Title: Letonia II. The Ties That Bind
Author: Cherry Ice
Written: March 2002
Keywords: crossover (X-Men)
Series: Under the Dark of Night (or Death, Angst, and Various Reasons No X-Man Should Be Allowed Up Onto a Roof)

Summary: After the event of 'Letonia', Scully deals with the fallout. Not always so well.

Note: Well, here it is. Depending on who you are, the long awaited, long feared, or long forgotten sequel to 'Letonia', and the second installment in the Under the Dark of Night series.

It was actually written awhile ago, but I've been working on the third story. I've been working on it in theory, anyways. It's a little stalled. So I thought that I should post this now.

There are a great many people to thank for this, for varying reasons, so please forgive me if I forget anyone. The usual suspects: Char, Pokey, Lindy, B, McGarry, Katie, Kari, LG, Jenny, and Smoria, who are, as always, wonderful and supportive. Craig, Aiofe Pooke, Jeremy, and Kerri who have all either done a beta, a partial beta, or told me that it doesn't suck as badly as I think it does, so I shouldn't just drop the entire thing. Mark for giving it a final once over. Drea, Stacy, and Indiana, just because. Alicia McKenzie, from whom I got that is was Lucinda Guthrie, and Persephone Kore, who got it from her for me. Anyone who's ever feedbacked me for Letonia, or any other story.

There are too many of you to name, but I appreciate you all a great deal.

She heard the pipe whistle past her ear as she threw herself to the side. The flying stone chips struck her skin as the pipe thudded hollowly against the brick. Her hair was in her eyes, and she tossed it back desperately, just trying to see. She saw a fist heading for her and she jumped up on the ledge, tottering as it followed her.

Changing direction, she gathered as much of her strength as she could find and jumped straight up, trying to avoid the lead pipe that was following the fist.

She thought she had it. She thought she had him. She caught herself nimbly on her toes as she landed, grasped the edge of the ledge with a hand, and a foot came streaking towards her, catching her knees from behind, a hand shoving into her shoulder as she pin wheeled to keep her balance.

And the ground rushed up at her, air whipping at her hair and clothes.

She caught a glimpse of brick road before her momentum spun her around again.

The clouds were flying away from her.

The ground had to be close by now.

She closed her eyes and braced for the impact, knowing even as she did so that it would do no good.

The pain never came. Dana Scully opened her eyes, and saw metallic tiles scant inches from her face. The breeze cradling her flipped her onto her back and set her down gently. She looked up at the control booth and smiled at Ororo. The woman didn't return the expression.

Her face was strangely troubled, considering that all that had happened was that she'd turned off the program and caught Dana with a breeze.

The outer doors flew open and Remy stomped in, his eyes glowing. "You tryin to get yourself killed dere, Chere? My grandmere coulda avoided dat hit that sent you off the building."

"I don't know if you've noticed this," she said with a raised eyebrow. "But I'm not your grandmere." She felt her voice flicker, the evenness destryed in her last sentence. "Maybe if you'd show me another way to counter the attack..."

"Oh no, we not moving on until you get dis down pat."

"Maybe I just need a different set of programs."

"Dana, you been doing the easiest set of combat training programs we have. Any of our others probably gonna kill you, safeties on or no."

Up in the control booth, Ororo leaned into the console and put her head in her hands. "Will they never stop?"

A pair of hands dropped onto her shoulders. She didn't start. She'd heard Logan enter the room just before the same argument had started.

Again. She tilted her neck as he massaged her shoulders briefly.

"Doubt it, darlin'," he said.

"What are we going to do about her? If I didn't know better, I'd say that her skills were not only not progressing, but going downhill."

He paused to squeeze her shoulder gently. "It's not just you, Ro.

The Cajun notices it, Bishop notices it, I notice it."

"We're just going to have to give her more time, I suppose."

"It's been three months. She's had plenty of time. She's capable of a lot, I can tell you that from the training session I had with her before she chose to stay. Her head's just not in it."

The numbers didn't lie. Her abilities were decreasing almost in tandem with the amount of time she spent training.

And the worse she got, the more she was training.

"Can you really blame her?"

"After a point, yes, I can. It was her choice."

"Merde!" Gambit's muffled shout reached the pair through the window, and they looked down into the Danger Room just in time to see Scully storm out. There was silence for a space, then Gambit muttered something incomprehensible under his breath and stalked out himself.

Ororo sighed, kissed Logan briefly, and headed outside.

Sam found her working in her garden a few hours later, face creased in concentration in the fading light. He cleared his throat and waited.

When she didn't notice him, he did it again. When he still got no response, he coughed politely. Storm snapped her head towards him, surprise evident on her face.

"Hello Samuel," she said with a slightly strained smile. "What's wrong?"

"Well, Ro, I just got ah call from Emma," he said, glancing at his toes as he scuffed the dirt with the tip of his sneakers. "It's Paige. She just got back from one ah those doctor's appointments."

"Oh no."

"This guy, he says that her cancer's been progressing, an she doesn't have much longer. An Momma and me, we'd like it if she could be at home, with us. Emma and Sean already excused her from classes and everything, so ah was wondering if maybe ah could go back to Kentucky for a bit."

"Of course, Sam. Take as long as you need."

"She's going home tomorrow, and ah kinda wanted to meet her at the airport, so...."

"We can make travel arrangements for you if you'd like. I'm sure that the Professor won't mind."

"Thanks, Ro. Ah really do appreciate it," he said, finally raising his eyes to meet her gaze. They bored into her, blue and almost as sad as she'd ever seen. He started to walk back to the mansion, but her voice stopped him.

"Are you all right?"

"What do you think?" he asked, still facing the house. "Mah little sister is dying of a disease that we can't cure, and ah can't do anything to help her."

"I'm sorry Sam, that was thoughtless of me. I didn't mean...I just wanted..."

"Look, it's ok. Ah know what you mean."

"Samuel, you know that if there's anything you need..."

"I know," he said again, turning to look at her. "And ah thank you for that," he started walking again, and this time Ororo didn't stop him. She went back to her plants.

She viciously pulled out the weeds trying to choke her amber roses.

"Bobby, do you happen to know why Sam's packing?" Scully asked as she walked into the darkened rec room. Light from the TV flickered against the wall. She thought she could smell Robert sitting on the couch hidden behind the pool table. Her heightened sense of smell still unnerved her, but it could be useful at times. Logan had tried to help her learn to track by it, but had so far been largely unsuccessful.

Letting her eyes adjust, she walked farther into the room. She dropped down on the other side of him on the faded white and green plaid couch. They sat in silence for a bit while he flicked aimlessly through the channels. She looked at him expectantly while his frown deepened.

"His sister is dying of pancreatic cancer."

"Oh. With the Shi'ar equipment, there wasn't anything..."

"Nope. Hank tried just about everything."

There was something in Bobby's expression that she didn't like. "Is there anything else?"

"Paige is dying, isn't that enough?"

"There just seemed to be something that you wanted to say."

He paused. "Nothing."

"Ok then." She rose from the couch. "I'm just going to wish Sam and Paige the best of luck."

She was almost at the door when he spoke.

"He told you, you know."

"Told me what?"

"About his sister. Before you went back to DC."

"Oh." She stopped for a second, evaluating. "Are you sure?"

Bobby killed the tv, tossed the remote into a chair across from him.

He stood, facing her. He probably couldn't make out much of her face, but she could see near every nuance of his expression. He leaned against the pool table, posture falsely relaxed. "I'm sure." His teeth glittered, dully bright, as he spoke.

At a loss for words, she started to turn to walk out again when his voice restrained her once more.

"I guess there is something I have to say.

"Ro's not going to happy when she finds out I did this, but it needs to be done. She wants us to give you more time. But he told you."

"I really am sorry."

"He's losing his sister. He's not just never going to see her again, no one is. We all know that. Some of us knew before he said anything."

"Are you implying that..."

He continued to talk right over her, moving closer. "You have no conception of the ties that bind us. We're all the defense the others have, we're their rocks in a world that wants to sweep them into the undertow. And if we move when they need us, they're gonna drown.

"You're still stuck in your past life. You left your son and friends and family because you thought that they would be safer without you. You left. There are people here that didn't get to make that choice, and I personally think that they're a lot worse off than you are.

"You're going to have to get your head into this if you want to survive, because you're leaning on us rocks pretty hard right now, and sometimes, if you hang on too hard for too long, the rocks just disappear."

Scully looked at him in shock.

"I'm willing to bet that when I told you about Paige again, you didn't even wonder to yourself if you could heal her. Your first thought wasn't to get her in here and see if you could do anything for her, it was 'I hope that that doesn't happen to Evan.' " He paused. "You know what? I'll give you your first thought for Evan. I mean, he is your son. I bet it just didn't occur to you at all."

The look on her face was almost the sound of an arrow striking the target. He winced a bit, wondered for a second if he'd been too harsh, but it seemed as if she needed a great big bucket of ice water dropped on her head before she'd really wake up.

He'd almost gotten all the way through to her. She could figure this out by herself if he managed to get his point across.

Then he made one of the biggest mistakes of his life.

"You're going to have to take a look at this from our perspective," he said, grabbing her arms right above the wrists, bringing her hands up to the height of the middle of her rib cage.

Her face registered shock at first, then began to cloud over, her gaze darkening. She squeezed her lids closed.

This was not happening.

Then it twisted, deepened, and she felt her face harden.

"Grow up," he snapped, continuing, finishing. Her eyes flew open with the force of her outrage, and she saw the pain hit him.

Scully jerked away as the (her) anger and ice flowed out of her hands and down Bobby's arms. She hit her hip on the side of the pool table and bounced into the back of another couch. Off balance, she caught herself on her hands as she fell. Her gaze never left Bobby as he dropped to the floor. He twitched a bit, and his eyes were closed, his breathing deep and ragged.

"Oh shit," she whispered. Rising, she threw herself over to him.

"Bobby, I didn't mean to," she said desperately as she checked him over. Best as she could tell, she'd accidentally lashed his nervous system with some sort of bolt. The same sort of thing that could heal if something was stuck. "I didn't mean it." He remained unconscious.

She tried to drag the healing energy out of the same channels, but the flow felt blocked somehow. Reaching deep, she found the centre and tried to push it into the man lying on the floor.

It swept back up at her.

Damn it. It was healing energy, she could feel it. She'd twisted it somehow.

It felt as if he were full up. Trying a different approach, she felt for the ice. It actually felt more like glacier water, almost frozen, full of jagged bubbles. She marked a spot above his heart, and pulled out the ice. As it left his body she could sense his breathing even out, his heart rate slow.

She looked around for the omnipresent computer console found in every room in the mansion. Finding it by the east window, she rose and ran to it. Her fingers flew over the correct keys, her throat curiously dry.

"Ororo, you'd better get up to the rec room right now. There's been a bit of a situation..."

Perched on the highest level of the Mansion roof, Scully thought that she knew why these people sat came here when they were troubled.

From up here, you could see forever.

The world stretched out around her, laying bare to her its secrets in the pale light of a quarter moon.

She and Ororo had taken Bobby.

Bobby.

Down to the medlab. Scully had hooked him up to the right instruments, checked him over again. Ororo hadn't asked any questions, despite the curiosity written all over her face, something for which Scully was grateful. Scully'd left the room when the others had started to arrive. She couldn't take all of it right now, all of them, their pity or their blame or their quiet sympathy or the sound of all that breathing and all those hearts beating between the walls.

She'd been up here for an hour now. Either no one was looking for her, or they hadn't thought of searching here.

They had telepaths, and they had Logan, so they probably knew where she was. What did that say? That they were giving her space, or that they didn't want to talk to her?

But Bobby...

God, Bobby.

