of you check in with Hank’s progress, while myself and Logan talk to Victor.”

“Hank’s progress with what?” Liam said with a yawn.

“Shit! With all this I never got round to telling you.” He put his arm around Louise and jerked his head to Liam to join them. “That dumb rabbit made it through the night and Hank is taking your mother out of stasis. He’s going to give her the vaccine.”

“OH MY GOD!” Louise hugged Logan for all he was worth and Liam did the same.

“What do ya want Prof?” Victor waltzed in and stared at Logan hugging his children. “Aw, how touching.”

They broke apart, Louise wiped a tear off of her face and Liam looked like he was ready to cry but holding it in. “Go on, I’ll catch up with you later.” They nodded at him and went to leave.

Liam was first out the door, but as Louise walked past Victor she felt like time went in slow motion. His eyes caught hers as he turned his head to watch her leave, a small smirk laying on his lips. Their eyes stayed locked as she passed him, only breaking off when neither of them could turn their heads any longer and then she was gone out the door and shutting it quietly behind her.

Victor turned back to Scott, Logan and Xavier with his smirk slightly wider. Logan crossed his arms over his chest and growled a low warning at him. “Don’t you dare look at her like that, don’t even breathe in her direction or I *will* kill you.”

Victor’s smile grew as he growled back and Xavier sighed. “Gentlemen please. We have better things to do than measure the size of our egos.”

“Yeah I can think of several.” Victor shot a glance at the door behind him.

Logan lurched forward, but Scott held him as Xavier wheeled in front of them both. “Victor, what can you remember about your incarceration?”

He shrugged. “First few years were just me in a cell, got beaten twice a day, fed once a day, showered with a hose once a week and strapped to a table given drugs and poked about once a month. Then I remember getting moved and after, not much. I guess they had a lot of fun with me, lets put it that way.” He sat on a plush chair near Xavier, still shooting glares at Scott and Logan.

“Can you remember any one in particular?”

“No.” He chuckled. “Why don’t you just ask, Prof? I know you’re dying to.”

Xavier smiled knowingly turning to Scott and Logan. “Would the two of you excuse us please?”

“Chuck I ain’t leaving you with…”

“Logan if you wouldn’t mind, time is pressing.” Logan huffed and stomped out of the room with Scott.

Both men paced outside Xavier’s office for around forty minutes waiting to be called back in or for Victor to leave, but neither happened. A few students straggled around in between their classes and Scott chased them off to their next classes with threats of detention for being late. In the end they left the hallway and went their separate ways, Scott towards the kitchen in search of coffee and Logan towards the lower levels and Hank’s lab.

************END OF PART TEN

Title: Missing 11/?
Author: sharonmjl47
Rating: *WARNING* NC-17 Sexual blood play! *WARNING*
Category: Movieverse.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and no one. Sad, isn’t it!
Feedback: Please, bad or good. If no one tells me it’s bad, I won’t know!

**********************

Liam’s backside had gone numb about an hour ago, but he didn’t say anything to Louise. He didn’t want to disturb her. When they had come to see Hank, they had been told to stay out of the lab until further notice. Rogue was coming out of stasis that was all they knew. And so they sat outside on the floor, their backs against the wall, Louise asleep with her head on her brother’s shoulder. He didn’t have the heart to wake her up and ask her to move just so as he could relieve his numb buttocks.

The elevator door whooshed open and Logan stepped into the hall, instantly smiling at the way Louise slept on her brother. “I’m guessing you don’t know anything?”

“No, he wont let us in. Said he was taking her out of stasis, but it would take a while. Something about slowly brining her temperature back to normal so she doesn’t get pneumonia.”

“Yeah, he kinda explained it earlier. I have to admit I didn’t really listen.” He shrugged and sat down next to Liam. “Just know we gotta wait.”

*********

Jean Grey crossed her small laboratory and removed a vial from a refrigeration unit. She raised it in the air and looked at it, giving it a tiny shake for good measure. The milky liquid inside sloshed around lazily, then settled.

She smiled and walked to her desk, handing the vile to Sebastian Lehnsherr. He shared her smile and opened the vial, pouring some of it on his hand. The milky white liquid pooled in the centre of his palm. He gave Jean back the vial and rubbed his hands together.

A small twisted smile forms on her lips as she watches Sebastian get up from his chair and cross the room to another chair. This one is occupied by a man, perhaps in his mid-forties, tall, healthy-looking, human... and sobbing like a child as the ropes on his hands and legs hold him still. He is bruised and bloody and he was begging, pleading to be left alone, not to be touched again by either of them.

Sebastian stands in front of the restrained man and looks at his hands. “One touch, Ms Grey, and we’ll have put evolution back in its place.”

Behind him she places her hands on his shoulders. “One touch.”

He reaches out and runs his palm over the frightened man’s cheeks, almost caressing it, then steps back. The man screams in utter agony, then chokes as his breathing becomes hard. Blood begins to pour out of his nose, mouth, ears, fingernails and his eyes. He chokes on his own blood and then slumps back in the chair with a vacant expression on his face. His blood is still dripping slowly onto the floor.

Jean casually snapped on a pair of surgical gloves and put her fingers to the man’s neck, checking his pulse. Sebastian’s delighted laugh made her turn. “You are pleased?”

“I am more than pleased. I don’t know how you adapted Clemency to attack humans instead of mutants, I don’t know how you made it so aggressive, and I don’t care. Mutants have always been the dominant species, now we’ll simply be the *only* species.”

“We’re a day ahead of schedule. How do you want to proceed?”

He casually leaned against the desk. “We shall proceed as planned. The day after tomorrow our chosen few will go out into the big bad world and… *infect* it.”

She took off her gloves, threw them behind her and rubbed her hands over his chest. “And what do we do in the meantime?”

Smirking, he began to undo her thin blouse. Once all the buttons were open revealing her bra-less chest he backed away from her towards the dead man. Kneeling in front of him, he smeared his own hands in the man’s blood and stood back in front of Jean. Sebastian placed his bloodied hands on her throat and smeared them down onto her breasts making sure to pinch her nipples as he went causing her to hiss in pleasure, then he brought his hands back up and cupped her face.

“In the meantime, I say we *bathe* in our glory.” Then he kissed her as she brought her own hands up to cup her breasts and cover her slender fingers with the deep red blood.

*********

“Rogue? Can you hear me, my dear?” He gently peeled back her eyelid and shone a miniature light to check her pupils. “Rogue?”

“Mmmm…”

Hank smiled - even though her voice was muffled by the oxygen mask he knew that her making any noise to acknowledge him was a good sign.

“No, no, my dear keep the mask on, it will help.” He gently took her hands away from the mask and laid them by her sides again; she made no attempt to stop him and drifted back into unconsciousness.

Hank checked the monitors once again and walked back through the med lab and out into the corridor.

Logan stood up as his buttocks were starting to go numb. He checked his watch: They had all sat there for hours. Liam shifted as well and the movement woke up his sister, who yawned and rubbed her face. “What time is it?”

“Just after 2 am. Why don’t you two go up to bed, I’ll come get you if there’s any news.”

“Dad, I want to stay here.”

“Me too, besides it can’t be…” Louise turned mid-sentence to see Hank coming out of the med lab.

“I thought you would all still be here.”

“Well?”

Hank patted Logan’s arm. “She’s responded well to the regeneration process and came out of stasis without incident. I administered the vaccine and she appears to be responding well. A little groggy still, but… good, the outlook is very good.”

“Can I see her?”

“Logan…” Hank sighed at his friend.

“Hank, I need to see her.”

Hank really felt for his friend.

“It would be best to leave it a little longer, let her come round a bit more. There will be a lot to explain, a lot for her to come to terms with. Let her just be well first.”

Logan nodded as Hank went back into the lab and Louise collapsed into Logan’s arms, beginning to sob. He could smell the complete relief coming off her as he kissed the top of her head and shushed her quietly. He turned to look at Liam who just shook his head dazed. “Liam…?”

“I… I can’t.” He ran his hands through his hair and ran to the elevator.

“Liam!”

Louise raised her head from her father’s chest. “Let him go… he’ll come back, this is all just a little too much. She… she was dead, you know. And now… she’s right there… she’s right there.”

*********

Marie sat up on the exam bed and pulled her oxygen mask off. The room around her was empty. She knew it was the med lab, she recognised it. Tentatively she pulled the covers back and swung her legs over the edge of the bed, then she flexed her ankles and toes. Next she stretched her arms, stretching them above her head and moving them from side to side. She heard a couple of pops and clicks in her back.

“Jesus! What have I been doing, running a marathon in my sleep?” She coughed, her throat all of a sudden feeling a little raw and unused.

Sliding gently of the edge of the bed, the muscles in her thighs hurt, making her groan at the pressure of standing on her legs. Leaning back on the exam bed she tried to lift her leg. It felt so heavy and she only managed to get it up a little before she put it back down. “This is ridiculous!” She shivered and rubbed her arms. “And why the fuck am I so damn cold?”

A soft whooshing sound made her turn to the main door. The young blonde man who entered stopped dead in his tracks at seeing her standing by the exam bed. “Um, hello.”

“Hi. And you are?”

“Um, I’m Justin. Dr McCoy’s assistant.” The boy looked like he’d seen a ghost and she couldn’t understand why he was so shocked.

“Ok then, Justin. Don’t suppose ya would mind runnin’ and gettin’ me some clothes, would ya?”

He quickly put down his books and rushed back towards the door. “Yes, yes, of course.” She laughed softly as he virtually bolted out of the door.

Her legs began to wobble a little, so she sat back on the exam bed and smiled as the door whooshed open again - this time letting Hank into the room. “Well if it isn’t my favourite shade of blue.”

He looked up from his clipboard and stared at her, she smiled and he sighed in relief. “My dear girl!” He crossed the room quickly and enveloped her in an unexpected hug. “My dear, dear Rogue! How I’ve longed to hear your voice again!”

Pulling back from him she laughed. “Afraid it’s a bit croaky.”

“Mmm yes, a little milk and honey should sort that out. I’ll get Justin to run and fetch some.”

“Hope you don’t mind I just asked him to get me some clothes.”

“No no no, I don’t mind at… you asked him to fetch you some clothes?” She nodded. “I’ve just passed him in the corridor and he never said that you were awake. I thought he looked a little pale.”

“I think I gave him a fright for some reason. And he’s your assistant? What is he, twelve?”

“He’s nineteen, actually. Just a little shy, that’s all. Now then, lets have a proper look at you. Have you tried to stand at all?”

“Yeah, but I got a bit wobbly.”

“Muscle ache?”

“Yeah. Gawd, it’s all over! I feel like I’ve been runnin’ for miles.”

He nodded. “I thought you might get a little of that. You’ll have to stay here for a while to…”

“Hank, I can’t, really. I have to get some clothes and I have to go. I have to get home, to Meridian and make sure that…”

He raised his hands to her shoulders to calm her and stop her from rushing off. “The children are here.”

“What… here?” She put her hand over her mouth.

“Yes. They’re perfectly safe and happy and very well indeed. Quite the pride of the mansion in fact.”

“Oh God. Did Clara bring them?”

He rubbed her arms and tried to reassure her. “They came on their own. The… the tape.”

“Tape, what tap… oh fuck! The tape, *THE* tape! Hank, no! The only way they would get that tape is… is if they’re… oh shit! How long?”

“You came to me on April 4th, nearly twelve years ago. Liam and Louise are nineteen in roughly a month. I am so sorry my dear, I tried desperately to bring this about so much sooner.”

“I’ve missed their whole lives! What if they’ve been in trouble, the government, the registration act…”

“Calm down. They are both perfectly safe and thanks to you and Remy have been for a long time. Let me explain everything.” She nodded and tears began to slip down her cheeks..

*********

Logan picked at the label of his beer, flicking the little wet bits of paper on the table, every now and then sparing a glance at Louise who sat opposite him. She was chewing on her thumbnail and had been jiggling her leg up and down for the last ten minutes.

“Would ya calm down already. Hank’ll come get us.”

She stopped chewing and juggling. “Sorry. Do you think Liam’s alright?”

“I think he’s fine.” A small smile tugged at his lips and Louise gave him a confused frown. “Ya gonna come in or listen at doorways all day?”

Louise heard a sigh from outside the kitchen, then Liam walked in and plonked himself in the seat next to her. “Sorry I took off, I just...”

“It’s ok. You’re here now.”

“Dad what if… what if she doesn’t remember us or something? Or she thinks that she’s missed too much and it’s not worth trying to be a family?”

“She would never forget either of you.”

Louise nodded and then chewed on her nail again. “This is just gonna be so hard.”

Logan leaned forward onto the table and looked hard at both of his children. “Look I’m not saying that this is going to be easy, because it’s not. You’re gonna to have to get to know her. Same for her. We have to help her, she’s the one that’s going to need to adjust to things the most.”

“What about you and her?”

He gave a little chuckle. “Louise, darlin’, I think it’s a little early to be worrying about that. But whatever happens, it’s up to your mom.”

“Do you want to be with her?”

Logan laughed at Liam’s question. “That’s rhetorical, right?” Logan stopped laughing when his phone went off. “Yeah? Ok, we’ll be right down. And doc… if I forget to say it later, thank you.” He flipped it shut and looked at Liam and Louise. “She’s awake. Come on.”

*********

Marie had been stretching her legs and walking a little while Hank had explained the last twelve years and the present: the stasis chamber and the effects on her body; the government’s response to the clemency incident; Remy’s death.
He told her what he knew about Louise and Liam, their childhood, their school, their interests, he also told her about their mutations. He filled her in on her friends and some of the general happenings of the school. Then he told her about the FoH facility and Victor Creed and lastly about Jean’s apparent deception.

It was a lot to take in. Marie seemed a bit dazed. “So let me get this straight, both the kids live here, Liam’s on the junior team and does photography, Louise is training for it and wants to teach here?”

“Yes, Liam attends Providence University and Louise wants to teach History. They are remarkable young people. There’s been a lot going on lately and both of them have pitched in with the students and activities and things.”

“But the FoH are still buggin’ around trying to stick their two cents in, you have Victor Creed as a house guest and I almost forgot about the *lovely* Miss Jean Grey and the little games she likes to play!”

“Like I said, there’s been a lot going on lately.”

She leaned up against Hank’s desk and shrugged. “So, are they, you know, around… or are they out, you know, doing school stuff?”

“My dear Rogue, you’ve never really *done* subtle, why start now?”

She laughed. “Hank, where are my babies?”

He laughed back at her. “I’ll call them, they were with Logan not too long ago.”

“Oh.”

“Is that going to be a problem?”

“I don’t know…”

“It wasn’t his fault.”

Marie frowned at him. “Does everyone know the ins and outs of my life?”

