Disclaimer: We do not own or claim the "X-Men" characters and other related material. The title was a take from the book title 'Weapon X' About Wolverine, Hence this name.
Authors' Note: We created these characters to take a small break from our usual characters. Plus we are writing together, which is a change as well. We felt this project needed our collective minds and even more so creativity.
The scream was heard throughout the entire emergency room. Inside the room where it originated, doctors and nurses scurried around the woman lying on the table. A nurse was reading the stat sonogram. "Two heartbeats, doctor, she's having twins!"
Rory Moran managed a smile. She hadn't had the money or resources for care during her pregnancy so her child, or rather children were a great surprise. She hoped desperately that they were to term. The accident had launched her into labor and broken her water; it couldn't be undone. A kindly nurse wiped Rory's sweaty red hair back from her face.
"Doctor, they're both facing the wrong way, there's no possibly to deliver them naturally."
"Damn. Get consent and prepare for an emergency C-section!" the doctor ordered, quickly leaving to prepare for the sterility of an operation.
Rory managed a shaky scribble in place of her name on the consent form and they began scrubbing her bulging stomach with various disinfectants.
Anesthetics aside, Rory was beginning to feel tired and drained. Somehow, she knew something was going to go wrong. "Keep them-together...please," she begged the nearest nurse, "I-I have names...in my purse...just in case...please...keep them together..."
"Everything will be fine, Ms. Moran," the nurse assured, holding her hand.
"Just in case..." she trailed off, going limp.
"What happened, why is she totally under?" the doctor demanded.
"I have the right amounts, I'm sure," the anesthesiologist insisted.
The doctor swore horribly. "Bring her out of it, we've gotta get these babies out," he ordered, brandishing a scalpel.
The C-section went well, the full-term, healthy baby girls were retrieved but Rory Moran never awoke. The scalpel had nicked an artery and it was impossible to keep the blood in the dying woman's body.
The nurse Rory had spoken to went to the deceased mother's purse, finding a folded sheet of paper with two long lists: boys' and girls' names. The two at the top of the girl list were "Luki Raine" and "Katania Rose."
She wrote the two names in on the birth certificates on her clipboard. "You have the names?" a second nurse asked, coming up behind her.
"Yeah. How are the girls?"
The red head seems strong and healthy, perfectly fine..."
"And the brunette?"
"We're running more tests but it looks like severe calcium deficiency. If that's true then if she goes untreated, it could turn into osteoporosis very soon."
"And they have no choice but an orphanage since their mother died and the father is unknown."
It was a rhetorical question but it was answered anyway. "That's right."
"Send a note with them that they stay together, per their dying mother's wish."
The nurse sighed and went back to the room to tend to the infants.
8 years later
Luki awoke with her curtain of dark red hair in front of her face. She pushed it back and stretched.
Her heart leapt as she didn't hit the familiar bundle next to her. "Tanny?" she mumbled, rolling over and feeling for her sister. Nothing. She sat bold upright and looked to Katania's own, less-used bed. Nothing. Still made from long ago even. "Tanny, Tanny, where are you?" Luki jumped out of bed, running down the aisle between the two rows of beds at the orphanage. "Tanny! Tanny, please?"
"Kie?" a familiar voice floated to Luki from a closed door.
Luki sighed in relief. It was the bathroom. "Tanny, you OK?"
The door opened and Katania came out, her long black hair in the frazzled bed head 'do. "I'm fine," she assured. "I had to go baf-room."
Luki hugged Katania, gently, having been told about her sister's condition several times and took her hand. Together they made their way back to the room slowly, Katania, with her limp from too many ankle injuries, setting the pace.
"So, Ms. Buckley, did you have anything specific in mind?" the director of the orphanage, Adrina Holmes, asked the young Native American woman in her office.
Chenoa Buckley shrugged. "I wanted to have a girl first. I figure same sex may be a little easier to raise."
"It says here that you're engaged," Holmes pointed out. "What does your fiancé think?"
"Oh, he'd have a daddy's girl, no doubt about it," Chenoa assured.
"Would you be interested in twins, Ms. Buckley?" the director asked. "She continued before Chenoa answered. "You see, we've had a particular set here since they were infants. They're eight now. We've had a hard time finding parents for them because they come as a par...and one has a certain bone disease, a child's form of osteoporosis. Oh, she's not hard to take care of, by any means. She's on no medication; she only needs...gentle handling."
"They don't sound bad. Can I meet them?"
Adrina smiled. "Of course."
Chenoa knew it was them before they were introduced. They sat at a table in the corner, just the two of them. The brunette seemed oddly hunched over, her thin frame covered in blue jeans and a t-shirt. She studied some of the pieces to a puzzle the redhead was working into place. The redhead seemed to be sitting up straighter than most.
"Girls," Adrina said to them as her and Chenoa approached. "I'd like you to meet Ms. Buckley. Chenoa, the redhead is Luki, the other, Katania."
As Chenoa knelt before the girls, Adrina smiled to herself. Since she'd become the director over four years ago, she'd made it her personal mission to get that clingy redhead and her sickly sister out of there. She believed she'd finally succeeded.