Her hands felt a little far away.

The wind was picking up. She saw what looked like an eagle a mile of so off. Concentrating, she brought it into a closer view. She was watching its path when a patch of white shot into her view, surrounding glowing silver eyes. Scully jumped, taken off guard. She reached her hands behind herself to brace, forgetting that she sat on the peak of a roof. Her arms hitting the roofing tiles below the level of her waist, she felt herself begin to skid.

A hand grabbed her ankle, stopping her before she had the chance to see if she could stop herself. She looked up to see Ororo crouching above, at the peak. The other woman offered Scully her free hand, which Scully took, and pulled her up to a sitting position again.

"Are you all right, Dana?" she asked.

"I'm fine, considering." There was an awkward pause. "You really shouldn't be asking me that, you know." Neither of them said anything for a time. "How is he?"

"Almost as good as new. He's asking to see you."

"How long has he been awake?"

"Only a few minutes. He came out of it and wanted to talk to you."

"I'm not sure that he really wants to see me."

"He told us what happened."

"Oh," Scully said, not meeting Ororo's eyes. She braced herself for the worst.

"He said, and we agree, that it wasn't entirely your fault."

"Really? I... He wasn't a threat to me, Ororo. I wasn't in danger.

I didn't even try to... I am supposed to be a doctor, Ororo. I am supposed to be a healer." She paused, studied her hands resting quietly, ever so quietly, against the shingles. "Did you tell him that I was sorry? I'm going to. I will. Just not now. He doesn't want to see me at the moment, Ororo."

"Let me ask you one thing, Dana. Did you want Bobby to hurt at the time?"

"No," she said softly. The word seemed to hang in the cool night air.

"Then you should tell him yourself," Ororo said finally.

"I know."

"Dana, with all powers come the ability to use them for ill. The Professor or Emma, they can put a mind back together that's been completely broken, completely shattered. But they are more than capable of reversing that, or of doing serious harm. They do not like to, but they could if they had to. Do you think that Xavier never accidentally lashed out at someone? You learn to control it, Dana.

That's all there is."

And they sat there for awhile, just starting up at the stars so far out of their reach. Steeling herself, Dana rose and brushed herself off. "I'm ready."

People milled inside the crowded Dominion Bank, a multi-colored crowd bright against the white marble. The lines for the tellers reached all the way to the door. Ted LeDuc smiled as he reached over the counter for the next customer's teller slip. Being around people still invigorated him, even four years out of university. He'd worked here almost since he'd graduated, and had just found out that he'd gotten the promotion he'd been aiming for. Today was his last day down on the floor. "Busy day, huh?" he asked the man. "I guess I don't need to tell you that though. You and your friends came in here almost forty-five minutes ago." Ted had noticed the group of three when they'd first entered. The one hairy man with them had to be at least six foot four, and the other one hanging behind them was definitely hunchbacked. Ted continued to chat at them amiably, hoping to cheer them up. The one in the lead looked about ready to blow.

There was something in those blue ey! es that Ted didn't like.

"Can we just get on with this?" the man snarled. Taken aback, Ted shut up. To tell the truth, the man scared him a little. He looked at the slip for his name.

"Well, Mr. Banks....." Ted trailed off as the blue eyed man glared at the hunchback, who was chortling softly, and took a closer look at the slip.

Mr. Robin Banks.

Okay, he thought. It's just a coincidence. This is way too cliché to be happening. The guy on his last day on the job...... He flipped over the slip, reading what was written on the back. This is a....

There is no damn way.

But he looked at the trio, and his breath stuck in his throat. There was a bulge in the tall man's jacket which looked alarmingly like a gun. The object of his attention noticed his gaze and smiled nastily.

The bank's policy on hold ups was concrete. Don't panic, press the silent alarm, don't let the other customers know what's going on, and above all, give them the money.

"I'm just bending down to get the money bag," he whispered, feeling the give of the silent alarm against the toe of his second-best pair of shoes.

"Don't mind that," the hunchback said, plopping a briefcase on the counter. "Fill 'er up."

Ted slowly filled the case with money while the customers behind the three robbers tapped their feet impatiently. If they'd known what was going on, chances are that they wouldn't have been in such a hurry to get up there with them. He moved as slowly as he could without raising suspicion, waiting for the undercover guard to move in behind them. He almost sighed in relief when he saw Clark appear, winding his way through the disgruntled patrons, but he fought to keep an unfailing expression. If these people saw Clark, they'd know that something was up. Ted didn't want to think about what would happen after that. He saw the tall, hairy one sniff the air. The blue-eyed man turned to face him sharply, and nodded.

Ted filled the suitcase, faked a smile, and said, "Thank you for banking with Dominion."

Clark reached the trio.

Then the tall one swung around with his hand out, and Clark fell to the ground, blood spreading in a pool around him. When the assailant faced his fellows again, Ted saw didn't quite connect at first.

Someone must have let a dog in or something, because he could see claws, shiny with blood under the flourecents.

People were running and screaming.

Ted stared at the claws, his gaze gradually traveling upwards. The dog was wearing a coat. His eyes reached the straggling hair falling over the collar, the tall man smiling (snarling) with teeth which suddenly seemed to resemble fangs rather a lot.

The rest of the security force was fighting their way against what had become a mob. Ted wanted to yell at them to watch out, that these people were not normal, but the glinting of the man's claws paralysed him.

He finally found his voice when the first of the guards reached them.

He opened his mouth, then something slimy wrapped around his throat, jerking him forward. He looked down to see the hunchback's tongue had somehow stretched to an amazing length and circled his neck. He could see that the blue eyed man had disappeared into the crowd somehow, taking the briefcase with him.

Ted watched the guards start to go down as the world dipped into black.

Mystique, still in the face that she'd used to escape the bank, waited at a window table in the McDonalds just down the street from the Dominion. She watched in amusement as the cops pulled in front of the bank, sirens flashing, and started to yell demands through a bull horn. They didn't know that in every likelihood, there wasn't a single living soul left inside the building.

She hoped that they'd end up throwing tear gas grenades in before they figured it out.

The gaping crowd almost completely blocked her view. She took another spoonful of her McFlurry.

"I leave the three of you alone for half a day. . ," a voice came over her shoulder.

"Erik. Why don't you sit down, have some of my ice cream? You can barely taste the chicken feathers."

Erik Lensherr ignored the proffered McFlurry, but sat down on the bench across from her. "You know, when I heard about it on the radio, my first thought was that you'd have more sense than that."

"I was bored," she said, picking up the briefcase from where it sat on the bench between her and the wall. She set it on the table, leaving one protective hand upon it. "Besides, Mortimer and Creed needed to kill something. They've really been quite restrained lately."

"This isn't going to go unnoticed, Raven. If they connect it to the Brotherhood, they're going to come after us."

"They never have before, Magneto."

"That's no reason to push the envelope. The more clues they get, the sooner they'll put them all together. Never mind that if one of you had been taken, it would've been forced out of you, and we'd all be done for. Do I have to remind you what the government does to captured mutants? And while we're out in public, it's Erik. Always Erik."

"There's enough in this case to keep us going for months. Where exactly do you think that we get our money? We're not exactly a government funded organization, Erik," she said, stressing his name.

She sat there, her eyes flickering as she traced the path of the condensation down the outside of her ice cream cup.

Erik studied her carefully. She was still out for blood over Rogue's death. She just hadn't turned her anger on Xavier for some reason.

"Speaking of Mortimer and Creed, where are those two idiots?" Eric asked absently.

"They should be back soon," she replied. "They had to get far enough away that they could double back without suspicion."

"They shouldn't have much trouble with city cops." Erik paused, and his eyes flickered. "You're training them, aren't you? You're trying to get them ready for something."

Mystique's face was impassive. He hated trying to read her when she was shifted into someone different. New visage, new set of expressions to interpret. "I have no idea what you're talking about, Erik." She picked up her cup, still half full of ice cream, and tossed it. The spoon, sticking up clearly from the sides, twirled on its axis and seemed on the verge of breaking free, but the cup dropped neatly into a cleaning cart standing by the door, taking the spoon with it.

Mortimer and Creed appeared beside then with a crashing of boots.

They looked down at the two, now sitting silently, and decided against slipping onto the bench. They were both grinning in a rather unpleasant manner. The sight of so many teeth made Raven want to shudder. "Any trouble after I left, boys?"

"Nothing we couldn't handle," Creed said.

"I think that the three of you have had quite enough fun for today," Erik said coldly. "Are you ready to go?"

Mortimer nodded while bouncing slightly, Creed said a disappointed yes, and Raven inclined her head.

Erik hung back while they made their way out to the van, his eyes narrowed slightly at Mystique's back. What ever she was planning couldn't be allowed to go through.

He still couldn't believe that they were driving around in a minivan.

Scully wandered aimlessly down the halls of the mansion. She'd gone back to her room after seeing Bobby, but the confinement had soon seemed too much. She'd been prowling the rooms and corridors, and the hollowing echoing was really starting to make her long for any other sound.

She stopped outside the Professor's study, trailing her fingers along the wood working. She could still remember the first time that she'd been in there, when he'd told her that she really couldn't go home again. It was a solemn place to her, a heavy place.

And, at that moment, there were voices coming from inside. She was about to move on when her name caught her attention. Against her own best intentions, she leaned in closer, turning her ear towards the wood.

"..on, Chuck," she heard Logan growl. "We talked to Bobby. She was backed into a corner, on the defensive, then grabbed. She just wanted to get away. There was no will involved in it. It was a reflexive use of her abilities, what we need to teach her to control. And afterwards, she tried to heal him, then she didn't leave till she knew that he'd get on. Look, are you going to tell me that you've never lashed out with a mental bolt when you were surprised?"

"The simple fact is," the Professor started, before being interrupted.

"It.....reflex....if we don't......give her the chance to ......

learn," Logan's voice began to fade in and out, and she leaned forward the extra inch, placed her ear against the cool surface, feeling guilty.

"Ah trust her." That had to be Sam, the easy drawl.

She thought that she could hear them moving around the room.

"Why don't we ask her what she thinks?" Logan's voice came again, closer this time. "She's standin' right outside the door."

She hastily straightened, trying very hard to keep her expression level. She brushed her red and gold hair back as she straightened her shoulders, and walked into the room.

The Professor was behind his desk, Sam standing in front of him, almost as if he were interviewing for a job. Ororo stood with one hand on the bookcases off to the side, and Logan was guarding the door. Looking at all of them, she felt the sudden impulse to blush.

Xavier smiled at her. "I was actually just about to call you." They seemed to be prepared to overlook her indiscretion, since no one commented. Feeling as if she should still apologize, she opened her mouth to speak, but the Professor was already continuing. "You already know that Paige, Sam's sister, is suffering from the last stages of pancreatic cancer, and Sam is going home to be with her."

She didn't like how this conversation was going. The last time that someone had talked to her about this, it hadn't ended well. Fidgeting a little, she waited for him to continue.

"Sam here has asked me something that he'd like to pass on to you."

He motioned to the young man, who looked fairly nervous.

"Well, Miss Scully, mah sister's doctors have mentioned to me that they don't like her being out from under proper medical supervision."

He paused, licking his lips. "You're an MD, aren't you?"

Scully nodded cautiously. They had to want a refferal. The couldn't want... Not after this evening.

"Ah was wondering if ya'd come to Kentucky with me for a bit. We don't have the money to hire a caretaker, an my ma would sure sleep a little easier if there was someone there who knew the procedures."

"Aren't you worried that I'd..."

"Ah promise not to shake ya and tell you to grow up," he said, the traces of a smile touching his tired face. Scully looked at him closely, carefully. Since she'd been here, he appeared to have aged at least five years. She was sure that his eyes hadn't been so faded, touched by the start of those small lines.