“I’m afraid so. Jean made rather a big to-do about leaving, but Charles was rather adamant that he didn’t wish her to remain after what happened.”

“So what did happen?”

“The short version is that Jean found Logan staggering back to your room. She used her telekinesis to guide him into her room and to hold him in place while she attempted to…to have… sex with him. That’s when you found them. Charles eventually got the truth out of her after a week or so and he told her to leave. A team member that you can’t trust isn’t a team member. Logan even insisted that Charles inspect his memories - he wanted everyone to realise that he would never have betrayed you.”

Marie thought about at it all for a moment. “So it was all Jean, huh? Well. But I’m still pissed at him for not trying harder. He wanted everyone to realise that he would never have betrayed me, but he gave up. He should have tried harder.”

“What do you mean?”

“To find me, to convince me to come home. I left and *I* stayed away, kept the kids away, that’s down to me and I know it, but he gave up, Hank. He just gave up on me.”

“Let’s call them down, just see how it goes.” She nodded as he picked up his phone again.

*********

Logan stood in the hall outside the med lab and jerked his head for the twins to go in first. “I’ll be in in a sec. Give you two some time.” They nodded and shuffled in through the door as it whooshed open. Logan let go of the breath he hadn’t realised he was holding. He held up his hands and laughed grimly at himself as they shook in front of him.

He was nervous... scratch that. He was scared, scared just like Liam and Louise were. Shaking his head he flicked his claws out; the pain of them ripping through his knuckles gave him something else to focus on. Taking a couple of deep calming breaths, he flicked his wrists again and his claws shot back into their resting-place.

Marie looked up the instant she heard the door open. She had dressed a short while before in simply blue jeans and a white tank top, but hadn’t put any shoes on and as she slipped off the edge of the bed her feet felt cold on the floor.

She looked over both her children for a beat or two. Both of them looked happy and healthy and strong - for that she was thankful. Liam was the first to move, stepping forward first tentatively then forgetting his fears and rushing into her open arms. He was taller than she was but she still cradled him, squeezing her eyes tightly shut and breathing in the scent of him as he quietly sobbed onto her shoulder.

Louise just stared - only when Marie opened her eyes and smiled at her, she seemed to come to life and ran to her as well. She fell into her mother’s embrace, all three of them crying with relief and joy. Marie’s legs gave out and all three ended up on their knees refusing to let go of each other.

Hank looked on with a smile on his lips - after a minute or two he had to discreetly turn away and dab his eyes with his hankie. Then his composure was once again in place.

***************END OF PART ELEVEN

Title: Missing 12/?
Author: sharonmjl47
Rating: R
Category: Movieverse.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and no one. Sad, isn’t it!
Feedback: Please, bad or good. If no one tells me it’s bad, I won’t know!

**********************

The sun came up over Xavier’s school, but no one on the lower levels noticed. Resting against the doorframe of the med lab Logan watched on unnoticed as Marie sat on the big exam bed and chatted with her children. Getting as much information out of them as she could. Their school reports, boyfriends, girlfriends, their graduation, their prom. She wanted to know it all and they were only too happy to tell her.

In the middle of Liam telling her how he had missed most of his graduation ceremony because he was breaking Louise out of a toilet cubicle that she’d somehow broken the lock on, Marie broke down crying. “I’m so sorry, I missed everything, I missed everything and I… I’m so sorry!” She held them close again.

They hugged her again. “It’s ok. The Professor said that if you and Gambit hadn’t gone that night the world and mutants would be so much worse off, and God knows what would have happened to us then.”

Marie nodded at her daughter wiping her face and chuckling. “How’d you get so damn smart huh?”

“Must be her father’s side.”

Marie’s head whipped round towards the door. “Logan.” Her breath caught in her throat. He was exactly how she remembered him, though why she expected him to look different she didn’t know. Recovering quickly she smothered her small smile, replaced it with a frown and turned away.

“You can’t hide that from me darlin’. I saw that.”

She glared at him. “Saw what exactly?”

He uncrossed his arms and put them in his pockets. “For a second there, you were actually pleased to see me."

She smiled a little. “Just for a second.”

He shrugged, a wide smirk on his lips. “I’ll take what I can get, darlin’.”

She gave a sarcastic chuckle as he moved into the room and stood next to the bed. “You don’t ever change do you Logan.”

“You’d be disappointed if I did.” He forced a smile against his nervousness and reached forward running a finger down and through her white streak. When he realised that his hand was shaking he stuffed it back in his pocket. And then his eyes met hers and she smiled back at him and it hit him just how much he wanted to touch her, hold her, bury his face in all that brown silky hair and drown in her scent. He broke eye contact first and scratched the back of his neck. “We... er... kinda need to talk. I have to explain a coupla things to…”

“Not now. Ok, you’re right, we do need to say some things, but…” she glanced at the twins. “Just not now.” She chuckled and then broke into laughter, free and full of life as she got off the bed and stood in front of everyone. “I need some coffee and a beer, and some food! Christ I’m so hungry I think I could actually eat someone! Ooh chocolate, pretzels! Oh God how I fucking love pretzels!”

“Rogue I do not think it would be wise to eat anything with a high sugar count right now. Rather find something simple, plain salad or chicken and rice.”

“I am not… Whoa!” She spun round to face Hank and instantly went dizzy. Logan caught her as she swayed backwards. Her back was pressed against his chest and she could feel his breath on her neck. She shuddered slightly, and it wasn’t from the cold this time.

They stepped away from each other almost shyly as the others gathered around her and helped her back onto the exam bed. Hank looked into her eyes with his miniature light again. “Well, I think that proves you need to take things a little more slowly.”

“Screw that Hank, I’ve been asleep for years! I want to live! Eat a load of crap and spend some time in the fresh air.”

“Rogue if you overload your body it might react disfavourably. Nausea, vomiting or even something more serious. Now, how many fingers am I holding up?”

He put two fingers in front of her face and she raised her middle finger back. “How many am I holdin’ up doc?”

“Rogue really!” Everyone laughed.

“I’m sorry, but, I want outta here, I’ll take it easy I promise, there’s enough people around to look out for me, but I just need to get some air and get out!”

Sighing, Hank agreed. “Only if you promise to stay with the twins and Logan. I have a few more things that I want to run through with you, and there are tests we need to perform. We still haven’t tested the responses of your mutation yet…”

“Hank, I’ll be fine and if I’m not you’ll be the first to know.” After she flashed him a brilliantly bright smile he relented and let her out of the med lab.

*********

Victor Creed’s nightly sleep had been restless and annoying. Xavier had rooted through his mind for nearly four hours. It had been painful and left him feeling like a large elephant was trampling around inside his head. Xavier had said that there were a lot of abnormalities with some of his memories, like they were more suggestions rather than actual memories and there were blocks that the Professor knew had been put there psychically rather than occurring naturally through trauma. Xavier said that he wanted him to have a full scan in the med lab at some point that day. Victor wasn’t looking forward to it.

He rolled over in the large bed and stared at the clock. It was just past dawn and he’d been asleep for around forty minutes - he couldn’t stop thinking about Xavier roaming through his mind and he couldn’t stop thinking about Louise and how he’d like to feel her against his skin. He threw the covers back and decided to have a shower. He was wound up and frustrated and as the steaming hot water belted his skin he looked down at himself, realising he was horny to boot. Trying to ignore his raging hard-on he washed himself vigorously, then ran his hand through his hair, then shook his head out and ran his hand over his chin. “Need a shave.” He chuckled. “Wonder where little princess is.” His groin responded to the thought of Louise and he swore.

Once he was dried off and dressed in sweats and a black wifebeater he grabbed a small towel and headed down towards the gym. He smirked cockily to himself at some of the appreciative looks he got from a couple of the girls he passed, inflating his ego.

*********

“A pilgrim?”

“Yeah, I was always a pilgrim in the Thanksgiving play and Liam always ended up being dressed as a giant squash.”

Logan laughed and Liam blushed a little. “I didn’t like speaking, o.k.?”

Marie chuckled, then frowned a little. “I’m sorry I didn’t get to see that.” She touched Louise’s cheek and them Liam’s arm. “Sorry I didn’t get to see all your plays and musicals and recitals, everything.”

Louise jumped up out of her seat on the rec room sofa. “I have a load of photos in my room. A lot are of us when were at school and then some of here and of Clara and Fred. School trips, holidays… wanna see?”

“Of course I do…” she gave a small sideways glance at Logan. “But, later on? I would like to talk to Logan for a moment. If you two wouldn’t mind giving us a minute or two?”

Marie watched as Liam and Louise looked at each other, smiled brightly and stood up. She pointed an accusing finger. “What? What was that? I recognise that look! You two used to exchange that look when you were up to something or you knew something that I didn’t.”

“Don’t worry about it, mom, you two take all the time you want.”

Liam followed his sister towards the door. “Yeah, all the time in the world, you know to talk, argue, have sex, whatever…” Liam laughed as the cushion to his mother’s side flew threw the air and hit him on the head.

“Get out, the pair of you!” Logan growled, but there was no weight behind it.

Louise stopped in the doorway and turned to Logan. “See you later. Dad.” She bit her lip, then as she watched a huge smile spread on his face she smiled too before turning back to her brother and pushing him out of the room.

As they practically stumbled over each other to make an exit, both heard Logan’s deep chuckle and they exchanged their look again. This time it was to acknowledge that they thought life was finally getting good. After exchanging a pinkie-handshake Liam ran off towards the kitchen and Louise headed to her room.

Back in the rec room Logan was still grinning like an idiot. “Why are you smiling like that?”

He jerked his head towards the door. “First time she’s called me dad. She said she wanted to wait, until we were together, like it should have been.”

“Congratulations. Seriously, I’m pleased... more than pleased that you get on with them so well.” Marie brought her knees up under her and rubbed he arms.

“You still cold?”

“Yeah. Hank said I’ll warm up eventually. So you and the kids?”

“They’re fantastic, I mean really really fuckin’ fantastic. He’s smart, strong, honourable. He’s got that…arty flare. Guess he got that from you.”

“Not me, I can’t even draw a proper stick man! Kit-kat was always the smart one, Jubes the arty one and me…”

“The sexy one.”

“Logan…” She picked at her jeans and refused to look at his intense gaze. “What about Louise?”

“She’s amazing. Just like her mom, pretty, stubborn, sassy. Christ that girl has a fire in her... When she blows up, damn! stand well back.” He wanted to add ‘She has strange taste in men’ too, but decided to leave all that for later. “They both heal, did you know that?”

“Yeah, they’ve always done that, right from when they were babies.”

“They’re really close too, I think…”

“I’m sorry.” He met her eyes, but she wasn’t able to hold his gaze. It made her feel 17 again and she didn’t need that right now. “I made some very bad choices and I wish that I’d done better. At the time, you know, it seemed the right thing to do and I went with it.”

“I can’t say I’m not pissed about loosing my kids for so long, but… I understand. Maybe I would have sent you all away anyway, somewhere safe, I don’t know.”

“Did it get bad?”

“Yeah, it got bad, people got hurt, a couple of the students simply disappeared. If I’m honest, there were a few times when I was glad you weren’t here. Look, about Jean…”

“I know about Jean and the night I left. i don't want to talk about that woman.” She got up off the chair and walked to the large window at the end of the room, rested her forehead on the glass and looked out at the trees swaying gently in the breeze. “I said some awful things to you, things that I really didn’t mean.”

She hadn’t heard Logan move, but knew he was right behind her. She could feel the heat coming off him. “Doesn’t matter anymore. It was a long time ago.” He gently touched the back of her hair, letting his fingers find their way through to her scalp. “I used to spend hours with my hands in your hair, remember?”

“Yes…” it was a breathy moan and it escaped her mouth without her permission - she couldn’t help it, the same way she couldn’t help closing her eyes and leaning her head back into his hand.

Turning around to face him she opened her eyes, only to be met with intense desire. His hand stayed in her hair and she turned her face to kiss his palm gently, as he closed the space between them. “Marie…” She shut her eyes, tight, but a small tear escaped. It had been so long since she had felt him this close, so long since she’d smelled his pure masculine scent, so long since he’d touched her or said her true name. She wanted to ask him why he had let her go, but right in this moment, she didn’t care anymore.

Gently he wiped her tears away with his thumb and bent his head kissing her chastely on the lips. She suddenly realised that he was as unsure of himself as she was, both wanted the other, that was obvious, but their trust, their original bond had been damaged and neither knew how to fix it.

She whispered against his lips. “We shouldn’t do this.”

“What, kiss?” His voice was as quiet as hers.

“Logan…”

“Yeah...?”

Before she could answer he was kissing her again, his hands sinking into her hair and his lips crashing down on hers. She couldn’t keep her hands off him, it was impossible to resist and she really didn’t want to. Even though for him it had been 12 years of staring at her in the stasis chamber, for her, it had been seven years without him, starved of his touch, his passion and his love. So she kissed him and she let him kiss her, she pressed herself against him and he pressed her into the wall and they kissed.

Louise took the stairs two at a time and jogged down the main corridor of the teacher and visitor dorm, feeling carefree and happy. As she was half way along the corridor she heard a noise behind her and stopped to see who it was. But as she turned to see a hand shot out from one of the rooms and pulled her in.

Before Louise knew what was happening she was pinned up against expensive wood panel by a large chest. “Victor! You scared the hell out of me, leg me go…”

He ground himself against her and pressed his face into her neck, shooting his tongue out to taste her skin. Her gasping breath filled the room as he ground against her again. She wasn’t able to stop herself from moaning as his hands ran all over her body, over the curve of her ass, up her sides and onto her breasts. Her hands found his shoulders and she held on to him because she thought that she might fall. Victor slipped his hands under her t-shirt and she let go so he could get it over her head and throw it on the floor. She knew that she should be leaving or protesting or at the very least trying to stop him, but she just stared at him.

All she could do was whimper as he groped her breasts, while licking her neck. He worked his way to her lips and stole her breath as he kissed her. She couldn’t stop touching him and pushed her hands up under his t-shirt to feel his skin against hers.

Victor broke away from her, both were panting as he brought her hand out from under his shirt and held it to his face. “Open it up, I know you like it. Can see it on your face.” He leaned in and licked the side of her face. “I can smell it too, you’re hot for it, to feel all that power runnin’ through you. Scares you, don’t it, princess. It scares you how much you like it, ‘cause you know you shouldn’t like hurting people, even just a little bit.” His voice was a whisper on her skin. “Scares you ‘cause it makes you just like me, don’t it. Turn it on princess.”

She bit her lip, then licked them as she stared into his pit black eyes. Her mutation seemed to turn on of its own accord and she felt him rush into her. His passion and energy flooded her like the first hit of a drug, it left her feeling half-conscious, almost lazy and her eyes rolled into the back of her head as he hissed at the slight pain. Her knees gave out and he picked her up wrapping her legs around him.

