Here's the concluding chapter guys! It's been real fun writing a little winter story and breaking out my Christmas music. I hope you've had as much fun reading this as I had writing it.
Now on to the show!
Freddy can barely feel the cold snow against his skin, but it's for a much less worrying reason than it would have been for anyone else in his position. Despite being literally buried in snow up to his shoulders, his fat, the part of him that makes him 'the Blob', is doing a fine job of insulating him. He'd read once that whales use the same trick to survive living in some of the coldest waters in the world. It didn't stop him from pummeling the dumb ass who'd started calling him 'Free Willey' and 'Big Blue' into the ground, but it does serve to bolster his confidence in trusting his mutation to keep him alive in the face of temperatures hovering just above zero Fahrenheit.
Once he hits the end of their road and turns onto one of the larger drags the snow depth abruptly plummets so that he's plowing through ankle deep drifts instead. There's still nobody around so he keep moving towards town. Surely something is open. A gas station. A Wal-Mart. A hospital. Something.
But Bayville may as well be a ghost town. He sees exactly one other soul in the four hours it takes him to traverse into and back to the edge of town. The snowplow driver yells at him to get out of the way and get on home and drives past without stopping to listen to his pleas for help. Freddy is ready to start knocking door to door when a small lithe shape prowling from shadow to shadow catches his attention. He lumbers towards it. Whoever or whatever it is it needs to get out of the cold just as much as Todd does.
He's not thirty feet from the figure when it turns on him with flashing claws and flying hair.
"What are you doing here Blob? Why are you following me? What trouble are you causing me?"
One set of claws rips through his coat and scores deeply into his arm. The other is arrested by one of his massive fists and in short order he's holding the little Wolverine-girl up off the ground as she flails, trying to score a hit on him with fist or foot. Of course they're at an impasse. He can't even change position without allowing her to either score another hit or wriggle free and attack again. But he doesn't need to move to talk to her. She's not officially one of the X-men, but if she's out here then chances are Wolverine, at least, is out here too.
"Stop fighting X-girl. I don't want to fight you. I need help."
"Put me down! I will rip you to shreds for this!"
Fred shrugs. "I won't drop you if doing so will have me ripped to shreds. Try again."
The girl absorbs the logic in that and suddenly relaxes her muscles. "Fine. I will not rip you to shreds if you put me down."
"Will you help?"
She glares at him suspiciously. "With what?"
"Toad, my teammate. He is freezing to death. Let us take him to the x-mansion and let him stay there until we have heat."
She frowns. "You… don't have heat?"
Freddy shakes his head.
She bows hers. "I do not either. That is why I came here. I am going to the house you speak of as well. If you are speaking the truth then I will not stop you from bringing your request to Wolverine. He will decide if your teammate, Toad, is allowed to stay with the x-men."
Freddy drops her and she immediately turns defensively, claws raised towards his midsection. After a moment in which he doesn't move at all for fear of being deemed a threat again she sheaths her claws and motions for him to follow her. He does so gladly, happy to have finally found someone at least willing to consider helping them.
The going is still slower than he would like though and it only gets slower once they hit the long drive connecting the expensive properties on the peninsula to Bayville proper. Not a single house is lit, probably because all of the occupants are spending Christmas in various second homes around the country. The x-girl refuses to let him carry her and even with him breaking trail her small size slows them down as she wallows through the drifts that, even broken, still come up past her waist.
By the time they reach the last driveway dusk has long fallen and with it fat puffy flakes that threaten to undo all his work as a one-man snowplow effortlessly.
The girl takes one look at the snowbound gates and ignores the keypad entirely in favor of scaling the wall. Unable to follow her, Blob takes the more direct route, snapping the lock on the gates and shoving with his considerable strength until he opens a wide enough gap for him to squeeze through.
The mansion is dark.
"They must be asleep." He reassures himself out loud.
"No." The girl overrides him with surety, sniffing the air all the while. "No one has been outside for days. The scents are all old. Maybe they are inside. I don't think so."