"Can I let you know in the morning?" she asked.

He nodded. "We leave for the airport at seven thirty if you decide to come."

The five of them chatted for a bit, idle small talk dancing around everything of any importance. Sam left shortly, pleading his early morning. Scully went up to her room not much later.

She didn't get much sleep.

To the residents of Redan, Arizona, the New Hope Refuge was simply the enclave of a well meaning but misguided crackpot religion. They saw the Fellowship of Enlightened Souls as quiet and well behaved, but a bit soft in the head. There were, however, those who said that the Fellowship was a front for something more sinister. They said that they were a militia, a gang, a group of gun runners, that inside the the high stone walls, under the main building, there was a drug lab which catered to the rich and curious. The people seemed nice enough, even if the tall one did scare small children for some reason no one could ever pin down, and their leader, a man with striking white hair, did seem a tad fanatical.

But as long as the Fellowship kept mainly to themselves, bought from the town's grocery stores, didn't solicit within the township, and didn't try to convert any of the locals, they were tolerated, and the rumors remained just that.

rumors.

Even if they had been believed, they were pretty far off anyway.

The Fellowship didn't file their taxes as if they were a religious group. It attracted less attention to pay as if they were simply a group of co-op farmers trying to eke out a living. Claiming the refunds offered to a religious group involved proving that they were, indeed, a religious group, and the last thing that they wanted was the government breathing down their necks.

The name had been cleverly thought up by Mortimer, who had been responsible for preparing their arrival. Magneto's intervention was the only thing that had prevented Creed from skinning the little man alive when he'd found out exactly what he'd be pretending to be until they had to move again.

It was actually quite a nice compound. There was room for obstacle courses outside on the red packed ground, training areas and all of their equipment, some of which was quite bulky, inside the neat stucco building. Blasting had located a series of caverns underneath, which would be useful for escape if they were to be attacked, and their distance from town combined with their walls let them work in privacy.

Yet the Master of Magnetism himself sat outside, cursing his home as he watched some of the new recruits train. You never would have known it to see him, unless by some chance you were to overhear him muttering "Charles must be laughing his head off." It wasn't the lack of rain that bothered him the most, although that certainly contributed to it. It wasn't simply the fact that they were reduced to driving a minivan. It wasn't just something to do with the fact that the omnipresent dust was rotten with iron particles, and he had to constantly concentrate on keeping it away so that he didn't end up looking like a giant, red, teddy bear, and something else to do with Mystique's current... state... of mind.

Mystique was watching him out the upper story window as she dialed a number by heart. She wasn't unprofessional enough to leave incriminating clues like scraps of papers with the phone numbers of mercenary agencies lying around. This was a line that she'd had installed herself, so she knew that there wasn't a tap on it. It wouldn't do for Magnus to hear what she was planning. He didn't still consider Xavier a friend, but she got the distinct feeling that he'd be against what she was planning. On principle, in theory, due to practicality, and out of some well meaning but antiquated sense of fairness.

She let the phone ring four time, then hung up and dialed again. On the seventh ring, the line clicked open and she said the password.

They'd gotten more off of the bank robbery than she'd let on. She'd kept about half of it, and it sat in a safe deposit box in the very bank that they'd ripped off. It had been easy to slip in in the confusion. Some poor man had run out of the vault as the commotion started, and all she'd had to do was put a foot in the gap to stop it from closing.

That wasn't all the money that she'd siphoned from the Brotherhood, and stolen from other sources in various ways. All together, it was quite a neat sum. It had taken her almost three months to get enough for what she was planning.

Down in the courtyard, Erik pressed his hand to the side of his head, adjusting the microphone.

It wasn't always necessary to tap a phone line.

It was often less conspicuous to bug a room. A good mike would pick up part of both sides of the conversation.

He listened as his second in command outlined her treachery.

Sam glanced at his watch. Seven forty. Sighing, he heaved a bag into the truck of the car. He'd said his goodbyes all ready, inside.

He'd really hoped...

He was just throwing the last of his things in when a few loud thuds sounded behind his feet. He turned around to see Dana dropping her bags on the curb.

"Got room for one more?" she asked.

He smiled the first real smile that she'd seen from him in awhile.

"You betcha."

Bishop and Storm watched from her loft as the two finished packing the car. "Do you think that this was the right choice?" she asked from her perch in the open skylight as they drove off.

Bishop turned from the lower window, carefully avoiding the dangling branches of some sort of exotic tree. He looked at her, a bit surprised. Storm rarely second guessed herself like that. "I believe that she just needs a break, some time to clear her head. This could be good for her."

She smiled down at him gratefully, eyes creasing for the barest of seconds.

"Who knows. This could be good for all involved."

Scully sat in the Sears, Kentucky airport, staring out the windows and past the runways, at the rolling hills beyond. A plane blocked her view for a few seconds, taxiing to a stop at the gate. The hills were bright green, shimmering in the heat lines coming off of the blacktop.

She wondered how anything could remain so pristine in this temperature. The cracked vinyl seats were hot to the touch.

Beside her, Sam didn't even seem to notice.

They'd arrived awhile ago, actually ahead of schedule. Normally a cause for celebration, it had meant that they'd been parboiling in here while they waited for Paige's plane to come in. It was running right on time, and the already long wait between their arrivals had been stretched out in a rather major way. Scully looked for the time on her watch, but stopped, remembering that she'd taken it off sometime around hour two, since jewellery retained so much heat. She considered pulling it out of the bag at her feet, but couldn't find the energy.

Sam suddenly jumped up and began to wave his hands. His face was lit with a grin which stretched from ear to ear. "Over here!" he yelled through cupped hands, then practically ran over to a group of people coming through the gate. It was a good thing that there weren't many people in the airport. He probably would've knocked over anyone in his way. He scooped a frail looking blonde girl carefully up into his arms.

She giggled, screeched "Put me down, right now," unconvincingly. Two others separated from those disembarking the flight, a slightly older boy with his face wrapped in bandages, and an Asian teenager. The girl joined in the group hug.

Feeling like an outsider, Scully stopped half way to the group. She turned and was about to head over to the rental kiosk to get the car keys when a hand dropped onto her shoulder. The back of her head buzzed a little, and a tickle struck the back of her neck as she turned towards the owner of the restraining hand. It was the older boy. He too hung back from the group reunion. What little she could see of his face spoke of someone in the middle of a conversation, and she thought that she could hear a mumble. "What was that?" she asked.

He frowned at her and she could hear, almost an echo, //You with Guthrie?// She was sure that he hadn't moved his mouth, even as the words rang hollowly. She reached up to scratch the base of her neck, then started slightly as an idea occurred to her. "You're a telepath?" she blurted.

Raising an eyebrow at her, //Give the gel a prize.// She blushed furiously. She started to ask why he was speaking telepathically, but stopped herself as her gaze drew back to the leather wrapped around his face, even in this heat. He didn't even appear to be sweating.

//Why don't you give me a hand with the bags? We should get a move on.//

"Of course Mr...."

//Starsmore.//

The Asian girl popped up beside them, popping Starsmore on the arm.

"Don't be a jerk. He's just Jonothon, or, if you have to, Jon. I'm Jubilee."

Smiling at the young girl, she held out her hand. Jubilee smacked it.

"You must be Dana Scully," she said.

A little taken back, Scully frowned at the other girl.

"You shoulda seen your face when I didn't shake your hand. You look like you're in college, but you act like somebody's mom."

"Really?"

"Well, the hair was a bit of a give away, but I honestly would've known anyway."

While they were talking Sam and Paige had joined them. Sam had a protective arm around his sister, who rolled her eyes at the gesture but didn't shake it off. "Ah guess introductions aren't really in order, then."

Paige held out her hand. "Pleased ta meet you, Miss Scully. Ah've heard so much about you."

Scully reached to shake the blonde's hand, and forgot about the late Summer heat the second their skin made contact.

Cold overwhelmed her. It was as if her insides had suddenly become a vacuum, absolute zero, except for the blue lines of pain radiating from somewhere inside her lower abdomen My pancreas, she thought blurily, through the dark. Her vision dimmed and she felt the world start to spin around her.

They stared in shock as Scully started to crumple. Jubilee reached over to steady the woman. Scully sagged against her, clutching her stomach. "You ok?" she asked. Scully didn't react as if she heard her. Jubilee guided her over to the cracked red vinyl seats. "Jon, you wanna go get her some juice or something? Her sugar could be off or something." Jon nodded and headed over to the nearest concession.

They could see Scully seem to start to come out of it even as she sat there.

//Wot happened?// She hear Jon ask as he tossed a bill at the vender.

"Ah don't know," Paige answered. "She was fine, then she started ta shake my hand, and she just fell over."

The heat slammed back down on Scully, welcome against the stark cold of moments ago. A hand was rubbing her back as she bent down, head on her knees. She wanted to stay safe inside the cocoon of hair for a little longer, but forced herself to straighten, uncurling from around her stomach. She was surrounded by concerned faces, but one drew her attention.

Blue eyes set in a face much too young to be showing the beginning of those lines from continual pain. A face in which the whites of the eyes were back lit, as if there were a fire burning behind them. The eyes are the window to the soul, she thought. What if they got it wrong? What if the eyes were the window to the body, but you had to know how to read them?

Then Jon offered her a bottle of iced tea, and her train of though dissipated. She took it gratefully, suddenly thirsty. "Are you going tah be all right, Miss Scully?" Paige asked her.

"I just had a bit of a dizzy spell. I'm fine now." Scully caught Jubilee and Jon looking at each other knowingly. She willed them not to say anything. "We should probably get going. Mrs. Guthrie was expecting us a while ago already," she continued, then paused. "We wouldn't want to worry her, would we?"

Dust blew in the open windows of the car as a truck pulled out the drive way. Jubilee sneezed loudly in the back seat, where she sandwiched Paige between herself and Jon. Sam parked the car in front of the split level ranch house. The group climbed out of the beaten up car, stretching after the forced enclosement.

Smallish hills rolled gently around them, as miraculously green as those at the airport, despite the late month. A few horses roamed an pasture just behind the slightly tilted red barn which sat to the left of the white and yellow house. Wooden fences formed various pastures around them, and a few older buildings peeked out from behind the house and barn. Scully and Jon started to unload the trunk, and Jubilee just sat on the hood of the car gingerly, careful of her bare legs on the hot metal. Sam and Paige went to their mother, who had just walked out of the enclosed porch, patting her blonde pony tail.

Sam kissed his mother on the cheek, then the older woman caught her daughter in a tight hug. "Samuel," Mrs. Guthrie chastised. "Are you just going to stand there and let our guests do all of the work? Go and give them a hand."

Sam helped them toss the last of the bags out of the trunk, then they loaded up and started towards the house, Jubilee bearing her own bags, which she'd darted in to snatch, muttering something about her Gameboy.

"Just hold onto those bags ah yours when we get inside. I'll show you right up to your rooms," Mrs. Guthrie said. "I really am sorry about not being able to meet you at the airport, but like I said, Mrs.

Burstein down the road went into labor, and Mark needed me to watch their young'uns."

"It's all right, Ma. You couldn't exactly say no."

"My, where are my manners?" she asked, stopping suddenly, just outside the porch and turning to the five following her. "I'm Lucinda Guthrie."

"Jubilation Lee," Jubilee said, slinging one bag over her shoulder, freeing her hand to take Lucinda's extended one. "Mopey over there's Jonathan Starsmore. And the one with the wicked hair's Doctor Dana Scully. You know the one turning red under all of those bags. He's your son."