Moan was all she could do as she felt his hands go all over her, her breasts, her thighs, the rush from him blocking out all rational thought. She finally managed to open her eyes when he began to ravage her lips again. Her hands went on his face and she saw nothing but brilliant white light. That’s when she realised - she let go and pushed, completely and utterly, she panicked knowing how much she could really hurt him, how much she had hurt Liam before and she tried to turn it off.

Victor broke away from her, stepping back and leaving her panting breathlessly against the wall. The pain had got too much. He wanted to be touching her again as he liked the rush of her mutation as much as she did, but she had opened it up to far and pushed it back at him, the wave of emotion and power he got was too much.

She looked dizzy for a moment and he caught her body before it hit the floor, watched as her eyes flew back in her head and she started to convulse violently in his arms. Pain and fear rolled off her in waves as he gently laid her on the ground so he could get help, he opened the door to his room and leaned out. “SOMEBODY HELP!”.

*********

“WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO TO HER, YOU FUCKING BASTARD?!”

Victor pushed Logan away from him. “Back the fuck up, runt! We were talking, next thing I know she’s shaking all over the goddamned floor. Had fuck all to do with me!”

Logan growled and punched him in the face, knocking him down. “You fucking stay away from my daughter! I warned you!”

Victor was on his feet and about to pounce on Logan when Scott held him back, Liam holding already onto Logan. All four of them were standing in the hallway outside the med lab. Hank had asked them to leave so that he could help Louise without having to listen to Logan and Victor shout at each other. Only Marie was in there with her.

Both men shook off Scott and Liam who stayed between them. “This isn’t helping anyone, especially Louise.”

This time Logan pushed Scott in the chest. “Killing *him* will help *me*!”

Glancing from Logan to Victor and then back again, Scott shook his head. “If it turns out he had anything to do with her condition, then by all means help yourself, but right now we need to just calm down.”

Marie hovered by the side of the exam bed that Louise was sitting on, paced a little while Hank was checking over her daughter and then while Xavier was searching the girl’s mind. With Louise’s permission, he had wanted to check the level of control that she had over all the aspects of her mutation.

Louise had a blanket wrapped around her shoulders to cover her semi-nakedness and stared at the floor, scared of what was wrong with her and embarrassed at how she was found. Her mother watched Hank and the Professor talked things over on the other side of the room by Hank’s desk. Then Xavier gave them both a pleasant smile and excused himself: He wasn’t able to stay as he had an urgent telephone meeting. Hank said he would be with them in a few minutes as he left the main lab and went into one of the many storage rooms. Marie sat down next to Louise. “So, you want to tell me what’s going on with you and… ‘him’?”

“Nothing.”

“Louise, baby, you were in his room half naked. I mean did he, you know was he trying to…”

“No!”

“This is a mutual thing?” Louise only nodded and Marie swallowed her anger at the thought of Sabretooth trying to hurt her daughter. Then another horrible thought struck her. “Are you sleeping with him?”

Louise turned to her mother with a look of utter embarrassment, she pulled the blanket round her a little tighter. “No! I’m not sleeping with anyone!”

“But you were going to?”

“No! I don’ know. We were kissing and then… I just got kinda lost.”

Marie got up and stood in front of Louise again, rubbing her arms gently. “What do you mean, you got lost?”

She moved her shoulders uncertainly. “Its how he makes me feel. I get anywhere near him and its like the whole world gets really small and stands still and nothing else exists except how I feel and I don’t even know how I feel ‘cause all I can see is him and all I can hear is blood rushing in my ears. He’s so intense, I… I touch him and I can literally feel myself vibrate and if I turn my mutation on, just a little, just to try and gauge what he’s thinking because his eyes never give anything away, it hits me like a truck, its like a…”

“A rush.” One Marie knew only too well.

“Yeah, yeah, a rush, but I don’t know what of. He’s like fire running through my whole body and it burns, on the inside and I… my skin, mom it… it scares me.”

“Sweetie. I understand.”

Louise began to cry softly as she shook her head. “No, no you don’t, I… Hank thinks my control slips, but, how can you understand. It’s like I…”

“Like you have to touch him, you have to have just one more little hit, one more little piece of energy that’s like nothing else in the world.”

Louise stared wide-eyed at her mother.

“You don’t just want it, you *need* it. And it’s not just him, is it? I understand why it scares you, Louise. Before, when I couldn’t control mine, people thought that I was scared I’d hurt someone, scared of the voices in my head. But it’s not that, it’s being scared that you like it. That you like the rush, the feel of someone else’s energy flooding you like hot lava. Especially if said person has more energy that the national grid, if that person lights you up like a Christmas tree and gets you hooked. So yeah, I understand. You have control over your mutation. It’s the lack of control over yourself that scares you.”

“How…?”

“Your father. Long time ago, we had an accident - I had to touch him, take his mutation, heal myself and my whole world… exploded into tiny pieces. Then a couple of days later, something else happened, doesn’t matter what right now, but it was bad and he touched me, gave me everything and I mean everything... and I took it. In the end I pushed him away, but I didn’t want to, I stared wide-eyed at him nearly bleeding to death at my feet, but I couldn’t move, couldn’t help, I just stood there. Crackling with energy, like a cooling engine, hissing and pinging, trying desperately to settle, to get a hold of myself so I didn’t put my hands on his face and take what was left.”

Louise started to sob and Marie held her close and stroked her hair. “I’m… I’m so sorry. You must be so disappointed in me!”

“Shh, it’s ok. How could I ever be disappointed in you, huh?” She stepped back and lifted Louise’s chin, wiping her checks with her own hands. “We’ll figure this out.”

*sniff* “You promise?”

Marie kissed her on the forehead. “Yeah, I promise.” She held her close again and smiled when she felt Louise hug her back.

A small cough to the side made them break apart. Louise looked at Hank shyly and wiped her face. “Feeling a little better, my dear?” She nodded. “Good. From what I can gather with a little help from the Professor, you have two aspects to your mutation. The first part is your empathic ability through touch, which you do have control over, the second part is a little more complicated.”

“What do you mean?” Marie continued hold Louise close and rubbed her back soothingly.

“The first day that they came here, Louise had a panic attack, or what we all thought was a panic attack. Liam diffused it by letting her, in a way, use him as an outlet of sorts. At the time I was amazed at the amount of power she projected through Liam and it has puzzled me ever since. Charles believes that this is where you are lacking in control. The ‘power’ or ‘energy’ obviously builds up, and with no kind of release this is why you get these fits and uncontrolled outbursts. It’s basically more than your body can handle.”

“So what am I supposed to do?”

“Both Charles and I think that with some help you can control this, so he’s going to talk Scott about you using the danger room as a test area and give your mutation the room and safety it obviously requires.” Louise nodded wearily and Hank patted her gently on the knee. “I know things are all over the place at the moment, but try and stay calm, no stress or over-excitement.”

Marie and Louise exchanged glances, both more than a little worried, it was going to be easier said than done.

*****************END OF PART TWELVE.

Title: Missing 13/?
Author: sharonmjl47
Rating: R
Category: Movieverse.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and no one. Sad, isn’t it!
Feedback: Please, bad or good. If no one tells me it’s bad, I won’t know!

***********************************

Logan watched her pace around the room. She was tired he could tell - her body ached, her head ached and he knew she wanted to relax but couldn’t. He rested his head against his headboard and sighed. “Marie… sit down.”

She stopped and stared at him, then sat down on the edge of his bed, the bed that used to be their bed. “I just don’t know what to do Logan. She’s so scared and I know Liam can feel it too.”

“Chuck’ll help, he helped you.”

“Actually, good old ‘Chuck’ didn’t have a thing to do with it.”

Curious, Logan moved over, beside her. “Whatdya mean, I thought you two had meditation sessions or whatever flowery thing he does?”

“Logan you can’t call it ‘flowery’ when you used to do it too.”

“Mines a different kind of meditation, darlin’. Come on, whatdya mean?”

She scrunched up her face and then turned to look at him. “Promise you wont get mad?”

“I make a point of not making promises I can’t keep. Spill.”

She gave a short laugh at him then took a deep breath. “It was Erik.”

“Magneto?! *He* taught you how to control your mutation?” He was just plain shocked.

“Kinda - the him in my head. He made me realise that it was just a simple case of putting up shields in my mind. He made it sound more like magnetic fields, but you get the idea.”

“Does Chuck know?”

“Yeah.”

“So, is that weirdo still in your head?”

She frowned. “Charles?”

“No, Mags.”

“Oh, him. No, he faded a long time ago, along with the lovely and quite insane Ms Danvers.”

Logan leant towards her and nudged her slightly. “What about me?”

She met his eyes and almost smiled at his childish curiosity, but quickly looked away at her feet, cursing the heat rising in her cheeks. “No, you faded too.”

“Darlin’. Why do you even try to lie to me?”

She laughed. “What gave me away?” She had never let him fade, she’d clung to the last shreds of him and held him to her as if her life had depended on it.

“Scent. It gets a little bitter when people lie. Or it could just be the way you turn beet red.” He dropped his voice and whispered in her ear, making sure his breath tickled her skin. “Which by the way I think is kinda cute.”

When she turned her face to meet his their noses touched. “Cute? You, Mr-badass-Wolverine just used the word cute?”

“Ain’t no other way to describe you.” He reached his hand up and ran the back of his fingers along her cheek. It felt smooth against his own hardened skin, perfect as if it had never been touched before. Turning his hand over so that the tips of his fingers were touching her, he moved to her lips, running lightly over their plump surface.

His eyes followed his fingers and she watched him. Before she could stop herself her lips parted slightly, allowing one of his fingers to slip into her mouth. He felt the edge of her tongue flick over his finger before he slowly removed it and put it into his own mouth, savouring her taste.

Before either of them had another conscious thought his hands were back on her face and he was kissing her. The taste of her on his finger was good, but it was second best and he simply wouldn’t settle for that, he had to have the real thing. Her tongue swirled around his as he laid her back on the bed, her thighs falling open easily to allow him on top of her, his erection pressing heavily against her.

Although their kisses weren’t fast, or frantic, at first, they soon became filed to the brim with need, threatening to overflow. They could feel each others’ desire, she hadn’t been touched like this for so long, she hadn’t felt wanted like this and hadn’t needed to be touched so badly for such a long time.

Logan felt her stiffen under him and he pulled back. “You ok? Um, is this too fast?”

She pushed him away and sat up, but though he did the same, his hand remained on her thigh. “Seven years, I haven’t done this in seven years…”

“Marie we can go…”

“Wait. Its not seven years, it’s nearly 19, Logan I haven’t had sex for nearly 19 years, not unless sex with myself counts and I don’t think it does.” He looked at her puzzled. “I know you, you… you couldn’t not, you know.” Then he caught onto what she was trying to say and he dropped his head with a sigh.

“No I couldn’t.”

“How many?”

“Marie, I …”

“Jus’ tell me Logan.”

“Four.”

“Times or women?”

“Women.” He stood and ran his hands through his messy hair making the little peaks stick up even more. “But only once since you’ve been here, in stasis. You left and said in no uncertain terms that you wanted jack shit to do with me. I got mad and had a few benders. Then when you turned up here in that hazard suit, you wouldn’t let me near you, wouldn’t let me help, touch you, anything. I realised how much I’d missed you.”

“Only once since I’ve been here?” He kept his back to her.

“Yeah, couple of Christmases ago. Drank enough Scotch to sink the Titanic, I woke up in some dingy motel room. The girl was gone, but I could smell what happened.”

“Thank you.”

He turned back to her, anger and confusion crossing his face at the same time. “What? Thank you?”

“For being honest. You could have lied and you didn’t. Thank you.” Rising gently from the bed as she walked to the door, but as she opened it his palm slapped against it slamming it shut. She turned and met his gaze, she knew he was trying desperately to gauge her mood, her reaction, but couldn’t because he couldn’t smell past his own hurt.

“We split up, I thought… I thought I was never gonna see you again, thought that you hated me and wanted me out of your life, you… YOU left me! I tried to explain Marie, but you *wouldn’t* listen.” She watched him pace back and forth, getting more and more agitated.

“I know and I would never judge you for that. Jesus Logan how can I have expected you to be faithful to me when I didn’t want it! I just wanted to know if you’d been with anyone, that’s all.”

“So why walk out, huh? Why not just sit back on the bed and we pick up were we left off, why walk out?”

“Because we shouldn’t be doing this anyway Logan. You’re right, I left, I lied about the kids and kept them a secret from you and I’m sorry, I am so very sorry. It was selfish and stupid and at first done purely out of my own hurt pride, but the more time went on the harder it got to tell you, and the FoH were everywhere… I only just managed to keep me and them and where we came from a secret. I’m sorry Logan, ok, I’m sorry.”

Sometime during her rant she had started to cry and she leaned her back against the door, wiping her face, but the sound of his voice, quieter than before made her forget about her tears. “Do you love me Marie?”

He sounded so unsure, so scared, but she could still see the tension, the anger. Although less than before, it was still evident in his frame, radiating out towards her. “Logan…”

“Jus’ answer, dammit. Do you love me?” Resting his forehead against hers, he squeezed his eyes tightly shut, his voice just above a whisper. “Just tell me, god, just tell me that.”

A heartbeat passed, two, three...

“Yes. I never stopped loving you. It was just another reason to stay away. I knew that I loved you and that I would always love you and because of that I would end up forgiving you and I was so angry with you that I didn’t want to.”

He moved away from her and raised his hand to her face again, wiping away a couple of fresh tears she had shed. She gasped first at the feel of his touch and then at the single tear, the one clean pear shaped tear that he let go of, as his anger and some of the tension left his body. “I don’t think I’ve ever said it, but…”

“Ya did.” He looked confused, honestly not able to remember ever telling her. “In the blackbird, on the way back from rescuing the Professor in Dallas, ya remember? The Brotherhood nabbed him and I got hurt on the rescue.” She couldn’t stop crying.

“I remember. Ya ended up with a metal rod through your stomach.” His breath touched her lips as he spoke and she briefly wondered when he had gotten that close.

“And you pulled it right out, told Hank to stop his fussing and touched me, held on for so long. You were in my head, whispering how much you needed me, needed me to live and how much you loved me. So that’s how I know that you do. S’why I never asked you tell me or nothing. ‘cause I already knew.”

His lips descended onto hers the second that she had finished talking, his lips were hot and demanding with open wet kisses. Sweeping his tongue along her full bottom lip made her open her mouth and he kissed her with as much love as she did him. Marie found her hands captured in his, fingers intertwining as she moaned into his mouth.