Freddy's heart plummets. This had been his last hope. Even if the x-girl allows them inside without the approval of Wolverine, he won't make it back to the Brotherhood before daybreak and Todd might very well have frozen by then. He'd taken a gamble trekking all the way out here. Todd had lost.
Beside him the x-girl is still sniffing the air. "I can smell the electricity here. The security defense system is on, but it is not attacking us."
Freddy shrugs desolately. "So?"
She smiles for the first time since he'd spotted her. "So it is not on automatic. Someone is watching us."
She strides up the last set of steps to the front door and rings the doorbell. A moment later, the intercom crackles to life.
OoO
Laura has been traveling south for days now.
She'd smelled the approaching storm. She'd watched the various fellow inhabitants her forest stock up and hide themselves away. She did not hide. Her hut was not sturdy enough, she thought, to withstand the storm and she did not wish to bury herself in the snow and trust her healing factor to keep her alive until she could dig her way out again. What she really wanted was a pack with which to weather the storm and a warm place out of the wind and snow with plenty of food that she did not have to hunt down herself.
With those thoughts in mind she had turned southward and eastward. She knows of such a place and her originator, the one she calls father in her moments of deepest weakness when she tries to forget that she is a weapon and tries to pretend that she is just a young girl instead, had told her to come back there if ever she needed help. She is not so sure that she needs help but she knows that it would be nice to have some. At any rate she has calculated the probability of being turned away and the result is very low. She will risk it.
What she had not calculated the probability of was running into an enemy of her ally apparently seeking help and not trouble. She only vaguely remembers the Toad boy from her reconnaissance on the X-men leading up to her first encounter with them. He has powerful leaping abilities and a prehensile tongue along with other passive amphibious characteristics. He is a minimal threat. According to Blob – strength and immobility: minimal threat if not engaged – he is less than that now.
She is not sure how she feels about him dying or not, but she understands the loyalty of a pack towards its members. Blob smells of sweat, fear and something like ash but he does not smell like he is lying. She will allow him to present his case to her pack leader. Wolverine will know how to deal with this.
The long march to the mansion is irritating in extreme. If she were on her own she could run along walls and make much better time but she does not think Blob is capable of running anywhere much less balancing atop walls. He apparently feels irritation too as he attempts to convince her to let him carry her through the snow. She denies the request immediately. It would be incautious in the extreme to place her person so near an unproven agent; especially one who has already rendered her immobile once this day.
When they finally arrive the stillness of the grounds disturbs her. There is no scent, no tracks. Multiple members of her pack are capable of removing the snowfall and yet none have done so. She reaches the most likely conclusion. They are not here. Whether they left of their own design or another's is still to be determined but that they are not here is nearly irrefutable.
She informs Blob of this and continues searching the air for clues. Something is still not right. Something doesn't fit.
The slight smell of ozone and sulfur reaches her nose through the slight wind. Electricity…. It hits her. Electricity means that something is running. She shouldn't be able to smell house appliances from here, which means what she's smelling must be the security system set up across the property.
She announces her findings to her companion. "I can smell the electricity here. The security defense system is on, but it is not attacking us."
Blob shrugs, unaffected by her good news. "So?"
She allows a small smile to slip across her face as she elucidates. "So it is not on automatic. Someone is watching us."
Purposefully she strides up the last set of steps to the front door and rings the doorbell. A moment later, the intercom crackles to life as she'd expected it would. "Laura X-23 requesting entrance along with Brotherhood member Blob who wishes to ask for your help."
The gravely snarl of her pack laeder carries through the night air over the static. "What's he want?"
"He says that they do not have heat and that one of his team mates is dying as a result."
The intercom buzzes and a click signals the unlocking of the door to her sensitive ears "Come on in kid. It's good to hear from you again. Keep Blob in the entranceway. I'll be up before you can shake a claw at him."