Mrs. Guthrie took a look at her son. He had loaded up, taking the majority of the suitcases and sacs under his mother's watchful eye, and was, indeed, turning bright red under the load. "Dear," she said mildly. "Well, we'd better get inside before the nice doctor has to treat you for a hernia."

Dumping her possessions on the pale blue comforter which covered the bed, Scully reached her arms up above her head and stretched. The room was as cheerful as the house itself, this room with white walls and pale green accents, melting into the pale wood floors that stretched throughout the house.

It was neat and clean and pretty and well loved and homey and ever so country and it wasn't a place that a young girl should die.

She'd felt Paige's death.

There was no way that she was going to let it happen.

Scully watched from the porch as Paige help out a hand of feed for the colt. Sam and Jon hovered around her watchfully, as they had since arriving here in Kentucky.

Mrs. Guthrie sat on the deck swing across from Scully, placing a pair of tall lemonades on the short table between them. "Thanks," Scully said, taking the one nearest to her. They watched the children in silence.

"It's hard on us," the older woman finally said. "Not that it shouldn't be, you know."

The only sound was the clinking of the ice cubes inside the glasses.

"They both took the loss of their father so hard. With him, it was an abrupt thing, though. One second he was here, then we got a call from the mine and everything changed. I wonder if that was better, for us anyway. We didn't get the time to say goodbye, but we didn't have to watch him deteriorate in front of our eyes, knowing that there was nothing that we could do, knowing that he'd never even get a chance at his dreams. At least then, we had each other for comfort, and when we started the farm, it was a constant struggle to just survive. There wasn't time for pity. We can't talk about what's happening now, because then we'd start to break down, and we need to be strong, for her. It's just been the three of us, since Joelle decided that she was better than us. I know that I started to loose them when they went off to those schools, but it never sunk in, because it was for their own good that I sent them. Besides, they were just a phone call away, even if Paige w! as in Snow Valley, and Sam in New Salem.

"Now, it's almost like even though she's standing right in front of me, I can't touch her. All I can do is watch as her body turns against her."

Scully curled her feet underneath of her, watching the woman watch the children. "I really don't know what to say. I never was the one who did the comforting, who tried to make things right. All I can tell you is that cancer patients often feel alone, that people seem to think that it's catching. I know what it's like to be eaten up from the inside, and I know that having someone there whom you know will be there tomorrow can make the day fly by so much faster. I won't lie to you, but I can tell you that in the three weeks since we got here, her attitudes improved drastically, and often that's what gets you through. She's surrounded by people who love her, and that's all the difference. She doesn't need you to be so strong that you can't cry, she just needs you to be there."

Mrs. Guthrie stared into her lemonade, watching the swirls of cold water coming off of the ice, slowly merging with the liquid around it.

"When'd you get so smart, Dana?"

"You should meet my partners." They lapsed into silence again.

Scully felt her face pull a little bit. They weren't her partners.

Not really. Not any more.

"You know, you must be really bright, to have completed your doctoral all ready," Mrs. Guthrie said abruptly, trying to distract both of them.

"Well," Scully said, pausing. "I'm older than I look. Plus the circumstances were a little unusual."

"Oh," the other woman said, raising a hand to her mouth. "I didn't realize. I thought that you were just a doctor that Frost or Xavier sent."

"Didn't realize what?" Scully said, genuinely confused.

"That you were a mutant."

Scully studied the group out in the horse pen. "I think that your daughter is starting to look a bit tired out there. It's about time that they got back inside."

Leaving the porch without a glance behind her, she walked over to the corral where the small group was gathered. "I think that that's just about enough for today, guys."

Paige turned to face her. "But ah feel just fine, Dr. Scully."

"You want to stay feeling fine, hayseed?" Jubilee asked, swinging down from the top of the log fence, where she had been perched, landing easily. Paige just pursed her lips. "That's what I thought. 'sides, aren't you tired of the smell of horse crap yet?"

Paige reluctantly let herself be led back into the house, grumbling all the way, until Jon threatened to tie her to the bed.

Then they had to put up with Jubilee's snickering for the rest of the evening.

Scully let go of Paige's wrist. "Your pulse, as well, is normal.

Nothing wrong with you tonight."

"Nothing that wasn't ahl ready wrong, ya mean."

Scully paused. "Yes."

"Can I ask you something, Doctor Scully? If ah'm out of line, just let me know, but I'm curious."

Scully sat in the chair by the girl's bed, where Paige lay with the blankets tucked in about her, her eyes threatening to fall closed.

"Shoot."

"Why do you still take mah pulse that way? And check my heart beat with a stethoscope and all?"

"Paige, just because you have cancer doesn't mean that we can't make sure that anything else that goes wrong..."

"Ah guess I didn't make myself clear. Why do you do it like that? I really don't mean to pry, but something that happened awhile back's been bugging me. You knew when the new mare was sick, just by looking at her. Why don't you try it like that on me? Just reach out and feel, instead ah using all those instruments."

Scully sat silently.

She searched for a response, but Paige was already drifting into sleep. She started to leave the room when the girl called out to her.

"Doctor Scully?"

"Yes?"

"Could ya open my window a crack, please? I forgot to before."

"Sure." Scully walked over and cranked the window handle so that it was open an inch, letting the night air drift in, still warm from the heat of the day. She'd just turned out the lights and was slowly closing the door when Paige's stopped her once again.

"Doctor Scully?"

"Yes?"

"Why do you still go by Dana Scully?" the girl asked, her voice full of sleep. "Ah mean, there's got to be so many records of Dana Scully in the government data banks, seeing as how you were a federal agent, and a known mutant and abductee, and you worked on the X-Files? It's just that if I were you, I really wouldn't want ta trip any of those records systems."

Scully stood silently in the doorway, searching for something, anything.

Luckily for her, the steady rise and fall of the girl's chest stopped the conversation.

The house was still when she left her room again. Silently cracking Paige's door open, she slid over to the girl's bedside. Standing there, she placed one hand on the girl's stomach, and the other on her forehead. Reaching for her core, she let the energy flow down her arms until she was shaking with fatigue. Paige barely stirred, but her color seemed to improve, coming back up to what it had been that morning. Scully quickly left the room, socked feet silent on the wooden floor, and softly closing the door behind her. She didn't fancy having to come up with a reason for the room call.

Scully leaned back against the hall wall, waiting for the rushing in her head to subside. She felt her reserves start to replenish, and bent over, picking up her wind breaker and sneakers from where they lay on the floor by the door. The Summer may have been stretching out, but by the time it got this late, the nights were still cool.

Paige's words echoed in her mind.

She paused on the porch stairs, pulling her shoes on, then hopped down them, taking care to avoid the third one, which squeaked. Wrapping her arms around herself until she adjusted to the temperature, she headed over to the old barn, keeping to the shadows cast by the yard lights. She slipped inside the barn doors. The weather-beaten wood actually much sturdier than it looked.

Waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dark, she felt the frantic energy start to sweep through her. She moved to the small space that she'd cleared in the middle of the barn, and started to run through the exercises that Remy had taught her back at the Mansion. She knew in an abstracted sort of way that she was getting better, but that she that she still wasn't as good as she should have been. She put it out of her mind, finished the warm up set, and moved into the faster ones, dancing with some unseen enemy.

When the worst of the rush had passed, and she felt a little more normal, she started the cool down. Finally growing still, she closed her eyes, and drew in the scents around her, horse, dust, wood, sweat, and oil mixing into one tapestry of scent.

She pulled the new oil rings out of the pocket of the coat she had dropped on the ground, and walked to where the decrepit motorcycle sat in pieces. The rings in it had been shot to hell. There was no way that they would've sealed properly.

She'd found the cycle when she was clearing a space for her work out.

It had been allowed to fall into disrepair, but it was a vintage Harley.

Scully hadn't known anything about bikes, but Hank had been a motorcycle enthusiast when he was young. The spark had kind of gone out of it for him when in his first year as a medical temp, he had treated three young men for injuries resulting from bike crashes. His knowledge of cycles had been one of the pieces that he'd passed to Scully.

She worked on the bike for awhile, lost in the components. When weariness started to numb her fingers once more, she stood and brushed herself off. Walking out the door of the barn, she stopped dead in her tracks. Sam stood just inside the corral, petting a horse which nuzzled his shoulder affectionately. She shifted silently to the side, back into the shadows, but he raised his head and looked right at her. "Hey Scully," he said softly. She raised a finger to her lips, jerking her head towards the house. "Naw," he said with a smile. "Momma doesn't wake up till the sun's up, and mah sister always sleeps soundly after you visit her."

Scully walked over to the coral. "How do you..."

"The blind on the window's open. I can see from here. You're not the only one who gets insomnia, you know. Plus, I figured something was up when Paige's condition didn't start to deteriorate at all. Our Ma wants to think that it's the signs of remission, and ah don't have the heart to tell her otherwise."

"But you weren't here when I came out."

"I went up to the north pasture to check on Gina's rear leg before you were done. I knew you weren't hurting her."

"How long have you known?"

"Since Thursday night, the one before last. Round the time when Jubilee and Jon had to go back to Massachusetts."

Scully walked over to the house, heading for the tap on the side. Sam scaled the coral fence, landing softly. He fell into step beside, his feet rasping over the grass. She turned the red tap on half, waiting for the water to warm. She took the small bottle of Gojo from the ground and squeezed the pump, distributing the white grainy soap onto her palm.

"It's not workin, is it?" Sam asked.

"No," she said, staring down at the soap, pale against the darkness of dirt and grease which covered her hand. "I'll do everything that I can, put all of my energy into it, and what'll happen is that the cancer won't progress any farther. I put as much as I can into her, short of draining myself completely, and it's not enough. I guess that the best way to explain it is that it's like having this battery inside of you. I don't know what'll happen if I let it run completely down, but just the thought of it makes me cringe a bit. When my reserves are charging up again, I'm like a live wire. There's all this energy flowing into me that I can't contain, and it makes me feel like I'm on the hugest sugar high ever. But her cancer isn't getting worse, and that's the important thing."

She ran the water over her hands, the cold numbing the feeling from her skin as it rinsed the soap away.

"You're doing your best, Dana. That's all anyone could expect of you.

That's all we expect of you."

"That's the important thing, right? She's not getting worse."

"Dana..."

She fingered the pump on the bottle of soap. Soap was supposed to make you clean, keep you from getting sick.

"Dana..." he said again.

You look after yourself, you're supposed to be all right.

She threw the bottle against the side of the house, her vision blacking. She felt Sam drop a hand to her shoulder and spun away from him. "Dammit. Dammit, dammit, dammit."

The bottle was lying on the ground, cracked and broken. Soap was leaking onto the foundations of the house, staining it dark. She rubbed her forehead, her hands in her eyes. Sam placed a hand on her shoulder again, hesitantly this time, and she didn't shake it off.

"This is not me," she said. "Sam, it isn't. This is not me. I...

I'm not... I am not this weak. I have been through too much. I can deal with things. I have been abducted by aliens, and kidnapped, and I have been stalked, and I have been experimented on, and I know how to adjust. I can adjust. I've got to... I've got to pull it together. I've got to get it all back together."

He just kept on looking at her with those stead, honest eyes, boring into her, showing not one hint of blame. "I am a doctor," she said.

"I have been blessed, and I can't help her, Sam. I can't. I can't help her, but I can take people out with a thought, because the same things that I can use to heal I can use to hurt. How am I supposed to know where the line is any more?"

She slid out from underneath his hand again, gently this time, and smiled down at the ground, just a little. The expression was bitter and so fleeting that he almost missed it.

"I healed my cancer, Sam. Why can't I heal hers?"

The night wasn't quiet.

Scully could hear the crickets, and the horses breathing, and the night life, but between the two of them no sound passed. She looked at him, and he caught her eyes with his, holding them.