Once they broke apart after their initial kisses it seemed to open a floodgate, his hands began to roam over her body, seeking access under her shirt and feeling her skin. He was whispering in between kisses. “I… love you…so, so…. much. You’re so beautiful… so soft, I missed… you…. so much darlin’. I never… want to…. be without… you again… love you…”

All she could do was moan and press herself against him, her senses on overload, her body arching into him, screaming out for more of what he was offering her after being starved from him, from anything for so long. “God Logan!” She pulled his shirt over his head and threw it away, then as he took her lips again she made him growl by dragging her nails down his back.

He had her legs wrapped round his waist and her back slammed firmly against the door in a heartbeat. It vibrated against her back, but she only registered his mouth gently sucking on the sweet spot just below her right ear. The second time the door vibrated she definitely noticed it as it was accompanied by a familiar voice.

“Hey, anybody alive in there?”

Marie broke Logan away from her neck and tried to calm her breathing. “Jubes.”

All Logan could do was make a pained face. “Ignore her, maybe she’ll go away.”

There was more thumping on the door. “Heard that you miserable Cannuck, let me see my girl!”

He let Marie down to the floor again. “You got 10 minutes with that loud mouth and then…” he kissed her deeply. “Your sweet little southern ass is mine!”

“Whatever you say sugar.”

As he closed the door behind him he could hear the happy shrieking of the best friends’ reunion. He smiled. Any other day, he would have told Jubilee to fuck off so he could have Marie, but she needed it, she needed her friends to adjust back into things and he congratulated himself quietly on doing the right thing for once.

He turned towards the stairs planning on going outside for a cigar, then maybe sitting quietly while he thought up a thousand different ways he could kill Victor Creed for even thinking about touching his daughter, but Scott shot past the bottom of the stairs and called to Logan to follow him.

“Logan, come on, the Professor has had some news about the facility. We know who’s behind it.”

He feel into step beside Scott and they jogged down the hall. “SO who is it?”

“Magneto!” Scott opened the door to the Professor’s office.

“MAGNETO! He’s dead, right, tell me he’s dead?”

“Yes Logan, you’re quite right - Erik is dead. But his connections are apparently are still quite alive. My source is a mutant who used to be an affiliate of the Brotherhood before it disbanded some time ago.”

“So who is this guy? Can we trust him?”

“Scott, he has always been an informant of sorts, but I have always had to keep his identity a secret. Information that he has provided in the past has always been trustworthy, so I have no reason to doubt him now.”

Logan relaxed his body slightly and let it slump into one of the professor’s plush chairs. “So get on with it Chuck, the suspense is killing me.” Scott chuckled at Logan’s dryness and sat down next to him.

“As it turns out Magneto did buy the facility when the original company went bankrupt around ten years ago, but we can’t find a record of the ownership being transferred after his death.”

“So this Belzec Magnes guy or whatever the fuck his name is…”

“Belzec is the name of a Nazi extermination camp and Magnes is polish for magnet.” Rogue walked casually into the room. Xavier had known she was there and asked her telepathically to enter. Logan smirked at her as she perched herself on the edge of the desk.

Scott rose and hugged her, a broad grin on his face. “Its good to see you, properly, I mean.”

“Thanks, its good to see all of ya as well. But what does a Nazi camp have to do with anything?”

“Belzec Magnes is the property developer who bought the facility that Jean said she had escaped from, where we found Sabertooth.”

“Darlin’ how the hell did you know that?” She smiled a little shyly, glanced at the Professor and tapped the side of her head.

“Magneto. Of course, that’s what it has to do with this. I never thought to check out the actual name for hidden meanings or language variations. Well done Rogue, it’s good to have you back.” He sighed deeply. “I hope that we can make your transition back into a normal routine as easy as possible for you. This kind of situation can be traumatic if not handled correctly. My door will always be open for you.”

“Thank you. But I think at the moment I just need to concentrate on the kids, that’ll get me through.”

Scott touched her arm and squeezed a little. “We’re all here for you, and for the twins.”

“Thank you, I…”

The office door flew open, reverberating against the wall with a loud crash as everyone spun round. Hank rushed up to the desk and threw down a series of what at first glance looked like x-rays.

“Hank, what on earth is the matter?”

“It’s in his brain… I’m, I’m astounded! I heard of it being researched into and even read some of the preliminary findings, but no one had ever tried such a barbaric form of control, it’s… it’s just…”

“Hank! What?” Hank seemed to come to his senses, and looked from one to the other of his friends.

Shaking his head, he spread the scans out on the desk. “Victor Creed, these are his x-rays and brain scans. His body x-rays and full scan were normal for a man or mutant of his size, but his brain scans have shown an anomaly.”

“What kind of anomaly and what does it have to do with barbaric uses of control?”

“Charles, forgive my ramblings, I… I have to admit I’m finding it all a little hard to grasp.” He picked up the main scan and walked to the window, holding it up against the light. “If you’ll look at this one, you can see here, just below the left side is a small white dot. In a normal hospital, this scan would be considered normal and this little dot would probably have been missed, but due to my overactive interest in genetics and brain function, I spotted it and had it magnified.” He went back to the desk and then returned to the window, again holding it to the light. “This is that small dot, but magnified 1800 times.”

The Professor, Rogue, Logan and Scott starred at the scan, but none of them really grasped what they were looking at. “What ya trying to say doc, Bagpuss has got a marble egg wedged in his head?”

Xavier got a little closer to the scan. “Hank, maybe you would like to elaborate further?”

“Yes. Yes of course. This section here that Logan referred to as a marbled egg, even though it does look like an egg, these lines are in fact the outer wires of a neural micro-chip.” Hank took a roll of tape from the desk and secured the scan to the window. “These small marks here are marks from the initial surgery to insert it and these ones, almost invisible to the human eye, are the scars from stitches that initially held the device in place before they degraded. Why his regeneration didn’t take care of them I can’t explain, possibly they could have been tricked by a druga nd therefore his regeneration didn’t see the scars as a threat to his health, I don’t know, but I digress.”

“What does it do?”

“Well, I can’t really tell just from the scans, but I can get a rough idea from the position in the brain. The central nervous system…”

“Uh, Hank I think given the company you’d better make this simple.”

“Bite me, Summers!”

“I’ll carry on. Think of the central nervous system—the brain and
spinal cord—as consisting of a box with an input and an output. The input
exerts its effects on special nerve cells called receptors, cells modified to respond
to what we can loosely term ‘outside information’ rather than to synaptic
inputs from other nerve cells. But if a device was placed in the brain in the right place it could influence the receptors. Damage to certain regions of the brain, most notably the prefrontal cortex, can result in extremely violent behaviour.” He pointed to the larger scan that showed the chip as a small white dot. “That is exactly where the chip is placed. The prefrontal cortex is that part of the brain that processes information regarding threats and fear, inappropriate anger and aggression.” He moved away from the window and cleaned his glasses on his lab coat.

“So this thing makes him angry?”

“My dear, it is much more than that. If this chip was ‘set off’, activated or even exploded, he would go far past the point of anger, he would lose all of his humanity and he would simply wish to kill and destroy everything in his path. Violence and berserker rage beyond all comprehension. Granted given Creeds nature, he is already prone to violent behaviour and he has serious control issues, but this would just shut done all rational thought.”

“So what does this all mean?”

“Quite simply, Scott, it means that he is a danger to everyone in this building. This chip was inserted by a surgical expert, they really knew what they were doing. If it has the capabilities to be activated by remote then he is a bomb waiting to go off. He would have no mercy, no recognition and on top of all that he wouldn’t be able to recognise anyone else as a threat, he would have no fear. Which in itself would make him lethal.”

“Hang on, Louise told me about that facility and finding Victor. Has anyone thought that Jean gave him to us on purpose? I mean from what I can tell, we figured out that the FoH thing is faked, who’s to say that facility wasn’t *hers*?”

“Rogue’s right.”

“Darn tooting, I’m right! Goddamned women! He’s the perfect weapon to use against us - I mean, how many people would he hurt before we brought him down? Is he a distraction, a revenge mechanism, what?”

“Yes, I fear you may be on right track Rogue. I feel we need to take action and find Jean before we run out of time.”


***********END OF PART THIRTEEN

Title: Missing 14/?
Author: sharonmjl47
Rating: R
Category: Movieverse.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and no one. Sad, isn’t it!
Feedback: Please, bad or good. If no one tells me it’s bad, I won’t know!


**********************

“Doc, you get this wrong and I’ll…”

“Victor, I have explained several times: If I get this wrong, you will most probably be dead, so idle threats mean nothing at this point.” Hank used a small foot control to lower the ‘dentist’ like chair Victor was lying back in. “I have administered a strong painkiller, but given your healing factor I am afraid it might not have much effect - however, if it were not for your healing we would not be able to try this in the first place.”

As gently as he could Hank moved Victor’s head into position and placed a large scanner just above it. A holographic image of the inside of Victor’s brain flashed up and Hank could plainly see the position of the chip.

Hank wheeled over a trolley with a small metal tray, five instruments neatly laid out: A hand-drill, a scalpel, a small camera on the end of fiberoptic pipe and a needle with surgical thread on it. He picked up the long hand drill first. “Sure this ain’t jus’ a fancy ways of killin’ me off?”

“My friend, I took an oath to provide the best medical attention to any and I mean *anyone* who requires it, no matter what their race, gender, or affiliation may be. That oath includes you. Judging by the position I won’t be able to remove the chip without killing you, but my aim is to get some close-up images of it to determine its function. Now, please try and keep still. If the pain becomes too much then simply raise your hand and I will stop.”

Raising the drill to the side of Victors head, he pressed down and began to drill. Hank could see Victor grip the arms of the chair, but he made no sound and not once raised his hand to stop him.

*********

Scott, as instructed by Xavier, had gathered his the best of the X-Men in the briefing room: Jubilee, Logan, ‘Ro, Pete, Louise, Marie and Liam all stood around the central holo-map.

“I don’t know what the Professor has planned, but wherever we go, Louise and Rogue stay here with Kitty, Elizabeth and the Professor for the children. Hank is obviously staying behind to monitor Creed.”

“Hang on a second…”

“Rogue, you’re not on active duty, you’re not fully up to this and neither is Louise.”

“Scott, Hank said that my powers are back on top form, including my invulnerability and super strength…”

“Even more reason to be here with Victor Creed. If Hank is right about this chip inside Creed’s head, he could turn nasty at any time. I want Logan out with us, which means I need someone here and you’re it.”

“Fine. I guess I would rather have Louise here anyway at the moment.” She put her arm around her daughter who simply and clearly looked relieved. “Okay. We’ll stay with Betsy, Xavier and Kit-kat. Actually I was curious about that, why doesn’t Kitty go on missions anymore, and why haven’t I seen Bobby?”

Jubes nudged her. “Sorry, left that outta the goss. Kit-kat decided she wanted the quiet life and quit the team. Tried to make him go too, but little Bob didn’t agree with her, so they split up. That was one hell of an argument I can tell ya! Bobby’s not about ‘cause he’s in Boston visiting his dad, cancer or something major like. I tried to get him to talk about it, you know, open up a little? But you know what the Iceman’s like. Won’t talk, won’t trust, not since Johnny left.”

“Poor guy. Must be hard. I know he was close to his father.” When Marie said that Louise looked up and Logan, catching her eye, winked at her. It earned him a bright, glowing smile. Even only after a year of knowing Liam and Louise, he knew that they were close, knew he could count on them and vice versa. He couldn’t quite get his head round how he felt, it was strange to him. Protectiveness that was so fierce it almost hurt to think what might happen to them, it wasn’t like it had been when he first met Marie. Sure, he had wanted to keep her safe whatever the cost, including the sacrifice of his own life, but… This was different, a different kind of love. In some ways, it overwhelmed him.

Xavier entered the room and explained that by using Cerebro he had been able to detect a small trace of Jean. For whatever reason she had been distracted enough to let her shields slip for a millisecond and he had found her. “I’ve had Katherine find the exact address and it is a Hospital called Arlington Urgent Care. Its just over a mile away from the Pentagon in Washington. All information shows that it is a fully functioning emergency care hospital, but it does has a private section that was opened two years by a private benefactor. Katherine is currently doing some research to find out who that is, but I’m guessing that private wing is where you will find Jean and whatever she’s up to.”

“That close to the pentagon, sir.”

“I do not like it either, Scott.” Xavier crossed his hands and thought for a moment. “The only logical theory that I can think of is that she wanted us to find Creed. She knew that considering the condition we found him in we would bring him here and attempt to help. Hank hasn’t finished trying to investigate this chip yet, so we will have to see if he can confirm his fears. But nonetheless, Creed is here and could be a considerable danger to us all.”

“So we keep him outta the way. Danger Room?”

“Rogue... although a good idea, I doubt the DR would hold him. Though… it would hold the students. Scott, do you still have that pool hall/leisure centre program?”

“Yes sir, but surely you…”

“Yes, I do. Storm, if you would cancel all lessons and have the students gather in the Danger Room? Explain minimally about the situation and run the program. Myself, Katherine and Psylocke can go in with them to keep some semblance of order, but other than that once we are all in, I want the lower levels closed off. The children are the priority. If Hank is right, Creed’s intelligence will be greatly diminished. The grounds are vast enough, he won’t find the way out before he can be neutralised.” ‘Ro left the room with Scott to get all the children down. “Once we are all safe, I want Rogue and Louise to help Hank monitor Creed. Remain with him at all times.”

“Sure thing.” She nudged Louise a little. “We can handle that.” Louise smiled back at her mother confidently, proud to be included.

“All right. Wolverine, Colossus and… Liam, have you considered a codename?”

“Well kind off, but I think it’s a little predictable. Spiral.”

Pete slapped him on the back. “Sounds good. Memorable, not predictable.”

Xavier smiled at both the men and Logan chuckled a little. “Welcome to the X-Men Spiral.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“The three of you go and get suited up and them meet Storm and Cyclops in the hangar.” Then with another reassuring smile and a nod to all of them he left the room, crossing the hall and opening the Danger Room.

Louise was the first to move. Going over to her brother, she held out her hand and extended her little finger. He grinned and hooked his own with it. “Be careful.”

“’kay. Lou? Umm, don’t do anything stupid.”

“Would I ever??”

He rolled his eyes and she hugged him, left as only as their mother moved to hug him as well. She touched his face lightly and them turned to Logan, jabbing a finger in his chest. “He comes back in one piece!” Flashing her a trademark smirk, he then glanced at Liam before returning his gaze to Marie, she looked at her feet unable to meet his eyes. “You, um, be careful too.”

She turned on her heel and went out the room, trotting to the elevator to catch up with Louise. Logan caught her arm and spun her around, kissing her, deep and hard and full of love. Love that he had been holding onto, ever since she had left him. Marie wrapped her arms around him and held on tight as she kissed him back with everything she had.

