A/N: Okay, our fabulous readers and reviewers get ready to read a rather long but important long Author's note. Just to make things clear, neither Certh or I own X-men. But I own Ivy Dujardin, while Certh owns Morgan and Dominic. Please visit her profile as well and read her beautifully written stories about Morgan and Dominic. Now enjoy the new chapter! (Also after chapter four, I write the even chapters, while Certh writes the odd numbered chapters.)

-MOTH (Maiden of the Heavens)

Chapter 3

Once they reached the inside of the mansion, a cold blast of air greeted them away from the last remaining heated days of summer. Wolverine set Morgan on her feet, making sure she was steady before fully releasing his hold on her.

"You sure you're okay, kid?" he asked, hiding his concern behind his normal gruff manner.

"I'll be fine," she replied, her voice a little on the rough side from choking on so much dust and dirt, making it sound like she had a frog in her throat. She tried desperately to clear it, and turned to look at the Earth Puppeteer from where Ivy had once stood next to Logan.

But Ivy was no longer there. Instead she was making her way up the staircase, with Remy beside her, their fingers lightly intertwined. Ivy turned to face Morgan, bits of dirt still raining down loose from her dark chocolate curls as she did.

"I figured it would be easier to explain in my own room. If you don't mind that is," she explained; her voice was soft, as if talking any louder than a little bit above a whisper would hurt.

"Not at all," the twenty-four-year-old said, a weak smile flittering across her features.

Ivy smiled back before making her way up the stairs once more. Her sandaled foot was almost on the fifth step, when the Cajun picked up around the waist and heaved her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

"Remy... I can walk on my own two feet," she said trying to disperse the laugh that threatened to burst from her mouth, but it was not any use.

A smug smile lit his face. "You're too slow, Petite Fleur."

Ivy pouted a little but only smiled at Morgan, shrugging helplessly as Remy finally set her on her feet in front of her door on the fourth floor. It dawned on the younger adult then that the earth controller, the school's botany teacher, was the person over whom Logan and Remy had been arguing earlier.

Ivy was about to open the door to her bedroom, when she realized that the Cajun and feral were standing at the railing that aligned the landing.

"Are you going to stand watch?" Morgan questioned jokingly when neither of them made a move to go on with their daily activities, voicing Ivy's thought aloud.

Wolverine only gave a curt nod, his arms folded across his chest, while Remy stood beside him, pulling a pack of cards from his deep black duster pocket.

"Just in case," was all he said, before he began to shuffle the cards. Apparently, they were serious. The two women shrugged.

The Earth Puppeteer let Morgan enter in first before closing the door behind them. Her queen-sized bed was covered in a light-green and white spread, four large pillows resting against the headboard. The bed was pushed a little bit underneath the windowsill, where two individual bundles of potted daises sat, slightly covered by the thin long white curtains that hung beside the large window.

Ivy stayed near her dresser while Morgan let her gaze drift from the potted plants on the windowsill to the ones hanging above the ceiling. One - dogwood flowers - a dull dusty pink, and the other - oleander - bright yellow and nearly shaped like open trumpets. Her eyes went from the ceiling to the wall, where large, old and slightly yellowed due to age circus posters hung in large picture frames.

There were two on each side of the dresser. The first one was a young girl - about ten - dressed in what looked like a dark black prima ballerina outfit with dark rose-pink stripes. With white face-makeup coating her face and black upside-down triangles on each sides of her eyes. She sat sideways in an open blood-red rose; written in curvy dark green letters, one below the rose and one above the girl, in both German and English was the name - Lady Blossom.

The second one was the same girl, the same dark chocolate curls framed her once-again white-painted face. This time rose petals were behind her back like angels wings, and sitting beside her in a crouched position was a boy that looked about twelve. His skin was a dark navy blue, almost black, his eyes a piercing gold; the most shocking thing, beside his pointed elf ears, was the devil tail that proceeded from his costumed behind. The caption written above in German was 'Der Unglaubliche Nightcrawler'; the one below was once again 'Lady Blossom'.

"You were in the circus?" Curiosity once more got the better of Morgan, at the moment the young adult not realizing that the blue mutant on the poster looked very familiar.

Ivy smiled at that and turned to look at her, her fingers stopping their caressing of the potted aloe she had on the dresser. "For a little while." Suddenly Ivy's face dropped in concern, her dark rose-pink eyes swimming with guilt. "I didn't hurt you, did I?"

Morgan automatically shook her mahogany-haired head, ponytail bouncing from side to side as she did. "No, you didn't." She had only given her an adrenaline rush.

"Good." Ivy sat down on the bed, smoothing the wrinkles out of her dress. "The reason... I attacked you is because... you look..." Ivy swallowed hard, trying to push away the tears that wanted to spill. She still felt guilt squeezing around her heart, after all these years.

"You looked..." she corrected after a pause to compose herself, "like my sister, Aster."

Morgan stayed silent, listening, suddenly wanting to comfort the earth elemental that looked so close to tears. She spoke after Ivy did not for awhile. "What happened to her?"

Tears slipped past Ivy's eyes then, but she did not bother to wipe them away on her hand. "I was forced to kill her... it was either my life, or hers. Stryker had her under his control, and I couldn't leave Remy... but I couldn't leave Aster like that either." The tears fell on her summer dress like rain.