"Why can't I cure her?" she asked. Sam didn't drop her gaze, didn't smile, didn't say anything, just waited. "I have to go," she said.

"We have an early morning tomorrow. Or today, depending on how you look at it." She brushed past him and into the house, almost expecting him to try to stop her.

He stood there until she was gone, his eyes taking in the grass and sky and wood and horses and stars and everything behind.

"Only you can answer that one, Dana."

Why don't you use your powers to check me? Paige had asked.

Scully sat on the powder blue bedspread, arms wrapped around her knees, staring out the open window. Strange how the hour or so before the sun actually started to come up was the clearest and brightest time of the day.

Why do you still go by Dana Scully?

The air was clean and refreshing, full of the smell of dew. The sound of birds chirping merrily drifted to her ears. She could hear the slight brush of horse's tails as they began to wake.

I didn't realize that you were a mutant.

This is not me. I am not this weak.

Despite her words to Sam, she hadn't been able to sleep. Her past echoed. Evan and Doggett, with their faces always turned, couldn't see her. They moved as if she wasn't there, though she reached for them. Mulder stood apart.

Could he see her?

She reached for him, needing his solidity as an anchor, but she couldn't touch him. Mulder turned to Doggett, who held Evan lightly.

"You're in a different place now, you know. The X-Files aren't completely rational."

"And I really need you to tell me this?"

"Well, you sure aren't acting like you've figured it on your own.

It's a different set of rules. You have to be able to look at things from a few different perspectives. You have to let go of where you were before. This is almost like a whole new world. You aren't going to survive for long if you keep on trying to deal with things like you used to."

And she watched as her past moved on, while Doggett told Mulder that he didn't need to make it in the X-Files for much longer, because he had a job lined up that meant he could stay closer to home more often.

Funny how the hour or so before dawn was often the clearest.

Magneto sat atop of the highest building in the desert compound. A group of his new recruits had just lost a fight with Xavier's little lap dogs in Snow Valley.

He'd lost some very promising students. The group had just been pulling off a jewel heist to appropriate new funds. Erik had specifically ordered no casualties, to work on their finesse. They would have made a clean get away, but Frost's brats had decided to stick their noses where they didn't belong. Xavier had taught them well. The fight had escalated, and now Magneto was out some of his best new students.

He'd even ordered no casualties.

Xavier had interfered, and people, both Erik's students and civilians, were dead.

He'd ordered no casualties.

"Raven, do yourself a favor and put that knife down," Erik said without turning around. He could hear her hesitation, torn between her loyalties and her desire for revenge. She'd found the bug. She knew that he knew of her plans.

She also knew that he'd try and stop her, and she needed to bring her plan to fruition. Needed revenge for her daughter.

The silence stretched out.

Xavier had interfered, and people were dead.

"Raven, the knife may be made of stone, but there is enough iron in your blood for me to stop you. Besides, if you kill me, who is going to pay for the rest of those mercenaries?" He turned to face her then, watching as the stone knife tumbled from her fingers, landing with a clink on the red ceramic roof.

He watched as those churning eyes of hers lit up, and her face was split with a maniac grin. He stiffened uncomfortably as she embraced him. "They'll pay, Erik. We'll make them pay."

Mystique had always been a bit off. Maybe it came from never knowing who you were, being expected to keep up with a personality, an entire being, for each face. Maybe it was loosing a girl she had raised as a daughter, and maybe Raven had always just been toeing that line.

Since Rogue's death though, Mystique's condition had rapidly deteriorated, never mind the fact that up until they found out about it, Raven had never given any indication of missing her foster daughter.

Magneto sent his second in command off, watching the little hop in her step.

The woman honestly had no idea that she was insane.

Funny how those who were mad never knew it.

Dana sat on top of the highest log of the corral, watching the sun come up. The brightness intensified, tearing at her eyes until tears rolled down her cheeks. She forced herself to watch it, until what hid behind was burned out.

When she looked away, blinking, sunspots covered her entire vision.

She rubbed her hands against her eyes, wiping the wetness away, her sight already starting to clear.

"You all right, Miss Scully?" Sam's voice came from below her and to the right.

She swung carefully around, turning so she was facing him. "I'm going to be fine," she said, smiling weakly.

She heard him scuff the toe of his shoe in the dirt. "Look, Miss Scully, Doctor Scully, we can't pay you much for looking after mah sister, but that motorbike you're fixing up, it came with the farm.

Ah ran this past my mother, and if you get it running, it's yours. We don't have much in the way of tools and parts lying around, but anything that looks like it'd help, you're welcome to...."

"Sam."

"Yes, Doctor Scully?"

"Don't be so grateful. I haven't really done anything yet. All I've accomplished is to draw things out."

"Every moment counts," he said with a smile as he reached up for her hand, ever the gentleman. She found it through the remaining sunspots, and hopped down from the top of the fence. They walked back towards the house, the beginnings of an idea bubbling in Dana's head.

"I just received a message from the Academy. Banshee and Frost are letting Jon and one of the other students come out. I'm picking them up from the airport this afternoon, but I thought that it would be a nice surprise for Paige."

"You want me to keep her occupied?"

"If you don't mind."

"I wouldn't have offered if I minded."

"You're a peach, Toni," he said, grinning, as he turned to go back out to the field.

"Wait a second. What did you call me?" she asked, confused. He stopped and turned back towards her, his face a bit red.

"That slipped out?" She nodded. "Well, Letonia. Toni. Ah've been calling you Miss Scully for three weeks, and you barely look any older than me. People call me by my code name sometimes, too.

Cannonball."

Dana had wondered where that name had come from.

When she thought about it, she wasn't even sure what Sam's powers were, other than the fact that he was supposedly immortal.

"I've missed a lot Sam. There's a lot that I should know, but I've been too self involved to either notice or find out." Sam looked at her, confusion evident on his face. He really didn't have any idea what she was talking about.

He had to be the only one. "For one thing, I missed when my code name became Letonia."

"Sometime a bit after you came back for good. People just gradually started ta call you that."

She really must have had her head buried in the sand for that particular fact to slip past her.

"You really didn't know?"

"I guess that it's just not the sort of thing that you bother to tell people. You just assume that they know," she replied. "It's okay though. It's a nice name."

"Especially when you considered that they could call you an obsolete piece of ammunition?" Sam asked with a grin. "Or, hey, you could be Skin. Or Toad. One of the original X-Men was called Marvel Girl."

"Seriously?" Dana asked, fighting back the giggles that threatened to overwhelm her. "Who comes up with these? I'm sure that they strike fear into the hearts of your enemies."

"Hey, we live in ah culture where Batman's sidekick's name was Robin.

I'm sure he heard lots about it."

Scully, for some strange reason, found it hilarious. Once the laughs started, she couldn't get them under control. She collapsed on the deck swing, holding her side. Sam watched in some concern as she began to shake silently, tears streaming down her face for the second time that morning. He stood there, unsure of what to do, until Dana was once again calm. She wiped her face with the bottoms of her sleeves and looked up at him. She started to go off on another giggling fit, but got it under control.

"I'm sorry," she gasped. "It's just that it's been so long since I..."

"It's okay, Miss Scully. Ah understand." He paused. "Remember.

Mum's the word."

He stood there for a bit, then smiled and bid her goodbye. He'd only taken a few steps when she said, "You don't really need to call me Doctor Scully, or Miss Scully, you know. Someone told me that we are almost the same age, after all."

He smiled at her again, his blonde hair shining in the morning light.

"See ya this afternoon."

She watched him walk away, her idea still bubbling inside her head.

If it worked, then Paige would be healed.

She padded back into the house, her mind flying through the possibilites. If something went wrong...

But Paige was dying anyway.

She'd have to think about this carefully, from every possible angle, before she mentioned it to anyone.

They'd all had enough dashed hopes.

Paige squealed as a gray blur hurtled through the front door, sweeping her out of her chair. Dana was on her feet in an instant. But the blur resolved itself into a boy with strange gray skin who, by the way that he was hugging the girl, obviously knew her. She saw Sam and Jon clomp in through the door. "That's the other student?" she asked Sam. "Let me guess. Skin?"

He nodded. "Dana, meet Angelo Espinosa. Angelo, put mah sister down and meet the nice doctor FBI Agent."

Angelo quickly set Paige down and turned to face Dana. "I knew I should've left the image inducer on," he muttered under his breath, low enough that normal ears wouldn't catch it even if the person was standing right beside him. He grinned nervously. Dana looked him over appraisingly. She could see why they called him Skin. He seemed to have no end of it. "It would have to be a doctor," he said at the same level.

Playing a hunch, she darkened her face slightly. "Angelo Espinosa, you say?" She could feel the tension start to radiate off of him in waves, and Paige, whom the boy had pushed behind himself, held her hand over her mouth as if to ward off a bout of giggles.

"Yes, Senorita. I'm from Mevernton, a small town in upper South Carolina. Lived there all my life."

It was funny, Dana mused. She could feel that he was lying. The body produced different pheromones when a lie was told. Maybe she was developing a sensitivity to them. He misread her silence, fiddling in where he stood. "I have a few questions that I'd like to ask you," she said. His eyes didn't dart around the room, but focused on her face.

He moved one foot to the side, shifting his weight.

His eyes didn't dart around the room looking for escape routes. He'd catalogued the room when he'd come through the door, even as excited as he was to see Paige.

What kind of upbringing taught you to be that paranoid? What did you have to go through to be that alert, to be that afraid of an casually dressed, seemingly young, woman who sat with the family of your friend, just because you found out that she was an FBI agent?

"First off," she said. "Why don't you tell me about the image inducer?" His movements stilled and he no longer looked ready to flee.

Instead, he stared at her in shock, looking at the large gap between them.

"You heard that?"

She leaned in closer and tapped her ears. "Augmented sense of hearing."

"So you're..."

"Yep. And just for reference, next time, you might want to come up for a better name for a town than Mevernton."

He turned to Sam and Jon, glaring at them. "How long were you planning on letting me go on thinking that she was going to arrest me before you stepped in?"

//As long as it took to scare you straight, Angelo.// "You're supposed to be my hombre."

//Just looking out for your best interests. Besides, if you have a heart attack, I get to use your Playstation till you get out of the hospital.//

Angelo muttered something under his breath which only Dana caught. She struggled to keep her face professional.

Spanish may not have been her strongest class when she was in high school, but she'd learned the words that really mattered.

Angelo stood in the fading light, throwing pebbles from the neat gravel path as far as he could. He knew that he could get them farther if he used the fold of skin between his thumb and forefinger as a slingshot, but this was more of a release. It wasn't as satisfying as getting into a bar fight, but there were no bars to be found. He picked up a particularly large one, naming it Jonothon. He let it fly.

The stone sailed farther than any of the others had, disappearing into the blood red sun.

"You can't really be that mad at him for not telling you who I was the other day, can you?" a voice came from behind him. He started, automatically reaching for the knife that he didn't carry anymore.

He turned to face the doctor. "I'm not, senorita."

She didn't raise an eyebrow at that, even though it was evident that no further explanation was forthcoming. She simply walked back to the veranda and sat down on the bottom step. Dana watched as he hurled stone after stone, until his arm hurt from it. She watched as he walked towards the house and up the stairs, pausing at the top before finally settling down beside her. And she sat silent, waiting for him to speak.

"So Frost walks up to the guy and does something to his head. He hops up on the stage in the bar and does this chicken dance. Then it turns into a really bad Irish jig and the stuff just goes down hill from there. He gets hot wings thrown at him, and he gets booed, but he still stays up there. We caught hell from Frost and Cassidy for using the fake IDs, of course, but it was worth it just to see that slime make an ass of himself. I mean, Paige obviously doesn't look anywhere near his age. And I heard Miss Frost telling Bansh' that he'd have nightmares for weeks."