Logan broke the kiss first, stroking her jaw with his thumb, then he looked almost shy about his display. “Um, be careful, Creed’s a nasty piece of work when he gets going, ur, take your shots early and take him down as quick as you can ‘cause he wont tire.”

“Don’t worry, I can handle it.”

“Ok.” He looked back and saw Liam and Pete watching with smiles on their faces and then behind Marie was Louise’s head poking out of the elevator, watching as well. He scratched the back of his head. “I love you.” His voice was just above a whisper, but he knew that she heard.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that.”

Meeting her eyes he couldn’t miss the mischief behind her lashes and decided to play along by growling at her. “I. Said. I. Love. You.”

She stepped a little close and kissed his jaw. “Good, that makes us even then.” He kissed her forehead and breathed her in before she moved off to the elevator with Louise.

“Lou.”

She poked her head back out. “Yeah?”

“Be careful.”

“I will, dad! Don’t worry.” She went back in.

Logan turned back to Liam, then seemed to think of something else and called again. “Lou.”

Her head came out once more. “Yes?”

“Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Why does everybody always say that?” Back in.

“Lou.”

“What?!?” Back out.

“If he does go nuts, he won’t know anything, not you, not your name, not your scent, nothing. It won’t matter what you say, he just won’t know you. Take it from me, berserker rage, it’s like red rag to a bull and all you can see is the rag, nothing else, you’re blinkered, blind with it.”

She nodded and got back in the elevator, but just as Logan turned his back she poked her head out again. “Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“Love you.”

“Love ya too kid.” She smiled and finally got back in and pushed the button to ride up to the main part of the school.

*********

Sebastian sat casually in a large leather chair while Jean Grey explained to two of their ‘Brotherhood’ what was to be done. He watched the way she handled them, like a stern mistress talking to school children, ordering them around, leaving no doubt who they were to listen to and who was in charge. He liked it, revelled in it, enjoyed it when he let the tables turn and let her treat ‘him’ like that as it was usually her who was on the receiving end. The last time had been with a cane - he had especially liked that.

His voyeuristic musing was broken when Jean leant forward and picked up the two vials of cloudy liquid by his side. She smiled, knowing full well that she had given him a perfect view down her blouse.

Handing a vial to each mutant she made things clear again. “You stick specifically to the time-table. The clearance cards you have will get you into the main foyer of the Pentagon, then you split up. Bandit, you are to find your way to the cafeteria, there you touch as many people as you can, within minutes the whole place will be in chaos. Callisto, you have an extra clearance card, this will get you into the military wing. Our contact will meet you and take you to your target. You know what to do once you’re there.”

Sebastian rose gracefully from his seat and adjusted the sleeves on his expensive suit. “I don’t need to tell you how important it is that you touch no one until you reach your specific targets. If either of you are discovered before that, the whole plan will be ruined. In that case, I will personally see to it that rather than being hailed as heroes to our cause you will be sacrificed like rabid dogs.”

Both nodded, then took the lids off of their vials and rubbed their hands with the milky liquid.

Jean looked at her watch. “You have an hour before you’re due to leave. Go and get ready, go over and over your timetables, there will be *no* mistakes.” As they left Jean sat down in the chair next to Sebastian’s. “Are you sure we chose the right two?”

“Of course we did. Although good in their abilities, both aren’t very bright - once they are within the walls of the pentagon they are both bound to panic and something will inevitably go wrong, thus getting both of them killed, or interrogated to kingdom come. Either way their ‘Brotherhood’ alliances will be discovered and once again the world will have someone substantial to stand up to them.”

He poured himself a small shot of something and then another, handing it to Jean. “The President’s visit to his Military Secretary will be even more interesting for him than he anticipated.”

“Cheers!” He took a sip of his amber liquid. “In just over 90 minutes, Jean, the dream my father gave up on will finally be a reality. The Brotherhood will once again be in the forefront of the fight for Mutant supremacy.” She raised her glass and saluted him with it. “When will you activate the chip for Creed?”

“Just before those two idiots leave. That way, once Xavier and the X-Men realise what’s happening, it will be too late. Not that it will really matter, it’s a four hour drive from Westchester, 80 minutes by jet. Either way, they’ll be too late.”

Putting his glass down gently on the small side table, he picked up the DVD disc that was next to it. “This, however, will be delivered right on time. My own private message to that bumbling idiot who thinks he’s running this country, when really it’s us who should be in charge. And given time, when every mutant who’s fed up with being treated as an ‘equal’ to humans hears our cause, that’s how it will be.”

Jean rose and took the disc out of his hand and placed it in its protective case. “I’ll make sure Callisto has it on her.”

Turning away, he lifted his glass to his lips again. “I don’t want any mistakes, Jean.”

“There wont be any except the ones we want them to make.”

“My father’s plans were invariably thwarted by Xavier and his little band of followers. I won’t have that, won’t stand for it. I am a better man than he was, a better leader, a better strategist, and this day, I’ll prove it. Prove it was wrong to keep me a secret, keep me hidden at school. I could have helped him, could have made the Brotherhood better, with me it would have been magnificent!” The strength of his grip grew as he let his bitterness show and the thin glass he was holding shattered in his hand, spraying the table and his suit with shards of glass and amber liquid.


*****************END OF PART 14

Title: Missing 15/?
Author: sharonmjl47
Rating: NC-17
Category: Movieverse.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and no one. Sad, isn’t it!
Feedback: Please, bad or good. If no one tells me it’s bad, I won’t know!

**********************

“Hank? Are you sure having your nose so close to the screen is a good idea? No wonder you have to wear glasses.”

“Rogue, my poor eyesight is, I am afraid, a by-product of my mutation. When I wore glasses when I was a young man, I put it down to countless hours of reading medical journals, but alas, it is nature’s sense of humour once again.”

“Sense of humour? What - to give a genius who wants to read bad eyes?”

Chuckling, he turned away from his laptop to her. “Something like that.” He stood and stretched.

Marie got up from her chair as well, moved over to the edge of the small library balcony and looked down on the student reading area. She saw Creed, lying asleep on a large leather bean bag. Louise was there, too, on a desk behind him with her feet resting on a chair, elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands. She had her eyes fixed on Victor’s sleeping body, watching him breathe and shift around.

They had all been in the school library since the others left on the jet, around half an hour ago, but she felt like it was hours already. Her and Hank had retreated to the top section where the student computers were, but Louise had wanted to watch over Victor.

“Did you find anything?”

“Yes. Apparently, the primal function of the chip is to increase aggression, but there is also a small explosive embedded in its core. I was able to drill into his skull and get my miniature portable x-ray machine. Developed it myself you know. It’s a very fine firberoptic tube which holds a…”

“Hank.”

*coughs* “Yes well, I was able to get it close enough to get a film. Look, I’ll show you.”

He turned back to the laptop and brought up Creed’s x-rays. Marie turned away from the balcony and sat next to Hank. “Ok, so what am I looking at?”

Using his pencil as a pointer he circled the image. “This whole white section here is the chip, this smaller dark section is the explosive. It is wired directly into the chip and then into the surrounding section of his brain. If we try to remove it, it will explode.”

“How big a blast?”

“Oh, my dear! This scan is magnified thousands of times! The ‘blast’, as you put it, would be no more than a little spark to us, like a fuse blowing or a light bulb, but inside his brain, I’m afraid it would be fatal. This area here would be damaged, it would haemorrhage and swell, killing him within a matter of minutes, if not immediately despite his healing factor.”

Marie sighed and shook her head at the screen. “She’s a piece of work!”

“I would like to give Miss Grey the benefit of the doubt and say that this might be a trifle advanced for her knowledge and skill, but unfortunately it was me who taught her how to sew small intricate stitches like the ones used on our sleeping friend.” He leant back in his chair and sighed. “When I came to the Mansion she already was an excellent physician, but the school’s needs lay more with general medicine and minor injuries, scraped kness, cuts and bruises and maybe the occasional broken arm or dislocation rather than surgery. She had trained in medical school, but had never really had the practical experience and she begged me to teach her. I did. We practised on special surgical models and I commended her several times on how quickly she had picked up the techniques of general surgery, appendix, kidney removal and replacement, heart and lung, and to my shame we covered brain defects and surgery at great length.”

“She used your ‘hobby’ to learn.”

“I doubt back then she had any kind of agenda in mind, but yes, I suppose I was more than happy to keep going over the same things again and again when she asked. Happy to have another share my particular field. She has a natural skill. Her stitching was particularly excellent, small delicate stitches that saved many a student from having any kind of scar.”

“That’s how you know it was her?”

“I taught her, so... You see, the stitch marks that Victor’s healing factor has inexplicably left serve like a signature inside his head for all to see.” He gave a small chuckle. “It must have taken her days, weeks even, to produce such a minuscule explosive, then months of preparation to insert it into the brain, in just the right place, and then to wipe his memory.”

“Why, I wonder.”

“Mmmm, quite. The woman has no patience, lost her temper regularly when she got something wrong.”

“So why go to all the trouble? Hank, if she did all this, developed the chip, went through the preparation of Creed and then basically planted him for us to find, why?”

“I don’t know. To get him close enough and kill us, and maybe also himself in the process?”

“As far as I know she’s got no personal beef with Creed, no history.”

Marie rose and walked back to the balcony.
Hank followed her and glanced down. “She is very attentive. I don’t think she has even taken her eyes of him. It is much the same way she always liked to watch you in the stasis chamber.” He noticed Marie stiffen. “Rogue?”

“Stasis... the virus! It must be that. Logan said she somehow searched Liam’s mind for me in stasis. Maybe it’s that?” She grabbed his hands. “Was there any other area that Jean pestered you to help her with, any other interest you shared?”

Hank flustered a little. “Well, um, ur, yes, I suppose we both shared a passion for genetics, the mutant gene… stem cells, cell regeneration. How you could change the purpose of a gene or cell simply by slightly changing its structure. Logan’s healing factor fascinated her greatly - as it does all of us, I suppose. She took a great interest in the body’s own natural defences, tolerances so to speak…”

“What do ya mean?”

“Well, adrenaline for example. I heard you say on many occasions that there’s no drug quite like it. She wanted to know how far you would need to go before your body started to lose the battle.”

“Battle with what, Hank?

“Well, with… oh!”

“Hank?”

“Oh my stars!”

“Hank?!?”

“Bio and chemical weaponry, microbiology enabling pure-culture biological agents to be developed and used as a weapon - in World War II, for example, and by current terrorists. She was positively fascinated by that. I mean, we all want to work against the kind of quite frankly evil scientists that produce diseases that can be used for weaponization, but she was really passionate about it.”

“Diseases that can be used for weaponization? Like Clemency?”

“Rogue, she couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with that. It was developed by Dr. Martin Crawler, he was an expert in weaponized diseases, a madman, but a genius none the less. She had no affiliation with him.”

“How do you know? Do you or anyone else know where she was after Xavier threw her out? What she was doing? Who she was working with?”

“I didn’t have any contact with her personally, but I did hear about her from time to time. She worked in a New York hospital for some years - emergency medicine, I believe, and then she was working as a mutant medical liaison for the Governor’s office, till about four years ago. I lost track of her then.”

“It has to be something to do with Clemency, otherwise why would she scan Liam’s mind for information about me? No reports and witness accounts mention me, thanks to Charles, and those who might have known, think ahm dead.” She shook her head. “The others will be landing that jet in 40 minutes - we have to try and figure this out, because if it’s somethin’ to do with Clemency, they’re walking into a death trap.”

Both of them sat down again, frustrated about what they were trying to figure out. “Aside from ‘Ro and Scott, she never really had any friends. Her life was Scott, medicine and the school. Or so we all thought anyway. Well, I suppose there was Emma, but she didn’t see her very often.”

“Emma?”

“Emma Frost - another woman with psychic powers. They were studying together and got quite close at one point. ‘Partners in crime’, their tutors called them. I think Emma left just before you and Logan arrived.”

“Hank, you weren’t here then. How do you know all this?”

“Oh, but Rogue - I have always been a part of this school. Charles has been a lifelong friend. I would visit, stay a week or two, and then go back to Washington. I only decided to stay at the school full-time because politics was not going the way I had anticipated and my opinion, as a large blue mutant, was for some reason being overlooked. I really am at a loss as for the reason - it must have been the hair.”

Marie chuckled a little. “Could have been the glasses. No one will take ya serious with those!”

“Possibly.” He chuckled as well. “Or it could have been that from time to time I was known to hang upside down from the ceiling of my office and read the Time magazine!”

Marie let out a hearty laugh. “So this Emma woman, where is she now? Do you think she would answer some questions about Jean?”

Hank took off his glasses and began to clean them on his soft sweater. “The last time I saw her was… oh dear!” Hank snatched up his cell phone from the desk, dialled a number quickly and brought it to his mouth.

“Kitty, Kitty dear?” He could hear young laughter and the clatter of pool balls in the background. “I’m assuming that you took your latop with you? Good, listen I want you to find Emma Frost. Her last known residence was Washington DC, around six or seven years ago. Check police records, Interpol, government, everything you can get access to. Yes, thank you dear, pass me over to Charles, would you? And... Kitty? May I remind you as usual? Please call me Hank.”

Hank tapped his sharp nails on the desk while he waited for Kitty to pass over the phone. “Charles, yes, fine, fine, he’s still sleeping. Rogue and myself have been brainstorming about Jean and her intentions. I’ve asked Kitty to find information on Emma Frost. Well it suddenly occurred to me, she was a friend of Jean’s and rather disturbingly the last time I saw her she was working in Washington DC as a secretary. Where, ur, well, the Hoover Building….”

“Whoa, Hank, you mean the J Edgar Hoover Building, as in the FBI?”

“Yes Rogue, I do. Charles, although it was around six years ago, she may well be working there still, or in another government organisation. Exactly, like the Pentagon, yes, I fear so. Do you still have a direct telephone number for the President?”

Marie watched as Hank nodded and made agreeing noises, and then he flipped his phone shut and placed it back on the desk. “Well?”

“Charles is going to call the President from my lab. According to Kitty, Emma does indeed still live in Washington and she is currently the personal assistant to the President’s Military Secretary in the Pentagon.”

Running her hands through her hair, Marie stood up. “So if she is still friends with Jean, she could get her in?”

“Yes, Jean and possibly anyone else she’s working with. But why, why would they want to get into the Pentagon, why do this to Sabertooth, why want information on you? There’s still too much we don’t know.”

Marie leant on the railing again, looked at her grown daughter and smiled briefly at how proud of her she was. “The virus attacks mutants, unless she’s using it against us, what would be the point?”

“Well, there wouldn’t be one, for her to use it she would most likely be exposed to it herself. So unless she’s planning mass mutant genocide, as well as committing suicide, I don’t think it’s that.” He stretched his back and let out a small sigh. “I could use a cup of nice strong coffee. How about yourself?”