"William Stryker was an evil man." Her voice was bitter as she spoke of the mutant hunter. "Using mutants like puppets for his own gain... even his own son. He captured Remy and I, held us there for two years... it would have been longer if Remy hadn't thought of a way to escape. Tortured both of us, blindfolded me and bound my hands... I can't sleep without a nightlight in my room now." Ivy took a deep breath to calm herself, and tore her gaze away from her clenched hands on her lap to Morgan's stunned face.

"I didn't attack you only because I thought you were Aster. I attacked you, because I thought you were going to drag me back to him. I'm sorry, if the circumstances had been different and you had not snuck up on me, I probably wouldn't have," she continued to explain, before stopping to let what she had said take hold on the much younger mutant.

"It's alright, no harm was done," Morgan said and finally managed a little smile. "The name's Vector," she provided as an afterthought, surprising herself by actually offering her codename instead of her birth name as she usually would have done.

Ivy smiled back and righted herself from the cushiony comfort of her bed, "Gaia."

The Earth Puppeteer sighed, just now noticing Remy's luggage along side his normal sleeping area of the bed. She would not even bother to ask him how long he was going to stay; it would only hurt more. Her fingers grasped the door handle and looked back at her fellow female mutant.

"I am really hoping they didn't kill each other."

Morgan gave the earth elemental a puzzled look, unable to tell by her tone if she was serious or just teasing.

When Ivy opened the door and stepped back out into the hall, Remy and Wolverine were still in the same position, both ignoring each other.

The Cajun glanced up, forest-green eyes meeting dark rose-pink. He slid his pack of cards back into the pocket of his duster, and gently wiped the tears off of Ivy's cheeks with his hand, since she had even forgotten she had begun to cry earlier.

"You still have dirt in your hair," he said softly, his eyes beginning to suggest something that made Ivy's face burn red as he started to pull on the knot at the back of her neck that held her dress up properly.

Logan growled low at this, but Remy simply ignored him. Morgan just watched silently in sheer amusement, fighting to hide a smile that threatened to tug at the corners of her lips.

Ivy took Remy's hand in her own, and pulled it away from the knotted fabric. "Not now," she said sternly. "I'm going go fix up my greenhouse."

"I can help you if you want," Morgan volunteered, trying to help the Earth Puppeteer get out of the awkward moment.

Ivy glanced over her shoulder at her and smiled. "I would appreciate it."

She was about to loosen her grip on Remy's hand, but instead he squeezed it softly.

"Alors, plus tard, Petite Fleur. -Later then-"

"Peut-être. -Maybe-" The Earth Puppeteer replied and finally released her hand, heading down the staircase, Morgan at her heels.

The Cajun was about to head into Ivy's bedroom to unpack when he was slammed into the wall, Wolverine's adamantium claws at his throat, nearly piercing the skin. Logan had made sure that both of the female mutants were outside before he had bother to attack Remy.

"Listen, Gumbo." he snarled, menacingly, "you do anything to hurt Ivy, and it's gonna be your head."

Remy sneered, "Oh, it's not like we haven't done it before." He grinned as Logan pulled his arm back in order to swipe them at him, hoping to lop off his head.

The Cajun easily ducked out of the way and made his way into Ivy's bedroom, Wolverine's claws meeting with the wall instead.

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Morgan crouched below Ivy, re-potting one of the bonsai trees while the Earth-Puppeteer worked on fixing one of the broken tiered shelves.

"You're from Québec?" she asked abruptly, something finally clicking, albeit late. Thinking back, she was now able to place Ivy's accent as French-Canadian, something she had missed earlier.

The Earth Puppeteer made her way half down, from the ladder she was using as Morgan handed her the Bonsai tree. "Yes, I lived with my grandmother for a bit." She placed the plant onto its rightful place, next to the other three.

"I was raised in Toronto, but an old school friend there was from Québec," Morgan provided, and started putting a flower back into its home.

"Still impressive that you knew," Ivy commented and was back on the ground level of the greenhouse. Her eyes became cat-like slits as she moved soil from its place in the open bag to the empty clay pots, thin strings from the tips of her fingers connected to the soil.

The younger mutant shrugged. "I guess it's a rather identifiable accent, for someone who's heard it before, at least," she offered non-commitally, sending a tendril of her power towards a particularly heavy pot. The container, fallen on its side but miraculously not broken, hovered a couple of inches above the ground, making it easier for her to handle and set back down properly.

"How did you and Remy escape Alkali Lake?" she asked, hoping she was not pressing into matters that would make the Earth Puppeteer uncomfortable.

Ivy stopped the soil she was controlling in mid-air, inches away from the pot it was going to go in. Evidently, she had not been clear when she had been explaining before. "We did not escape from there. We escaped Three Mile Island."

Feeling downright silly that she had misunderstood the Earth Puppeteer's previous account, Morgan knew her cheeks were hot. Then her eyes widened when the words sunk in. That could only mean that this 'Three Mile Island' was the same facility where Stryker had given Logan his claws. She had heard those bits of the Wolverine's story that he could remember. But all that had taken place a little over fifteen years ago.

She looked at Ivy with disbelief. "But... then..." she stammered, "that means you're about forty."

The earth manipulator only nodded in response, and placed the soil into its destination.

"You look too young to be that old," Morgan stated, but not unkindly.

Ivy only started laughing, nearly losing control of the next lump of soil she had under her command. The younger female mutant looked down at the flower cupped in her hands as realization struck her. Stryker had done something to Remy and Ivy to rabidly slow down their aging process.

But was it a blessing, or a curse?

A/N: As usual, please review! They make our lives feel like bundles of sunshine. -Maiden of the Heavens (MOTH) and Certh.