Dana laughed again. They'd been talking for so long that the sun had gone down and the only light was that spilling through the housewindows behind them. She'd learned a lot about how things ran around Xavier's, the things about people's powers and pasts that she should have made an effort to find out before, even the very basic facts that everyone seemed to take for granted.

Turned out that Sinister wasn't the neighbor's dog after all.

"This is one of the longest Indian Summers on record," she said when the conversation hit a lull. "It's getting close to mid-November but it feels like July. It's almost like the earth itself is holding its breath, waiting to see how this all draws out."

She searched for a way to put what she had to say delicately. Finding none, she let the silence speak for a time. "I know," she said finally.

"Know what?" Angelo asked her, smiling lazily. He may not really think of himself as attractive, but this light was good for him. His black hair shone, and his skin gave him an exotic look.

"That you weren't really that mad at Jon for not telling you who I was."

"Si?"

"You're mad at him because of Paige."

The crickets were active that night, she decided, as they tried their hardest to fill in the silence.

Then he recovered and grinned at her. The expression was practiced and probably fooled most people who were on the receiving end of it. "I have no idea what you're talking about. Why would I be mad at him because of Paige?"

Scully raised an eyebrow at him. Her eyes, old beyond her years, bored into him. She wasn't buying it. The crickets were going to drive him crazy. He finally broke her gaze. "Is it really that obvious?" he asked.

"No."

"How long exactly have I known you? And you figured it out."

"Yeah, but I was an FBI agent for a long time. It's one of those things that you start to pick up on after awhile, seeing as it can be the motivation for a lot of crimes." Plus, she added to herself, You radiated it. She had the feeling that she'd been picking up on pheromones and hormones for awhile, but hadn't been paying attention to what they said. "Does she know?"

"No, senorita." Angelo seemed to have lost his animation. His movements were as subdued as his voice.

"Well I hate to be the party pooper here, but this might be something that you would want to tell her soon," she said, knowing that he knew.

He looked up at Dana. His eyes weren't sparkling anymore.

"I can't."

"Because of Jonothan Starsmore? The boy doesn't own her. They're not even together."

"I can't."

"Tell me why, exactly. Believe me, you're going to feel a lot worse if you don't say anything and Paige..."

He caught her eyes again, a fire starting to show in the restrained motions of his fingers. "Because Jon is my best friend. Not only that, he's my team mate. Jon and Paige, they're constant, they always have been. If I make a move on her, then not only do I betray my best friend, I disrupt the team. We have to be able to trust each other.

The world we live in, the team is more important than the parts. If we can't depend on the others to be there when we need them, then we can't function as a whole. We don't function as a team, then we're easy prey, and none of us are going to survive very long." He paused.

Scully was reminded of Bobby's words to her, a month, a year, a decade ago. They were echoes of each other, and they slammed back and forth inside her head.

"The ties that bind us," she muttered under her breath.

"Add in a healthy dose of fear of rejection," he finally continued, back to the practiced grin which he so often showed the world. "And you've got a killer combination."

"What ever feelings Paige had for Jon have long since faded," Dana told him. She could tell him that she knew from any number of things, but if he couldn't take it at that, then she wasn't going to push and push and push. "And it seems to me that maybe duty works both ways. He should have the decency to give Paige the choice, without backlash affecting your team. It goes both ways. That's something that the both of you would do well to remember," she said, brushing herself off as she rose. Angelo was looking at the porch with an expression on his face that was equal parts embarrassment, shame, and anger.

Dana walked towards the door, stopping by Jon where he stood leaning against the house.

Where he'd been standing for sometime.

// Mrs. Guthrie said to tell you that the short cake is ready,// he said evenly.

"Think about it," she whispered, words meant only for his ears. She pushed past him and into the porch, dropping her shoes on the rack before heading towards the scent of fresh pastries.

Jon followed a few minutes later, looking even more withdrawn than usual, leaving Angelo sitting all by himself on the porch.

And Jon thought.

Dana sat on the foot of Paige's bed. The girl looked up from her book and smiled. Angelo had come bearing homework, saying that he wasn't going to let Paige's grades slip in their Senior year, not after she'd worked so hard.

The look on the doctor's face sobered her. Paige closed the text and set it aside. "Yes, Miss Scully?"

Dana took a deep breath, looking at the fire that still back lit the girl's eyes. "I've thought long and hard about this. I think that I might have found a way to cure you."

"Really?" Paige asked, loosing her breath some time between the beginning and end of the word.

Dana held her hand out. "Wait until you hear all of it. I don't want to get your hopes up, because I'm not sure that it can work. And if anything goes wrong, chances are that we won't get another attempt."

"But if yah don't try..."

She looked deeply into the girl. Her cancer was progressing, despite the energy Scully passed onto her. Pretty soon it would be too late for anything to do any good at all. All she'd done so far was slow the progression of the cancer until it was a bulldozer creeping slowly instead of a speeding city bus heading straight for her. "I'm asking you about this first, before I do the others. It's your choice, but I want to make sure that you understand all of the risks involved."

And as Dana outlined her plan, she watched the burning inside of Paige's eyes, and knew what the girl's answer would be.

Dana surveyed the group gathered in the living room. She cleared her throat. To her surprise, she immediately had their attention. "I suppose you're all wondering why I called you here," she said, grimacing slightly at the expression. "Paige all ready knows. In fact, we've had a long discussion about it. I think that I might know how I can save her." She was immediately interrupted by clamouring.

It really was amazing how much noise four people could make, especially when it was taken into consideration that one didn't even have a mouth.

"Look, I can't explain if I have to shout over all of you." When the noise had subsided, she took a deep breath. "Cancer is a parasite, and a glutton at that. It eats away at cells, mutating them, and it doesn't particularly care what it is that it's living on. I think that I might be able to turn the cancer in on itself. It wouldn't cure Paige, but it would regress her condition to a stage where it could be successfully treated by a doctor. A simple operation would remove what remained of the cell mass." Angelo let out a whoop, but feeling the weight of Dana's gaze on him, he fell silent again. "Hold on until you hear all of this. If something were to go wrong, all I'd be doing is accelerating the growth of the cancer by pumping the energy into it."

The clamouring broke out again. Dana fought the impulse to sink her head into her hands, wondering if it was too late to bring out the gags. Then Paige's voice broke through, silencing the group.

"It's my choice. Ah know the risks. Yeah, if something goes wrong, the cancer'll get me. But if I don't try, it'll get me anyway. And ah don't fancy waiting around for someone to come up with a better idea. Ah've waited for long enough. Ah'm not ashamed to say that ah don't want to die, that ah'm afraid. My whole life is ahead of me, and ah don't want to miss it. This looks like the best chance I'm gonna to get. So ah'm going to take the chance, and hope that you'll support me."

Angelo plunked down on the arm of her chair. "You sure, chiquita?"

She nodded solemnly. With a sigh he wrapped an arm around her shoulder. "Then I guess that I'm going to have to go along with it."

"Ah can't let Monet graduate at the top of the class, now can I?"

Jon kept his eyes steady on Dana. //There's something more, isn't there?//

"Yes."

//Would you care to share with the group?//

"I don't have enough energy, or power, or whatever you want to call it, to do this by myself."

//I assume you have a plan.//

She could feel the press of eyes heavy upon her. "You're literally full of what I need. Sam can make the air itself explode around him.

Either of you feel like sharing?"

"Now, no matter what, you're probably going to feel restless and slightly hyper after I'm done. It's from having so much extra energy in your body all of a sudden. The important thing is that you don't give into that feeling. You're staying in this bed until I tell you otherwise. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Miss Scully."

Jonothon pulled Dana off to the side before they started. He glanced over at Paige sitting comfortably in the bed, and Sam hovering over her. //I think that you should let Ange in on this. He's feeling particularly useless, and all mutants have a bit more energy than humans. It would really mean a lot to him.//

Dana looked at Jonothon appraisingly. "Do you want to go and get him?"

//It might be better if you were to go.//

She smiled at him a bit, then clapped a hand on his arm. She saw Jon turn and sit silently at the foot of Paige's bed as she walked out the door.

She found Angelo sitting at the top of the stairs, leaning against the bannister. She'd kicked him and Mrs. Guthrie out of the room about ten minutes ago. She'd felt crappy about it, but she needed to be able to concentrate. "Jon is starting to rub off on you. Moping is a way of life for that boy."

"At least I'm learning from the best."

"Look, I could use another hand in there. You interested?"

When they finished, hours later, Dana could already feel the difference in Paige. Dana stood to stretch the cramps developed from sitting in the same position for an extended period of time, surprised at how normal she still felt. It hadn't taken as much out of her as she'd thought it would. Raising her arms above her head, white danced in front of her eyes, and she felt her legs start to collapse.

Something caught her, cradled her, and the white edged into black.

//Good job, Dana,// an unfamiliar voice said as she faded, following her down into the void.

Dana dug her head under the pillow, trying to hold on to the last vestiges of sleep. She could feel someone else in the room. Finally giving up on the idea of being able to drop back off, she cracked open one eye. The sunlight filtering through the blinds seemed to stab into her brain, and she dropped the eye shut just as quickly. Seeing that she was awake, whom ever it was in the room with her reached over and opened the curtains. Stifling a groan, she pulled the covers back over her head, hiding in a cocoon of white and baby blue. The footsteps moved again, presumably taking their owner to a chair.

When the rumbling in her stomach forced her to surface, Sam was leafing through a magazine, which he quickly tucked into a bag when he noticed Dana watching him. "Morning," he said brightly. "We were starting to think that you were never going to wake up."

"How long was I out?"

"Just a bit over four days."

Well, that explained the state her stomach was in. "I should go check on Paige."

"She's doing fine. We called Doc Garrett out to look at her when it became obvious that you weren't going to waking up any time soon. He says that she's doing remarkably well. She says that she can feel it working. And don't worry, we haven't let her out to run off the zing she finds herself with suddenly. Angelo's been keeping her occupied by teaching her Spanish."

"How are the others?"

"You got it the hardest. Jon's been hell to live with, easily irritable. He doesn't sleep, so it's taking him longer to recharge.

According to Angelo, it's a baby step down from his usual attitude.

Angelo's developed a fondness for naps, but he's still up for the majority of the day, usually at Paige's bedside. He's almost back to normal sleep patterns though."

"And you?"

"It was easiest on me, since you weren't taking something that was part of mah body normal, just what I generated for you. I got you up to your room, then slept like a baby for half a day." Dana's stomach chose then to loudly protest being deprived of food for more than half a week. Sam just smiled as she felt her face redden. "Why don't we go get you some grub? We can stop and see mah sister on the way."

"Sounds good." He stood, waiting for her. "Ummm, Sam?"

"Yes?"

"Would you mind waiting outside while I get dressed?" His face was the one to redden this time, and he slipped out the door. She pulled on a pair of broken-in jeans and a bunny hug. Stepping into the hall, she motioned for Sam to stay were he was while she washed up in the bathroom.

By the time they stepped into Paige's room, she felt halfway human again.

Or halfway mutant, anyway.

Dana watched Angelo throw the last of Paige's bags into the trunk of the Guthrie's car. Hers were all ready there, underneath Jon's, Mrs.

Guthrie's, and Angelo's. They were heading to Massachusetts that afternoon. Frost had arranged for Paige's operation to go the next day.

In the week since Paige's remission had begun, the Indian Summer had released its hold on Kentucky. Autumn had set in with a vengeance.

Angelo strolled over to her when everything was secure in the car.