“Yeah, I think I could.”

“Coming right up.”

She watched Hank trot down the spiral staircase, briefly ask Louise if she wanted anything and then leave for the kitchen. She turned back to Hank’s laptop and stared at the image of Creed’s brain. “Come on, think! If it’s not the virus, what is it, what is she doing? Think woman, what do you know about Jean Grey?” She rubbed her temples a little. “Psychic, teleke-whats-it, spiteful, untrustworthy, dangerous... hmm... determined, short tempered... huh... vengeful…. She’ll want revenge, she’ll want revenge on Logan for not wanting her, Charles for kicking her out and me for being what Logan wants. Well, with Creed here, if he hurts just one student, it will be enough revenge on the Professor, and she knows about the twins, so it will be revenge on Logan and me if one of them gets hurt. So that’s all those bases covered.

“What else do I know about you, Jean? You like to brag, you like to make a big fuss about things, let everyone know who’s the centre of attention. Okay, so *we* know you planted Creed, but is that a big enough audience for you? Is that what you want in the Pentagon, an audience? Or is Creed really just to keep us occupied while you’re doing something else?”

Resting her chin on the desk she blew out a long frustrated breath. “Or maybe that’s all you wanted to do and there is no other plan.”

She used Hank’s mouse to click away the image of Creed’s brain and it went back to Hank’s desktop. Opening up a web browser she typed in ‘Arlington Urgent Care’.

Quietly she read through all the information that came up: Physicians were trained in Family Practice, Emergency Medicine or Internal Medicine and backed by a team of Registered Nurses, Licensed Practical Nurses, Licensed Radiology Technicians and ancillary staff. Most major insurances accepted. “Huh, god forbid you turn up without insurance!” The site listed non-emergency conditions that they dealt with: cuts, colds, fevers, sore throats, sprains and fractures. It was also apparently a convenient stop for health checks such as sports physicals, flu shots, occupational health contracts, drug screenings, physical exams and workers' compensation cases.

There wasn’t any information on the private wing, so Marie re-did her search and came up with a newspaper article about its opening.

“Arlington Urgent Care opened its new research wing this month. This sleepy area of Washington is the sort of idyll often romanticised on celluloid. But Arlington also hides a surreal sophistication—a state-of-the-art lab where white-robed scientists are busy tweaking genes to fashion life-saving drugs.

It is here that a cool 2 million dollars have been privately invested in research into genetically engineered (GE) vaccines that can help mutants as well as humans. It is a known fact that on rare occasions the mutant gene rejects the basic vaccines for the ‘flu, hepatitis and other illnesses more serious, but the dream has started here.

This was the first stone to be dropped into placid biotech waters, setting off ripples that are now waves. Start-ups are mushrooming. The Department of Biotechnology has announced an ambitious 10-year vision—vaccines for cholera, malaria, and tuberculosis; biofertilizers, biopesticides, transgenic crops; and gene therapy trials against cancer and HIV for mutants. State government has backed the move all the way, bending over backward to lure firms into their ‘genome valleys.’ Foreign firms and research institutes are rushing in. The Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corp. and the U.S. firm Genome Technologies are collaborating to help with an extra 4.5-billion in research money……”

As Hank’s phone began to vibrate at the end of the desk, Marie turned away from the article and picked it up. “Hank’s phone? Hey Kit, yeah, he’s gone for coffee - we needed something to keep us awake. What? You’re kidding! Jeezes! So this Emma woman was getting her in. It must be something to do with Clemency, she’s running a research lab into genetic vaccines, for god’s sake! Yeah, I gotta find Hank!”

She hung up the phone and didn’t bother to finish reading the article, leapt up from her chair and raced down the spiral staircase. She shouted: “Back in a minute” to Louise and raced towards the staff kitchen.

“Where’s the fire?”

Louise jumped at the sound of his voice, then turned to see him sitting up and watching her - his eyes their usual dark pools that gave nothing away.

“Coffee, apparently.” She got up and gestured towards the door. “Do you want some, or something to eat?”

He waved a hand at her. “Nah, nothin’. How long have I been out?”

“A few hours. Hank said it was your healing factor making you sleep.” She sat on the edge of the large couch in front of him, close enough for their knees to almost touch. Reaching out, she tugged at a strand of his hair . “It’s worked, even your hair has grown back…”

Louise gasped as his hand shot out and gripped her wrist. “You shouldn’t do that. I’m potentially dangerous, remember.” He lessened his grip, but didn’t let go of her, just lowered it to his knee and began to rub slow circles on her skin.

“I guess we’re both kind of a bomb waiting to go off. Hank said I have to avoid stress and excitement.”

“No excitement huh? Think you can handle that?” He rubbed up her forearm and then back down settling his thumb in her palm, rubbing again.

Ignoring his comment she pulled her hand back slowly and inspected her feet shyly. “Look, when this is over…”

“I’ll probably be dead.”

She snapped her head up to look him in the eyes. “Don’t talk like that. Hank… he’s a genius, there’s nothing he can’t do.”

“Except take this out. Booby-trapped or somethin’. Either way, there’s no way out of this. I’m a dead man walking, princess. ‘n besides, last thing you should be thinking ‘bout is me.”

“And why is that?”

He took her hand in both of his. They dwarfed it, making it look even more delicate and feminine. “Because the way I look at you ain’t right. I should look at you and wanna cherish you or some shit like that, keep you safe, make you happy, but…”

“But?”

He reached forward and ran his thumb across her bottom lip. “I look at you and see you writhing against me, those plump lips begging to be kissed or wrapped around my cock, all I wanna do is feel you against me, be inside you, fuck you and have you screaming my name. That’s not what you want.”

“We could be…”

“Because I can smell you, I can smell your *innocence*.” Slowly he slipped forwards onto his knees, but his huge bulk still towered over her as he got closer, his lips a breath away from hers. “I’d take that innocence. It would hurt and you don’t want that.” He ran one hand up her arm, across her collarbone and up onto her throat. As he moved his hand down her front to her breasts and then pressed her back until she was laying flat on the couch, him between her legs pinning her in place.

“Victor, I….”

“What? You what, princess?” His hand snaked back up to her throat, his long fingers wrapping around it, she could feel his claws digging in a little, not enough to hurt, but enough so as she knew they could. He had started this to try to scare her off again, but he found himself unable to stop touching her. He wanted her, wanted nothing more that to cherish her as well as bury himself within her wet, hot folds, but he knew he couldn’t, wouldn’t let himself show weakness, especially for a woman, but he just couldn’t stop.

Another gasp escaped her lips and she closed her eyes tightly when she felt his other hand go up her inner thigh and rub over her clitoris through her thin white linen trousers. All she could do was moan as he rubbed her again and again, her breathing getting more and more rapid.

His grip on her throat tightened a little, but still not enough to hurt her. Feeling his tongue snake out over the edge of her ear she arched into his hand. “You like that princess?” She moaned again, this time in annoyance as he moved his hand away, but she panted against his lips again as he pushed the same hand down the waistband of her trousers and into her panties. “You’ll like this more.”

She felt the tips of his claws slip through her folds and circle her clitoris, she arched off the couch into him. The more she arched her body and the more noise she made. She touched her lips to his and he licked her, then kissed her hard as she came, unashamedly bucking her hips into him.

“Please…”

“Girl, you don’t know what you’re asking.” He still laid on top of her while she shuddered away her orgasm and he was just breathless as he pulled his hands away from her and sunk them into her hair, shaking out her hairband.

“I want more, please.”

“Louise, you….”

“Please! Say something does happen, I don’t want to spend forever wondering about what… you, you know, what you would be like. I can’t describe how I feel about you, because I just don’t know what it is, I just know it has to be you, that I care about you.”

“I take you now the only one whose gonna enjoy it is me. It’ll hurt, I’ll wan’ it from behind, hard... Fuck, princess, I would take you so fucking hard. And I don’t care what you say, you don’t want that, do you?” There was a long moment when she simply stared back into his eyes, seeing nothing but black, then she shook her head a fraction, finally admitting that he would be too much for her. “Good. Now stop wiggling that tight pussy against me and stop tempting me before I just take what I want.”

She hadn’t realised that she was rubbing herself against him – shaking slightly she stopped herself and sat up, taking him with her. Touching his lips lightly with her fingers she saw a flash of disappointment in his eyes, she was sure of it.

“You’re right, I don’t want it like that, I don’t… I don’t want pain or domination or whatever, but I do want you.” She kissed him gently, nothing more than a whisper against his lips. “I want *you* to feel, feel something, anything other than the rage, pain and loneliness I felt when I first touched you. I want you to know what its like to…”

He grabbed her hair and shook her slightly, making her gasp. “What, love? Is that what you want me to feel?” He closed his eyes tightly, resting his forehead against her in what seemed like despair. “Stop teasing me little girl or I will fuck you, right here, right fuckin’ now!” She was right, he needed to feel something other that pain and pure lust, she was different than anyone else, he wanted her differently and he knew that, he just couldn’t admit it. Not even to himself.

“Victor…”

He pushed away from her roughly and stood up, keeping his back to her. “I feel, okay? I feel just fine. I don’t need this shit and I don’t need lessons in love from some little girl hooked on Mills and Boon!”

“Little girl? You son of a…”

Whirling on her he grabbed her by the shoulders and shoved her against the nearest wall, hard. “That’s right, finally she’s getting the idea. I’m a son of a bitch, a bastard, an asshole. And you, your just some little girl who thinks that she can change me, well you can’t, I will always be this way. I’ve spent the last eighteen years knowing nothing but whatever animal I have crawling around inside my head and you think its that simple? What just give the man a little female comfort and suddenly I’m the perfect boyfriend? Fuck that princess! Fuck! That!” He shoved away room her and turned his back again.

His grip on her arms had been hard and she rubbed her them. “You know what I think? I think you’re afraid.”

Whirling on her she jumped at the look of fury on his face. “I ain’ afraid of jack shit!”

“Yes, yes you are. Your shit scared that if you let anyone in then you’ll have to care, afraid that if you give a shit about someone other than yourself, you’ll actually have something to loose and at some point you’ll have to admit who you really are.”

“Fuck you princess, you don’t know me!”

She took an angry step towards him and pushed him in the chest, he remained solid and she ended up retreating her own step. “YES! Yes I do, I’ve seen inside you remember. Felt every emotion, I *know* what you want.”

Moving forward he towered over her and glared into her eyes. “Yeah, and what the fuck is that?”

“Forgiveness.” He barked laughter at her, then his face sobered. “You want someone to tell you that all the things you’ve done, all the people you’ve killed, that it wasn’t your fault, that you were just doing a job, employed. You want to know that your life wasn’t a waste of time, that it all meant something, that you’re worth something. But it doesn’t work that way and you know it. You can’t just erase the past and start again, you have to face up to things, to yourself.” She walked to him and stood in front of him. “That’s why you don’t want to feel, why you don’t want to admit your feelings or your emotions, because you hate yourself for every moment of your life and its easier that way. Its easy just be a bastard that doesn’t care, than to actually be a person and deal with the shit in you life like the rest of us.” She didn’t want to, but she started to cry. “Your afraid to admit that you care for me. You think I’m just a pathetic little girl with some rather third rate romantic ideas, well maybe I am, but at least I have the balls to admit how I feel.”

He watched her stomp towards the door and sighed. “Louise, I…”

***************************END OF AT 15

Title: Missing 16/?
Author: sharonmjl47
Rating: NC-17
Category: Movieverse.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and no one. Sad, isn’t it!
Feedback: Please, bad or good. If no one tells me it’s bad, I won’t know!

**********************

Jean stood stock still, back straight to the wall, her slender arms crossed neatly over her chest. She watched, afraid to move, afraid to be noticed, so she watched as Sebastian trashed his office. She jumped as he slid his hands across his desk sending his papers, pencils and other things, including the lamp, sailing to the floor. Then he roared and upended the desk on its side.

He whirled on her, making her jump again as he caged her in with his arms. “HOW? How could they have known Jean? You’re a smart woman, tell me? They knew that we were coming!”

“I don’t know.” Her voice was quiet. He had been angry before, violent even, but it had always been sexually motivated. This was different.

“You, YOU, said that we could trust her! YOU said that she would get our people in. And what happens? It all goes wrong. She got Bandit shot and Callisto arrested and detained by bio-hazard security, which means that little witch told them everything, the entire plan, your adaptation of the clemency virus, everything.”

He walked away from her and picked up a glass off the floor he had knocked over earlier, then he threw it against the far wall.

“We don’t know how much she told them, she might not have mentioned either of us. Emma has been the closest person to me for years, she wouldn’t just….”

Jean’s voice was silenced by the back of Sebastian’s hand. “You are not the only person to have contacts, people on the inside. I have had a man there for months, keeping an eye on your precious little Emma. While you were watching Callisto getting herself dragged away on the news, he called. Yes, they were meant to get caught, but not before they started my epidemic! The President was tipped off, by *Xavier*, he apparently pin-pointed Emma as a possible threat to security. They cornered her, and then she sang like a bird released. She told them everything, Jean, every last detail. That you had used the cover of the research hospital to cultivate the human-virus, that said hospital was funded by the estate of the late – great Magneto, and then she told them about *me*! They have shut down and seized the hospital. Your friend has ruined everything! Do you know how long I have been a secret? Years! I’m surprised that I can’t hear the sirens coming for me now!”

“Sebastian, I’m sorry…”

“I want Xavier’s head! We’re paying them a visit, now!”

“That’s not a good idea, the entire team will be there….”

“His precious team is still mingling in the Oval office. We only have five agents left, gather them, that mansion won’t know what’s hit it. Is Creed’s chip activated?”

“Yes, I activated it half an hour ago, it should be taking effect now.”

“Good!”

“Sebastian?”

“My father could never finish off Xavier, but I will, him and all his little children. The sample of clemency you had for testing, how much do you have left?”

She swallowed, knowing why he wanted it and for the first time in years, she lied for the right reason. “It’s all gone.”

Sighing, he walked to his upturned desk and took out a small handgun from one of the drawers. “Shame, I’ll have to kill him the old-fashioned way. Set the self-destruct for five minutes, have everyone meet on the roof by the helicopter. We’re going right now and once and for all I’m finishing this!”

“What about your mother? She’s still locked in her room, but we can’t leave her in the house when the detonators go off…”

When he spoke his voice was cold and detached and more frightening than anything else Jean had ever heard. “I killed my father because he was too old and too weak to stand against them anymore, so what makes you think I care about her? Her carcass stays in this house. When the detonators go off, MY Brotherhood will have one less human to worry about!”