"Kind of creepy. Seems like you were right, before. Almost like the world really was holding its breath. Soon as Paige started to get better, it started to move on again." Dana nodded silently, briefly clapped a hand to his shoulder. All of a sudden, Angelo gulped.

"Great, I forgot my sandals." He dashed back into the house, leaving Dana to her thoughts.

She took one last look around the farm yard. She was going to miss it here. As well, a mild disappointment that she hadn't finished working on the bike touched her. Sam's voice came from over her shoulder.

"It's not like you're never coming back. We'd love to have you again, you know."

"I know, but..."

"Yeah." Sam drew her into a hug. "I'll see you guys tomorrow, ok?

There's just a few things that I have to look after for the farm, like making sure someone's going to feed the horses. Then I'll be right up."

Angelo was back at the car already, and as he slammed the trunk, Mrs.

Guthrie honked the car horn. "We've got to hurry if we want to get to Sears in time for the flight!" she called through the open window.

Sam bid goodbye to the group as they climbed into the car, Jonothon all ready glowering in the front passenger seat.

Sam waved goodbye until they could no longer see him out of the rear view mirror. Then he pulled the magazine out of his jacket pocket, and went to work.

They sat in the hospital waiting room, all nine of them. Dana, Sam, Mrs. Guthrie, Paige's teachers and classmates. Emma Frost, a powerful telepath, was monitoring the operation through the surgeon's eyes.

"Is it over yet?" Monet, the only one of Paige's friends that Dana hadn't met yet, asked. Jubilee kicked her. "What was that for?"

Jubilee glowered at her in response. Monet rubbed her shin.

Dana just sighed as Sean Cassidy threatened to separate them. Tempers had become increasingly short. "The doctor's coming," Emma informed them. "Do stop bickering before he gets here."

When Doctor Jenkins found his way to them, he was faced with a row of expectant faces. "It's too early to tell for sure, but I think that Paige is going to be fine," he said, running a hand through thinning hair. "In all honesty, I've never seen anything like this. Her recovery has been amazing. She seems to be well on her way to a complete rehabilitation."

All of a sudden, Dana found herself being hugged by an exuberant Jubilee, while the rest of the mutants, the doctor, and various other people in the waiting room looked on in amusement. "You did it."

"Is Paige awake?" Sean asked Jenkins.

"She was under an anaesthesia, but it should be wearing off any time now. However, I'm afraid that you can't see her until tomorrow, unless you're immediate family. We wouldn't want to wear her out."

Mrs. Guthrie looked at the group. "Everyone here is my daughter's family. Maybe not by birth, but by blood."

Jenkins started to disagree with her, but found himself telling them that she was in Room 724, on the paediatrics floor, but to make sure to leave when she started to get tired.

As the group pushed past him to the elevators, he shook his head.

And forgot all about it.

The elevator was large enough to accompany stretchers, so they all fit in easily. Sean leaned in close to his fellow headmaster. "Em, did you..."

"I have no idea what you're talking about, Sean."

Paige was awake when they finally located her room. She smiled weakly at them, and then the stampede to get through the door started.

//Children, contain yourself.// Emma's voice came in their heads. It rang in Dana's mind with an odd familiarity. She hung back, finding herself face to face with Emma, who looked at the ex-FBI agent with some little curiosity.

The two people who would do Paige the most good had shown up right after Scully had started to formalise a plan. A walking nuclear furnace and someone who cared very deeply for the girl. A plan she had come up with after reflections triggered by casual comments that Paige would never normally allow to pass her lips.

Dana gave herself a mental shake. She was being paranoid. Xavier, who was supposed to be the world's most powerful telepath, had barely been able to tell what she was feeling when she was standing in the same room as him, before her powers had had a chance to develop.

She was being paranoid.

But something in the way Emma smiled at her as she ushered her into Paige's room made Dana wonder.

Dana sighed as she dragged her bags down the stairs of the Massachusetts Academy, plopping them next to Sam's in the entrance way. It was at least one sign that the mansion was occupied by someone other than herself today. Pausing, she thought that she heard voices coming from the living room. Following her ears, she stopped dead.

"You're not just going to stand there, Miss Scully, are you?" Paige asked. The girl had been back for a week and a half, and was doing well and beyond anyone's expectations.

"Don't worry, we didn't let Frosty make the cake," Jubilee said, dragging Dana into the room. "She just called up the baker's."

Sitting on the table was a chocolate cake that was just being cut into. "With Sam and you leaving and all, we figured it'd be a good excuse to get some junk food."

She smiled at the eclectic group gathered before her. "Give me a piece of that." So they sat and ate cake, and she thought that she could get used to this.

And she realized that sometime, when she hadn't been paying attention, she all ready had.

"I really didn't believe that you could finish that all off, even together."

"What's wrong Monet? Regretting now that you didn't take a piece first?"

"Not at all. Unlike some people, I prefer to stay slender."

Jubilee just stuck her tongue out.

Dana laughed. These were even more people that she was going to miss.

Except, she wasn't going to have to miss them in the long run. They were going to be right here.

"Hey, Frosty, do you think that Dana could teach a course on fire arms safety some time?"

Emma looked at Jubilee forbiddingly. "Do you really think that I would allow you to learn to use a side arm?"

Sean, obviously used to such confrontations, placed a placating arm around Emma's shoulder. "Now now, not until our guests are gone.

Then I'll help ye tape the lass's thumbs to her palms."

"You forgot one thing there, Bansh. How am I supposed to do my homework if I don't have my opposable thumbs?"

"You can still type without thumbs, Jubilation," Emma said coolly.

Sam stood, ignoring Jubilee's squawk of protest. "Come on Toni, I have something to show you."

She followed him to the front door, grabbing her jacket before they stepped out to the walk. Then she stood staring at what was in front of her, vaguely aware that the rest of the group stood behind her on the landing.

The Harley was sitting at the curb, in much better condition than she'd left it. For one thing, various parts essential to its functioning weren't scattered on the ground around it. "What...."

"Surprise."

"I don't understand."

"Well senorita," Angelo started. "We knew that you wouldn't have time to finish fixing it up, with your being unconscious and all. So me, Sam, and Jon kind of did it for you. That's the business that kept Sam behind."

She turned around. "I don't know what to say."

//How 'bout thank you? But you know, you did most of the work by yourself. We just turned a few screws.//

"Thank you."

Sam stretched back in the seat of the jet. "This is the way ta travel. Private plane beats coach any day."

Dana had to agree. "So your sister and her friends almost always fly like this?"

"Frost has a thing about luxury. And she's got the money, so who's to tell her not to?"

Dana folded her jacket behind her head started to drift off. She was almost asleep when a short, harsh note filled the cabin. She bolted upright and followed Sam, who was already heading up to the cockpit.

"What is it?" she asked, trying to peer over his shoulder. "Is something wrong with the plane?" But the pilot didn't look like someone in control of a malfunctioning plane.

Sam turned to face her slowly, his face unreadable. She felt her stomach drop. He was holding a piece of paper in a suddenly white fist.

"It's, ah, a distress call from the Mansion. They're under attack."

Really, these sorts of things never come when you expect them to.

Storm was outside, working in her garden when it happened. She was watering the plants, the drops sparkling in the sun as they fell, when she felt a presence above her. "Yes?" she asked, looking up.

She threw herself to the side just in time to avoid the knife arcing down towards her. As her attacker struggled to disentangle his weapon from the rose bush, she hit him with a gust of wind, watching as he landed against a tree.

She soared up into the air, surveying the grounds.

A loud clap of thunder rent the silence. "X-Men," she called. "We are under attack."

She counted eleven figures out in the open, including the one who had tried to kill her earlier. Goddess only knew how many more were under the cover of the woods, or already at the Mansion. If they'd managed to breach the perimeter security, then they could probably get into the house.

//There are nineteen in total,// came the Professor's voice.

//They're wearing neuroinhibitors of some sort, so I can't tell more than that. Unfortunately, that also means that I can't knock them out.//

Storm's mind started to race. Nineteen of them. She had Wolverine, Bishop, Betsy, Gambit, Bobby, and Marrow. Seven of her people, eight if you counted the Professor. But he wouldn't be much of a help if their assailants were blocked from telepathic interference.

//I've communicated the information to the others,// Xavier continued.

Sweeping her hand out, she let a blast of lightning down at the group that she could see. They scattered. She followed it up with another bolt, forced to duck when one of them stood into its path and held up his arm, reflecting it back up at her.

//Professor, they are either mutants or are well enough equipped to posses reflective technology.//

//Understood.//

A pink blade took down one of the attackers, and Betsy bounded off looking for a new target.

//Ororo, Remy is on his way back. He was up in the...// Storm lost the rest of what the Professor was communicating, as she was dodging from the fence spike which had come flying towards her head. It came hurtled past her before correcting its course and arc back towards her. She dodged again, this time leaving her hand trailing to the side. She let it brush her skin, then fed a bolt of lightning into it, watching as the pieces fell towards the ground, gravity reasserting itself.

There was a thump on the roof from behind her.

//Sam and Dana's plane is only ten minutes or so out, so back up will be arriving soon.//

If she'd had the choice, the two of them wouldn't have been the reinforcements. Dana couldn't even beat the simplest Danger Room simulations, and her control over her powers was splotchy.

Storm turned to the roof, rotating gracefully in the air.

Sam was like Bobby. He wasn't ruthless. He hated to hurt people. It made him a great person to be around, but right now she wanted someone like Pete Wisdom, or Cable.

Magneto was standing on the Mansion roof.

It figured.

Sam's face was white beneath his golden thatch of hair. His fingers tapped against the control panel, the clicking of his nails audible over the jet's engines. Dana finally slapped her hand down over his, pressing it against the cool metal. "That's not helping us get there any faster, you know."

He barely spared her a glance. He stopped tapping, however. He sat even more rigidly in the copilot's chair.

"Look, by the time we get there, they'll probably have the upper hand anyway. The way you guys tell it, you're pros at this. They don't need our help."

"No offence Miss Scully, but that really doesn't make me feel much better." He watched her as she leaned back against the bulkhead. "Not that ah don't appreciate the effort, though."

"Five more minutes guys," the pilot said. "We're almost there. Hang on for just a little while longer." She looked, by the blue-ish tinge to her skin and purple eyes, to be one of the more obviously mutated beta or gamma glass mutants employed by Frost Industries in various positions.

Silence filled the plane until the Mansion came into sight.

"Look, Miss Scully," Sam started, then paused. "Look, it might be better... What I'm trying to say is... Do you think that you can handle a fight?"

She started to reply angrily, tell him that she'd logged more field hours than he had, that her experience far outstripped his.

"It's just that you haven't had any training with the team, and the last time you ran simulations, you kinda... lost."

She stopped herself from replying, turning his words over in her head.

Did she have anything to add to a fight, or would she merely be in the way? Guns weren't exactly the most useful things in these types of fights, due to the prevalence of powers that could interfere with the functioning of the weapon, or hijack the wielders body. "Sam," she said finally, as they crossed over the fence that separated Xavier's property. "I don't think that I'm the same woman as the one who lost those sims, not really. Not anymore."

And he smiled at her, a roguish grin that she would have been more likely to expect out of Remy. Then he led her out of the cockpit. As he hit a button on the control panel, the hatch opened, air rushing around them. "See you on the ground," he told her as he stepped into thin air. She watched with no little jealousy as he arced down to the earth, which seemed so very far away.

She waited impatiently as the scene below her grow ever closer, resisting the impulse to lay her hand across her gun as the pilot spotted the landing area out back. And as the ground drew closer, she hoped that everyone was all right.

She was out of the plane the second that they'd slowed enough, rolling as she hit the ground. She could all ready see a few scattered figures lying on the ground, but none of them seemed to be the X-Men.

Then something hit her from behind, and she was knocked flat to the ground. Twisting, she tried to throw the man off of her, but he outweighed her by several hundred pounds. She wondered how anyone that massive had managed to sneak up on her, even against the noise of the plane.

But now he had an arm around her throat and he was leaning into the back of her neck, and her breath was caught. What she could see of the world with her face pressed into the ground was going black, spots dancing across her vision.

She reached behind herself blindly, arm waving. Her hand caught bare skin, and she felt a pulse leave her fingers and enter her assailant's system. She rolled out from under him as he gave one a shudder, lying on the grass until her wind returned.

"Not too bad, Remy?" She turned her head to look at the Cajun, who was standing off to one side, panting as if he'd been running for a long distance.

"Not too bad at all, Dana. Here I was, charging in on my white horse, and you had to go and rescue yourself."

"It was a near thing," she said, rubbing her throat. Then he offered a hand, pulling her up when she took it, and they headed towards the middle of the fight.

Charles Xavier sat in the kitchen, monitoring the progress of the fight.

These were the times he felt more useless than he ever did in the rest of his life.

"Hello Charles," a voice came from behind him, chilling in its blankness.

"Erik." Xavier said, turning his chair as he spoke, facing the man standing in the doorway. "I assume that this little attack is your doing."

Magneto pulled out a chair and sat at the kitchen table, apparently unaware of the blood running from a cut in his forehead and down over the silver device attached to his temple. "You don't know, do you?"

he said with a laugh. "Oh yes, that's right, this little baby does a very good job of keeping prying minds out." He pointed in the general vicinity of the small silver disc. "This entire thing was Raven's idea, actually. Her brain child. She was going to do it without me, but circumstances changed. You have yourself to thank for that, actually." He paused a second, then a smile lit his face. "But enough of shop talk. How are you, Charles? It's been forever since we've caught up."

Xavier approached the table carefully, keeping off his face that when Magneto's mood had changed, the neuroinhibitor had flickered, letting his thoughts through for a short time. "I've definitely been better," he said, trying to keep the man he had once called a friend occupied.

He hoped that what had come through in the flicker was mangled by interference.

"What's wrong, old friend?" Erik asked, unconsciously mirroring Xavier's thoughts.

"As you no doubt know, I've lost a few of my students lately."

"It's always hard." He paused again. "I really am sorry about Hank.

It never should have gone that far. You have to understand, it wasn't my intention. I didn't plan for it. I had harsh words with Victor afterwards. The man really does need to learn to control that killing impulse. I just do hope that he can keep his senses about him. I left him and Mortimer in charge back at home. I'd hate to return to a slaughter."

Xavier kept his face steady, and waited for another flicker. There had been one already, but it had been so short as to be useless. The neuroinhibitors were probably cheap, not made to withstand blood being dripped all over them.

But Magneto was waiting for Xavier to speak, so he pulled thoughts out of nowhere and began to talk. "He was one of my first, you know.

He'd probably been through more than any of the others, the transformations, the loss of his science. Losing him, it was like the foundation of my world started to crumble. In the beginning, there were five. I spaced them around my dream, they were my pillars. They held it up, and the other students as they came built on top of them.

A building can stand with two supports, Erik, but with one it becomes a miracle if it stays up. Losing Rogue set the entire thing wobbling, and I don't know how long it's going to be before it comes crashing down around my head."

"Charles," Magneto started, sympathy written across his face. The flicker started, and Xavier coiled his mind to strike.

Then Ororo appeared in the doorway, sweating and beaming. She didn't see Magneto sitting at the table, and before Xavier could warn her, she called out to him. "Professor!" But before she got any farther, Magneto shot up from the table and pointed a hand at her. Her skin started to darken, and she screamed in pain. She loosed a lightning bolt from her hand towards her attacker, but he ducked and all she succeeded in doing was destroying the table.

And in a split second, Xavier realized what was going on.

He was pulling at the iron in her blood.

He was going to kill her.

Time seemed to slow down as the neuroinhibitor flickered, opening a small gap into Erik's mind.

Xavier watched a bead of sweat roll down Erik's face. He was aware of the smell of burning wood from the table that had survived everything until now.

Then he reached out and into the mind of the man who had once been his best friend, and twisted.

After it was done, Xavier moved over to Ororo. She was sitting against a wall, looking shaky. "It's over," she whispered. "We won."

We won.

"Are you all right?"

Did we? Did we really?

"I'll be fine," she said, smiling. "I could use something to drink, though."

Xavier rolled over to the counter and took a glass from the low cupboard. As he filled the cup with water, he scanned the grounds.

All of the mercenaries, marked by null spots, seemed to be out of commission.

//X-Men, we appear to be done for the day,// he sent. //I'm in the kitchen with Storm, so if you could regroup here, perhaps.// He hoped that the last part had gotten through to Dana. He wanted someone to take a look at Ororo.

He handed the team leader the glass of water, then tried again to contact Dana. It was always so hard to know if he was getting through to her.

He half heard a door open, and returned to his attempted conversation as soon as he saw that it was only Bobby.

Later, he would try to tell himself that even though he hadn't initiated contact with the doctor yet, his attention was being eaten up. He had no way of knowing.

He was just about to reach out when an aborted female scream from some where nearby broke his concentration. He snapped his eyes open, expecting to see a mercenary, expecting to see Ororo writing in pain.

But Bobby was lying unconscious by his feet, holding a knife. He looked as if he'd fallen asleep, save for the small drops of blood trailing their way down his face.

Raising his eyes, Xavier saw Bobby standing a few feet away, one hand coated in melting frost, face full of shock. "I had to," he said.

"You thought she was me, she was going to kill you. I had to." Ororo used the wall to haul herself up, and she staggered over to Bobby.

She put an arm around him, and led him to a chair at the island, sweeping small chunks of wood off of it.

Bobby on the floor, Bobby by the door.

The Bobby on the floor was turning blue, changing shape.

Bobby's back was straight in his chair by the island. His eyes looked curiously empty.

Xavier steepled his fingers and rested his head on his hands.

"Here's to a job well done!" Remy hooted, raising his arms above his head. Dana laughed as Sam took one of his hands, and the two bowed in concert.

"Come on, Toni, celebrate a little. You performed admirably for your first fight." Sam was grinning widely.

"The hick's right. You did better than I thought you would," Logan growled as he dropped from a tree.

Sam extended his hand to Dana. "I don't dance," she said with a raised eyebrow. But he grabbed her hands anyway, and led her in a jig. Pretty soon she had started to laugh, and wasn't trodding on Sam's toes quite so often. Just when she started to think that she'd gotten the hang of it, he spun her out and she tripped over her own feet, sprawling onto the grass. "Thank you," she called from where she lay. She propped herself up on her elbows and tried her best to scowl. It must have worked, because Sam came over to her, smiling ruefully. He offered her a hand up, and when she took it, she twisted her arm and raised her knee, sending him over her head.

She scrambled upright, laughing, feeling giddier, happier, than she could remember being in a long, long, time. There was nothing wrong in this world right now.

Sam mock snarled at her, and as he stood, she sprinted towards the Mansion. He took off after her, trying to snarl as he ran. The effect was something like a cross between a pig and a car engine badly needing a tune up. She thought that she heard Remy say that this was something that he had to see, but she was busy dodging Bishop and Betsy, who seemed to have come out of nowhere.

She heard what sounded like Sam colliding with and then apologizing to someone, and she knew that she had enough of a head start to make it to the Mansion. She slowed a bit as she hit the door, swinging it wide open. When she turned the corner to the kitchen, she stopped dead in her tracks.

Sam hit her from behind, not having seen her around the corner. His hand tightened around her arm as she heard the rest of the team file in behind them.

Smoke drifted in the kitchen air, painting charcoal whorls on the ceiling. Xavier was sitting with his head in his hands, looking very defeated. Mystique was lying unmoving by his feet, a small amount of blood pooling around her head. The huge kitchen table was lying in charred pieces around the room.

An rather unhealthy-looking Storm was sitting at the island with Bobby, who wouldn't look at them. Logan was at her side in an instant, talking in a low voice.

Mystique's still form drew Dana to the shape changer's side. Dana reached out a hand to the woman's neck, knowing before she even touched her that she was dead. She seemed at peace, something that she never had in life. Tears of blood dripped slowly down her face.

Dana sent a feeler, none the less. Mystique had suffered from a major cerebral hemorhage. The pattern didn't feel natural, though.

Everyone learned at an early age that water expanded when frozen.

The brain, the entire body for that matter, was composed mainly of water.

She looked up at Bobby, who was staring into space, his eyes vacant.

The freezing of water within the brain would have ruptured the cell walls, causing a major hemorhage.

"Elizabeth," Xavier said. "Could you please take a look at Magnus?"

With a concerned expression on her face, Betsy walked over to where the table had originally stood. Dana noticed what she hadn't before.

A white-haired man was lying on the ground, staring up at the ceiling with empty eyes. But she didn't have time to examine him closely, as Logan was calling her over to Ororo.

She examined the woman, smiling slightly as she looked at Logan's anxious face. "You'll be fine," she told Storm. "There was a bit of stress on your heart and brain, but it's nothing that I can't just heal right up. You're going to have to take it easy for a week or so, though, just to be safe."

"Don't worry about her," growled Logan. "I'll make sure that she gets lots of rest."

"Guys?" Betsy said. "There's a police car at the gate."

Sure enough, a buzzing filled the room, signaling that someone had rung the doorbell out front.

"I'll take care of it. You just look after things in here," she said as she headed out the front door.

The minutes that Betsy were gone were the most nerve wracking that Dana had spent all day. She followed the other woman out into the front room, and watched through the window as Betsy talked to the uniformed officers who sat in their car halfway down the long driveway.

One of the assassins was lying no more than three feet from the car.

There were unconscious men sprawled all over the yard.

But the officers were just talking calmly to Betsy, smiling and nodding their heads as she tossed her hair. Then the one driving waved his hand as he put the squad car into reverse, turning to go.

Dana winced as he missed the man on the drive by scant inches. Betsy waved goodbye, then headed back into the house.

"How..." she started as soon as Betsy was in the door. Then she stopped and gave herself a shake. "Never mind, I figured it out.

Telepathy, right?"

Betsy nodded, and they walked back into the kitchen.

"One of the neighbors complained about hearing noises," she told the others. "So then sent a car out. I told them that we'd had a bit of a problem in the science lab, but it was under control."

"This is the third time in the past five months that some one's had them send a car out," Ororo said. "Betsy, you'll find out which one it was this time, and wipe them?" Betsy nodded an affirmative. "We should start cleaning up," Ororo continued when no one said anything.

"Keep all of the neuroinhibitors that you can find. You all know the drill."

As the others started to file out of the kitchen, she moved to join them, but Logan grabbed her and sat her back down. "You're coordinating," she sighed in exasperation, but remained seated after Dana pointed at her and told her to stay. Betsy walked into another part of the house with Magneto in tow. Eventually, Storm and Xavier were the only ones left in the kitchen. She watched him move over to where the table had stood. He picked up a piece of charred wood, stared at it for a long time.

"I'm sorry about the table," she said as she walked haltingly over to him. "I'll make sure that we get a new one."

"It's all right," he said, still playing with the wood. Streaks of charcoal darkened his fingers. "It's my table. It's my responsibility."

Something about how he was talking struck a wrong chord. "We can fix the damage," she said, surveying the burn marks that scarred the kitchen. "It's not that bad."

Xavier continued to stare at the piece of the table, his eyes focused on it.

"I don't know, Ororo. I really don't know anymore." As he spoke, the shard fell from his fingers, sounding hollowly as it struck the ground.

And there was nothing more to say.

Fin