***************

Marie paced in Xavier’s office listening to the Professor on the speaker phone. Hank sat behind the desk, hands clasped tight in anger. Scott had passed on congratulations from the President and told the Professor the details. Both Hank and Marie couldn’t believe what they were hearing. That Magneto had a son, who was hell bent on genocide, that Jean had engineered the Clemency virus to attack humans and about the private hospital lab being a front for Jean’s work.

“So it’s over?”

“To all intense and purposes Hank, yes, and I believe members of the FBI and CIA are currently shutting down the hospital for investigation. So far they have found the body of a congressman that went missing a few months ago, evidence of Jean’s new virus apparently. There is a large property, also owned by Erik’s estate, that both agencies are on their way to, hoping to apprehend Jean and this man.”

Marie stopped pacing. “Are the guys on their way back?”

“Scott said that they are on their way. Apparently they have been running over a couple of other security issues with the President and his staff, they should be back within the next hour. How is our guest?”

“Still asleep the last time I looked, but I’ll go and check now.” She turned and went out the door, shutting it behind her knowing that Hank would want to get his anger out of his system privately. She chuckled to herself - he would rant and rave onto the Professor for a long time, setting the world to rights before he calmed down.

*************

He watched her stomp towards the door and sighed. “Louise, I…”

“What?” Louise scowled at Victor. “Victor, I’ve said everything I wanted to say. If you have something to add, spit it out.”

“I can’t help who I am.”

Louise shook her head, then looked down the hall. She could hear voices and footsteps, which she presumed were her mother and Hank taking the far corridor towards the Professor’s office. She had never been in the mansion when no one else was there. It echoed strangely.

“I don’t want you to change who you are Victor, but accepting it would be a nice start. I mean - for god’s sake, what is so wrong with admitting that you actually have feelings?”

“What the fuck is with you? Don’t you understand? Before all this shit, my life was nothing but killing people for someone else’s cause. Every piece of underground scum knew my face and most probably where I crashed every night. I was untouchable, no way to get to me, no way to get past me. What do think would have happened if I had a *girlfriend*? She’d be dead. So I don’t do *feelings*!”

Walking to him she smiled and put he hands on top of his. “Things are different now…”

He shook her of with a rough growl. “God you are so fucking naive! Things look different on the surface, but the world is just the same underneath. It always will be. I played the good little dog for Magneto for years, then he taught me to be the wolf. I don’t want to go back to being the wolf.”

“What? A wolf?”

“A wolf is only a safe pet when it thinks it’s a dog. When it finds out it’s really a wolf, there’s no stopping it. I don’t want that Louise, but I don’t know how to change… I don’t know how to…” He put his head down and rubbed his temples, groaned slightly, leaned against the wall behind him.

“Victor…?” Standing in front of him she tried to move his hands so she could look at his face. He was worrying her, scaring her and confusing her. When she opened up her mutation briefly, he gave her a jolt of pure aggression and she stumbled back from him. “Victor?”

Panic started to creep into her as Victor raised his head and met her eyes. Tilting is head to one side his nostrils flared. She took a step back when he growled, low and menacing, his lips curling away to show his fangs. Now she noticed how very sharp they looked.

She backed away another step to the doorway and he followed, getting low to the ground and growling again, a thick sound that rumbled towards her. Doing the only thing she could think of she turned on her heal and ran. Creed was too fast for her and within a couple of strides he caught her leg and both of them fell to the ground as she screamed, hitting her face on the hardwood floor, splitting her lip.

Another loud growl echoed in the hallway as he grabbed the back of her head by her hair and snarled in her ear. She screamed again as he flipped her over and wrapped one large hand around her throat. Gasping for every breath she clawed at his hand, but it made no difference. She knew he could snap her neck in an instant and that for some reason the beast was playing with her.

Her mind was reeling as her face began to redden dangerously, not being able to get his hand away she brought her knee up in a last-ditch attempt to get him off. It worked, her knee connected with his groin, and yelping like a wounded puppy he moved off of her. Gasping for air Louise scrambled desperately to her feet and ran down the corridor towards the dining hall as fast as she could.

It wasn’t until she burst through the double doors and looked around the wide-open space of the hall that she realised she should have run the other way, towards her mother and Hank. There was nothing to hide her, nothing to barricade the door. She had been trained in hand-to-hand by Logan, but she knew against Creed that alone wouldn’t be enough.

Hearing him snarling as he came down the corridor she grabbed the first thing she saw, a large fire extinguisher just inside the door. As Creed crashed through the door she swung it upwards at his head, connecting it with his jaw, forcing him backwards. The moment was almost comic as he staggered and shook his head, Louise using his confusion to bring the extinguisher back round into his stomach. As he doubled over, she smashed him over the back of the head with it, dropped it and ran. This time she headed for Xavier’s office.

*********

Marie reached the library and wandered around inside. “Where the hell are they?” Walking back out to the hall she turned the corner and was knocked over by Louise, both sent sprawling on the floor. “Louise, what the fuck?”

“Victor… his head, the chip… Mom it’s on! He’s psycho!”

“Where is he now?” Marie got to her feet and helped up Louise.

“I hit him with a fire extinguisher in the cafeteria, but he won’t be down for long.”

“Shit. Let’s go, this way.”

They made it to the Professor’s office, just as Hank hung up the phone. “My stars! Are you two alright?”

“No. That chip is activated ‘nd Creed’s gone nuts. Hank, tell me you brought some tranquilliser up with you?”

“No, I didn’t, and Charles doesn’t want anyone going down no matter what the situation.” Hank stopped and looked around. “What’s that sound?”

A low whirring sound echoed around them and was growing louder. Hank suddenly realised what it was and dove for both women. “GET DOWN!” All three hit the floor of the office just as a large arrow crashed through the window and stabbed into the back wall.

“What the fuck was that?” They heard another whirring noise and then another thud as a second arrow found its way into the back of Xavier’s desk. “Okay! Let’s get outta here!”

“My dear Marie, I have never agreed with you more.” They scrambled to the door then onto their feet, as they reached the main hall an explosion ripped open the front door and shattered through the hall.

Louise fell to the floor and was showered with debris. “Hank get her out of here. I’ll deal with this!”

Hank helped Louise to her feet then ran with her towards the rear of the mansion and the gym, leaving Marie with the intruders. Before they turned the corner, Louise stopped and looked at her mother. She stood in the centre of the entrance hall facing the door, pulled her sweater over her head and tossed it aside revealing a yellow bodysuit with green edging. Louise watched as her mother levitated, fists balled, ready. She smiled as Hank grabbed her and they ran again.

The first through the main door was a tall man with dark hair and strange marks on his face like a tribal tattoo. He had several small knives strapped to his belt. Marie flew a little higher and stared down at the man.

“Get outta my house!”

He smiled and drew a dagger. “Mmm… not a lady I have seen before. Madam, we’re alike, mutants. Surrender the Professor and you will not perish.”

“Alike? Sugar, the only thing we have in common is that we can both stand up, and trust me, soon we won’t even have that!”

“Very well.” Quicker than any average person, human or mutant, he threw a knife aimed at her chest. Catching it easily Marie spun around in a circle and threw the dagger full strength back at him.

It hit him in the chest and sent him sailing backwards with its force, the point of the dagger appearing out of his back and lodging into what was left of the doorframe behind him.

He spluttered at her. “Who are you?”

“I’m Rogue, honey, and I am so back!” She landed on her feet and walked away from him, a smile on her lips and a defiant swing to her hips.

Another explosion rocked the side of the mansion. She ran towards it, rounding the corner in time to see two female mutants crash through the debris. One in a white top with purple hair and another with long back hair that was in dreads and it somehow seemed to move on its own.

“Well, more intruders. So, ladies, wanna play?”

“Where is Xavier?”

“Yeah, ‘cause it’s gonna be that easy!” She launched herself at them both, but the one with dreads was faster, swung her head and her dreads came to life, wrapping themselves around Marie fists, lifting her and pinning her to the wall.

“Go find the old man, I’ll deal with this amateur!” White top girl ran off, leaving Marie pinned against the wall by the other girl’s hair.

“Amateur? Girlie, I’m an old hand.” Marie tore hard enough to rip off part of the girl’s scalp and pushed her backwards, then punched her in the face. They exchanged blows in the hallway, taking out a couple of prize pieces of antique furniture in the process. Marie managed to dodge the girl’s hair, in the end grabbing it and wrapping it around her opponent’s neck and holding her until she passed out. She stepped back from the girl and took a deep breath. The hum of a jet engine made her smile. “Thank god for that!”

*******

When the elevator opened Logan, Scott, Liam and Betsy darted through the main entrance. Noticing the man nailed to the doorframe Logan smirked. “That’s my girl.” Turning to Scott: “I think we should split up. Me and Liam head back through the house and you and Bets take upstairs.”

Scott put his hands on his hips. “How about just once we pretend that I’m in charge.”

“Okay, oh fearless whatever, what’s your plan?”

“Well, um, we probably need to split up.”

“Sorry what? I didn’t catch that.”

“Just shut up and go! Come on Elizabeth.”

“Elizabeth? Scott, even my parents didn’t call me that!”

“Can we argue about that later?”

“Sure, but I’m not letting it go. I hate Elizabeth!”

Liam chuckled and followed his father as they doubled back through the house towards the gym, leaving the other two to argue about Psylocke’s name. As they passed one of the large classrooms, usually used for drama, the door burst through and a girl with a white top and purple hair hurtled backwards, hit the far wall then fell to the floor with a loud thud.

Marie stepped through the broken classroom door and rolled her shoulders, Logan couldn’t stop the lecherous grin that spread across his face. “Havin’ fun darlin’?”

“Liam!” She ran past Logan and straight into hugging her son, relieved at seeing him safe and all in one piece.

“Mom? I kinda need to breathe.”

“Sorry. You both ok?”

“We’re fine darlin’. Where’s Louise?”

“She ran off with Hank when the fun started. Sabretooth is loose somewhere and we’re under attack from outside. I’ve taken out three so far, but I don’t know how many there are.”

“Chuck said that Jean is here somewhere with buckethead’s son, but he can’t get a lock on the bastard - something about mental blocks. We don’t know what he can do, so we need to watch our backs.” Liam was about to say something, but stopped short as all the lights went out and the emergency lights flickered on, leaving everything in an eerie glow. “They’ve hit the main power grid, it’s all off.”

“What about the professor and the kids?”

“Liam, it’s fine, the emergency generator gives priority to down there. All the codes and everything will still work, nothing will get through.”

Logan put his hand on her cheek and smiled down at her. “You sure you’re ok?”

Returning his smile she pushed her cheek into his hand, her eyes lost in his. “I’m fine, now you’re here.”

“Um, Mom, Dad, I think we may have a small problem… erm… well, a big, hairy, snarling problem.”

Both looked in the direction the Liam was pointing. The end of the corridor was dark and Marie couldn’t make out much, just maybe a pair of eyes, dark eyes, glistening. “Is that…”

Logan was in front of them in an instant with his claws out, gleaming dangerously in the half-light. “Yeah, it is. Get outta here, find Hank and Lou.”

“Can you handle this?”

He looked away from Sabertooth and met her eyes. The silence between them that stretched for a few seconds said everything. He didn’t know and it scared him, scared him to know that after so long he had found her again, they had found each other and there might not be a future. “Go.” She nodded slowly, but couldn’t bring herself to say anything - right now everything would sound like some kind of goodbye.

They backed away from Logan and Sabertooth leaving them to their feral battle. The minute Marie heard the first growl, the first clash of bodies and scrap of claws she turned on her heel to go back.

“Liam find your sister and….” Long black dreads whipped around her legs and brought her down before she could finish her sentence. She rolled onto her back and flipped herself to her feet, shaking of the dreads as she went. The girl stepped out in front of her crouching low to the ground. “Liam, go, I have this.”

“Mom…”

“GO!”

*******

“Hank! BEHIND YOU!” Hank managed to turn, but couldn’t avoid the punch bag as it hit him lengthways, the force of it slamming his large frame into the wall behind him. He left a sizeable indent as he fell unconscious to the floor.

Louise took a few steps back further into the gym and looked around. She could see the wide space of the basketball court, the high seating, the supply room at the end, but she couldn’t see where the bag had come from.

“Who’s there?” She couldn’t see much with the lights out, but she did hear the section of seating start to creak behind her. Spinning round she saw it was about to tip, but she was frozen. What felt like a gorilla wrapped around her and hit her from the side, pushing her hard to the floor and out of the way of the falling seating.

“Lou, Lou!”

“Get off you big lug, I’m fine!” Liam pushed to his feet and helped her up.
“Liam, there’s someone in here.”

Again the pair went sailing, but this time another person hit them both from the side. Liam was the first to his feet again, letting his spirals wrap around him right up to his shoulders. He was almost immediately hit in the stomach, then the face, them their invisible assailant swept his feet out from under him.

While Liam tried to fight thin air Louise ran over to Hank to check him. Hank was breathing, but she couldn’t rouse him. She took off her zip jacket and put it under her head to try and make him comfortable, then went to help Liam.

He was standing in the centre of the court looking around him wildly. Blood came from his nose and his eyebrow. “How are we supposed to fight something you can’t see?”

“You listen.” She put her back to his and then smiled as she realised she probably had the answer all along. “Or you feel.” She put her hands out letting her mutation take over. White light spread around her as she began to breathe heavily in a bid to control it. To the left of them the silhouette of a man shimmered strangely. “LIAM!” Liam leapt at the man and Louise kept her mutation going so that Liam could see him, but she couldn’t hold it for very long and soon she was on her knees sweating and struggling to breathe.

Suddenly Liam was lifted into the air and grasped at his throat like a giant was holding him there. “LIAM!” The invisible man showed himself and grabbed her by the hair, held small knife to her throat he had quickly produced out of his boot.

Jean walked slowly from the shadows of the door, her hand held in front of her keeping Liam locked above them. “Shall I kill him now?”

Louise thought the man’s voice was hard and cold and when she strained her eyes to look at him as he walked in behind Jean, she knew he was just that, cold and hard and evil. “Take the boy and throw him off the roof. I have a few questions for this one.” Jean nodded and walked out of the gym holding Liam in the air in front of her.

Sebastian walked directly to Louise. Invisible Man jerked her head up to look at him properly. Another man stood with Sebastian. He was tall, wore purple leather and carried a long bow. “Where is Charles Xavier?”

“Second star to the right and straight on till morning… ah!”

“Very good.” He nodded at Invisible Man who let her down, then he slapped her hard across her face and again nodded for her to be picked back up get the knife put back to her throat, a little harder this time. “Let’s try again. Where is Charles Xavier?”

******

Logan opened his eyes slowly with a load groan and looked around. The corridor was a mess, smashed bits of wall, claw marks every where, blood and broken furniture. But no Sabertooth. As he got to his feet he could feel his stomach and insides burning as his healing worked double time to fix everything. He stumbled once, but then got to his feet and cracked his neck, which made him swear and see stars.

He could smell in which direction the Cat Man had gone and with a snarl began to follow. Before he found anything or even got more than a few hundred yards he had to duck out of the way of a girl with long black dreads who hit the wall beside him. “AND STAY DOWN!”

“You wanna watch where you’re throwing things.”

“Logan, shit, are you ok?”

“Will be. Son of a bitch got away from me.”

Marie touched his face and then his uniform jacket. “Not before he tore seven shades of shit outta ya though!”

“Come on, we have to find him and the kids.” Marie swung his arm across her shoulder, but he suddenly pulled her back. They both stood and watched as Jean walked towards them with Liam dangling helplessly in the air.

Marie whispered. “I’ll fly up for him, you take her out.”

“With fucking pleasure!”

Jean jumped as she saw a green blur snatch Liam out of her telekinetic grasp. The minute Liam was out of the way, Logan rounded he corner with a roar, drew his claws and was about to run her through when a thin optic beam caught Jean on the shoulder and threw her back against the panelled wall with a scream.

“Guess this ones all yours, Slim.”

“Guess so.”

Logan ran up to the end of the hall to Marie and Liam. She was rubbing his back to help him breathe properly again. “Louise…. *cough cough*…. gym!” She exchanged a look with Logan and nodded for him to go, then she briefly concentrated on Scott shout at Jean.

Jean grasped her shoulder and gave Scott a wide-eyed stare. “How could you! I was your wife!”

“Yes, yes you were. I married you, in a church in front of a priest, our friends and God and you didn’t even care when you tried to have sex with another man, in MY bed! Not only that you used your mutation against one of your team-mates, one of your friends - you taunted Rogue and ruined seven years of her life. And then, what about her and Logan’s children, have you ever thought that what you did ruined their lives as well? No Jean, I bet you haven’t given any of it a second thought.”

“Scott please…. I… I am sorry, I never meant for this all to go so far, I wanted to get revenge and I….”

“Revenge!” He shook his head and punched Jean in the face. She yelped and fell to the floor.

Marie was shocked that he’d hit a woman like that, but she didn’t blame him. After everything she had done Marie felt like hitting Jean herself. Several times, in fact. “Feel better?”

Scott laughed. “Actually, yes.” He grabbed a lamp that had been smashed and ripped the cable off. “Come on, help me tie her up and then we can help the others.” As they set about immobilising Jean, Logan was running for the gym as fast as he could, not realising that another was getting there first.

Unable to stop herself from yelping in pain as he hit her again, she fought back her tears, determined not to show him that he hurt her. “Where is Charles Xavier? In one of the rooms, an outbuilding or underground, perhaps? It would benefit you to tell me because I doubt you’re enjoying this as much as I am.” The man with the bow raised it and spun round behind him, pointing the arrow at the main door.

“What is it?”

“I heard something.”

“Both of you look around. Leave the girl to me.” Louise couldn’t help the small breath of relief she blew out when the invisible man let go of her hair. He immediately disappeared, going in search of what the arrow man had heard. She watched him pace towards the seating and the narrow walkway between it. “I will ask you once more, before I simply kill you out of boredom. Where is Charles Xavier?”

A loud menacing snarl was followed by the sound of a man being hit and then falling to the floor, then the unmistakable sound of claws tearing through his windpipe. Sebastian grabbed her by the shoulder and held her in front of him. She struggled against him at first, but when he pushed a small gun under her chin, she stilled.

“Barton, Invo, get out here!” Only the man with the bow emerged from behind the seating, his bow still raised. “What’s in there?”

“I only caught a glimpse as it took out Invo. It’s big.”

A crash outside the gym and down the corridor took their attention away for a split second, just enough time for Sabertooth to charge all three and knock them to the ground.

Arrow Man was unmoving, but Sebastian tried to get to his feet and reach his gun. Sabertooth stood in between him and Louise, not sure where to leap next. Louise could tell he was confused and would lash out in a second. She was still on the ground and scooted back a little further away to make Sebastian an easier target.

Sabertooth snarled at him as he raised the gun and fired it into Sabertooth’s chest. “NO!” Louie couldn’t stop herself from shouting. Sabertooth took a swipe at the gun before he fell backwards and landed with a huge thump, clutching at his chest, rolling and snarling in pain. The weapon slid away from Sebastian, leaving him defenceless against the huge beast.

“BARTON! BARTON! Shoot it! NOW!” Arrow Man rose and saw Sabertooth raising to his knees snarling towards Sebastian again. Raising his bow, he got off one shot, but because he was still a little dizzy it only hit Sabertooth in the shoulder making him snarl and howl in pain again.

Louise screamed again and began to shake. “No, not now!” She could once again feel the enormous pressure building up inside her, she struggled with it as her hands shook, her teeth began to chatter as her body shook and it was all to much. Her head flew backwards and she let go. All her own emotions, the ones she’d picked up from others that she thought had faded, the fear and pain and hate in the room around her, she could feel everything.

She could feel her father running to her, desperate not to be too late; she could feel her mother’s fear for her love and her children; there was Scott’s anger and sense of betrayal and his love for a women he felt he should hate; Sabertooth’s rage, hatred and inner struggle with himself. She could feel the Professor and Psylocke trying to reach out to her to calm her, she could feel Hank slowly regaining consciousness. The children, all the students and their mixed emotions, she could feel it all, even as far out as the small houses that surrounded the Mansion grounds and the people on the street.

Paralysed in a sitting position, her head back, mouth open, she couldn’t move and couldn’t stop it, the rush in some ways amazing and in other too much o bear. A white glow slowly began to surround her, then like a glowing sea amoeba it spread around the room, touching the others and enveloping them.

Screaming from the pain of the white glow Sebastian clawed at his skin as if the glow burnt him, then yelled at his arrow man to kill her. “DO IT NOW, BEFORE SHE KILLS US ALL!”

Logan crashed through the door just in time to see the arrow man fire off four arrows at once, tried to follow them as if in slow motion towards his daughter, saw that he wouldn’t get there in time he roared: “NOOOOOOOO!”

Sabertooth watched the arrows as well and with a viscous snarl leaped to his feet and crashed into Louise, landing on top of her and covering her with his body as all four arrows simultaneously thumped into his back. Looking up at him, she saw that it was Victor who had saved her, not the uncontrollable animal he had been moments ago. She stared at him, both of them surrounded by her white, glowing dreamlike light. He tried to speak, but he couldn’t seem to find the words. A drop of blood fell from his lips and landed on her cheek as he opened his mouth again, his voice edged with pain. “Felt…you…”

She nodded, a small smile crossing her lips. “I know.” She touched his lips with the tips of her fingers like she had done earlier in the library. Blood coloured her fingers, then his head slumped forward onto her chest and his body slipped to one side. She turned them over and touched his face as she began to sob.

Anger filled her as she turned to the arrow man, balled her hands into fists and screamed, her eyes shut but the tears still falling. The Mansion shook and in a shock wave, the white light that had been glowing around Louise flew out from her like the explosion of a nuclear bomb and raced away to the edges of the mansion grounds. As it passed through the Arrow Man it disintegrated him into pieces of ash just as Louise passed out and Logan caught her before she hit the floor.



ONE YEAR LATER……..


“Goddamn tie!” A soft knock at the door makes him forget the dress tie for the moment. “Yeah, come in.”

“Hey dad, how you doing?”

“NOT fuckin’ GOOD! Can you help me with this?”

Louise chuckles at him. “If it will stop you from growling at it.” Then she’s smiling at him - as she puts his black tie into a perfect bow, she can’t help but think that this day has been a long time coming.

“Scott back yet?”

“No, we’re still waiting for him. He called about twenty minutes ago, apparently there was an accident on the freeway that’s why there’s so much traffic. He’ll be here, don’t worry.”

“Can’t someone just pick him up in the jet?”

“I don’t think the Professor would approve. Where’s Scott been anyway?”

“Where do you think?”

With a small sigh she shakes her head and then perches on the end of her parent’s huge silk-covered bed. “I thought he wasn’t going to visit Jean in prison anymore.”

“Yeah well, guess it’s hard for him.”

“He still loves her?”

“Yeah. You can’t choose the person you fall in love with.” Logan saw her head drop and sat down next to her, putting his arm around her gently.

“Look… we never really talked about Creed.”

“You mean you actually want to.”

“No, but… Lou, he was dangerous, unpredictable, an asshole and he should never have been here. Chuck should have known better, we all should, but he saved your life and I… I have to thank him for that.”

“Begrudgingly.”

He chuckled a little. “Damn right begrudgingly. You think I actually want to owe Sabertooth anything? He was part of the original Brotherhood, the one that tried to kill your mother when good old Mags was in charge.”

“You know, I kind of feel sorry for Magneto.”

“You do?”

“Yeah, I mean he changed, he acknowledged that the government had got it right and he disbanded the Brotherhood. They even pardoned him for it. Then his son, a real, real whack-job, kills him, tries to commit genocide and kills his own mother to boot. It’s crazy. He’s crazy.”

“That’s why he’s in a maximum security nut-hut.”

“What was his mutation anyways?”

“Levitation.” He laughed, got up and checked his tie in his mirror again.

“Levitation? He was going to take over the world with levitation? How crappy is that?”

“Very crappy.”

She sat silently for a few moments watching him fuss with his tie and pull his collar about. He was uncomfortable, he hated the suit, he hated the tie, he hated looking like a penguin, but he was doing it, for Marie, for his family. Then she wondered if Victor would have done such a thing for her - but then, what could be more than giving your life for someone.

“It would never have worked, would it?”

He turned to her from the mirror. “What?” The sad look on her face told him enough. “Oh, that.” He leant against the wall and tried folding his arms across his chest, but the shirt wrinkled and he knew Marie would kill him if he wrinkled it, so he put his hands in his pockets instead. “I’m guessing he probably told you as much himself?”

“Yeah. He did. Look dad, you’re really the last person I should want to discuss this with, but… but you and mom, it’s all very similar. You’re much older than her, she was young when you got together and then there’s that whole ‘dark side of me’ stuff that I don’t really understand and, well, I don’t understand why he couldn’t admit how he felt, why he didn’t want to at least try to live, you know, let Hank try and get the chip out, not just say ‘hey, I’m a dead man walking and I don’t care’. I don’t get it. I felt every emotion he had ever had, it was all anger, all pain and I made him feel good, I felt that, he just wouldn’t admit it.”

“People like him, people like me, find it hard to say how you really feel. It’s hard.”

“If you’re about to tell me it a macho thing, I think I’ll leave now.”

“No, honey, it’s… well yeah, in a way. When you’ve never had to use your feelings, never had anyone or anything to care about you get detached, you find yourself just living from day to day taking your kicks, whatever they may be, where you can get them. You don’t have to answer to anyone, most importantly not yourself, your conscience turns off and you find yourself not giving a shit. You see people get hurt and just shrug it off because it doesn’t effect you directly, so why care.”

“Is that how it was for you?”

“Yeah. When I met Marie, I’d spent the best part of fifteen year getting drunk, beating the shit outta red neck truckers and…” he shrugged almost shyly. “Sleeping with a lotta women. I hated it, but was too angry at the world and everyone in it to care. For a person like that it’s hard, sometimes too hard to change.”

“Till you met mom.” He smiled warmly. “You’ve never told me about that.”

“I’m sure she has.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard the eyes meeting across a dingy bar, knight in shining armour version, but you haven’t told me. Come on, tell me what you thought about her.”

“I was in the cage, fightin’. I didn’t see her at first, but, well, I’d been in that bar for a good few hours and knew every scent, then she comes in and…. It was like… you know that smell when you cut grass, it’s fresh and clean and new. It was like that, this scent hit my nose just as another idiot walks into the cage, it makes it a little difficult to concentrate, so he gets a few good punches in, a shot to my jaw, then my back and while I was on the floor he put a knee in my stomach, huh, but then I get half up and I throw him the old…”

“Dad…”

“Yeah, well, anyway. After, she was sat at the bar and I got a good look at her for the first time.”

“Did you think she was pretty?” Logan rolled his eyes at the soppy grin on her face.

“Louise, it wasn’t some profound moment of destiny, yeah I thought she was the prettiest thing I ever saw, but too young, way too young and at the time all I knew was that I couldn’t just leave her there. God knows what would have happened to her if I’d have left her there.”

“So, not a profound moment of destiny, more like a like a spark of interest tucked away in your head for later reference?”

“My God, you are a complete hopeless romantic, just like your mother.”

“What’s wrong with being a hopeless romantic? Better than being a pessimist.”

“I am not a piss-artist!”

“Pessimist dad, I said pessimist!”

“Darlin’ I don’t even know what that word means, all I know is that if Scott doesn’t turn up in the next ten minutes your mother’s going to kill him for ruining her wedding day.”

“I’m kind of glad things turned out this way. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Liam and I missed out on a lot, but I get to watch my parent’s wedding which is kind of cool.”

“You’re just happy ‘cause you’re on drugs.”

Wagging a finger at him she got off the bed and walked to the door. “Hank says that the suppressant has no effect on my personality, it just stops me from spontaneous human combustion!”

His face took a serious edge to it. “It won’t be like this forever, you know. Hank and Chuck, they will figure out a way for you to control the shockwave.”

“I know, and in the meantime, I’ll just keep taking my tablets like a good girl so I don’t disintegrate any more people.”

He chuckled and then growled as his nostrils flawed. “Scott.” The door pushed open past Louise and a red-faced Scott appeared.

“Logan, I… I’m really sorry, I was going to come back from DC last night, but it got late and I changed my mind then this morning driving back there was an accident on the freeway and it was a complete mess. I should have been back hours ago I’m really sorry and… you look great.”

“Excuse me, did you just…”

“Not you, farm-boy. Louise.” He cleared his throat a little and his eyes swept over her long pale-green strapless dress. “You look really nice.”

Logan narrowed his eyes at Scott and the dreamy look on Louise’s face. “Anyway, don’t you too have somewhere to be?”

“We sure do. May I have the pleasure of escorting the bridesmaid to the chapel?”

“Thank you. See you in a few dad. Try not to ruin the tie before you get to the alter.”

“Yeah yeah. Lou, love ya kid.”

“I love you too dad.” She closed the door behind her, but Logan could still hear her voice. “I think you look nice too, the glasses go surprisingly well with a dinner jacket.”

Logan picked up his own jacket off the bed and swung it around slipping his arms in through easily. He checked his reflection, huffed at it, then he huffed again when he head Scott’s voice at the end of the hall by the stairs. “So, do I get a dance later?”

“Huh, forget it Scooter, over your dead body are you making eyes at my little girl!”

He smiled and blew out a big breath. "My little girl, my son and... sooon, my wife. What ever the hell bumped me toward Laughlin City... thank you."


******************END