She does as directed, shutting the door firmly behind them and Blob stands quietly subdued where she directs him until Wolverine appears in the hallway.
"Hey Laura. Long time no see."
She smiles back at him. "The storm brought me down. It would be unpleasant and unnecessary for me to hold my position when you offered wintering quarters here."
He chuckles, "too right."
OoO
Freddy waits impatiently for the x-girl, Laura, and Wolverine to finish exchanging pleasantries. Don't they know Todd is dying?
Finally Wolverine turns. "So what's your story Dukes?"
Freddy tells it as it is and prays for a miracle. "We don't have power and the fuel for our heater spilt and there's nowhere to get more. Toad's not handling the cold well. We think he's dying."
The Canadian frowns. "And what do you want me to do about it?"
Freddy swallows his anger at the callous reply. He can't lose his temper. He's Todd's last chance. "Let Toad stay here until it warms up. The rest of us will survive but he won't."
OoO
Wolverine's frown deepens. Does this kid seriously think he's going to turn them away? They may be troublemakers and rabble-rousers but they're hardly trouble of the worst sort. He certainly doesn't want any of their deaths on his conscience when they're not threatening his own kids. Not when they're beaten so far down that Dukes can come begging to the X-men, their enemy, without even a sniff of reluctance or resentment. "Get settled. I'll see if Blue's well enough to 'port over there and collect Tolansky. The rest of your lot can make there own way over tomorrow."
OoO
Fred blinks. They can stay? Not just Todd, but all of them?
"Laura, why don't you grab Rouge's and Kitty's room? They won't mind you using their stuff. Dukes, you're too big for any of the beds but the couch in the rec-room doubles as a futon. That should work. How many other hoodlums am I hosting?"
"Three. Mystique and the Witch aren't around."
Wolverine grunts. "I'm not even going to ask. Listen Bub. I'm putting a lot of faith in your lot's ability to be non-destructive for the duration of your stay. That means no stealing, no vandalizing, no breaking into areas you don't belong and no fighting in the house. Do I make myself clear?"
Freddy nods and clumsily salutes for extra measure. "Yes sir. We don't want trouble."
"Good." With one last stiff nod, Wolverine disappears back down the hallway he'd arrived from and Laura departs for the girls wing. Freddy stands awkwardly in the foray for a moment before heading in the direction he thinks the rec-room might be in.
OoO
Kurt is utterly miserable.
It's bad enough that he'd come down with a bad bug right over Christmas vacation. Even worse is the fact that everyone else is enjoying a cool Yorksire holiday in England while he's stuck here, alone with only Wolverine for company. Worst of all is the power inhibiter on his wrist, courtesy of Forge, to stop him from teleporting only God knows where every time he sneezes. It blocks his porting ability all right but it also makes his skin crawl like crazy as if the device takes offence to the very physical nature of his mutantness.
Being confined to a bed in the medbay instead of his nice comfy bed upstairs doesn't help anything so when Wolverine appears in the doorway asking if he's well enough to do a short emergency retrieval mission, he lets out a loud sneeze, blows his nose, ignores his raging fever and nods enthusiastically. Ok, maybe the nodding was a mistake. Now his head is throbbing as well.
"Good. I wouldn't ask this of you if it weren't a matter of life and death but a certain group of miscreants needs our help and you're the best bet we have of reaching them in time."
Nightcrawler gapes. "Miscreants? You mean the Brotherhood?!"
Logan nods gruffly. "I meant what I said about life and death. Are you still in?"
The fuzzy teenager lets out another sneeze and nods miserably. Unsteadily he climbs to his feet with Logan's help, pulls off the inhibitor and then focus' his entire attention on picturing the front doorstep of the Brotherhood Boarding house. He might land in a pile of snow but at least this way he won't land in anyone.
OoO
Pietro is deep in the throes of a nightmare about an abominable snow-monster when a loud persistent banging sound drags him into consciousness. Lance is passed out across from him. In between them, Todd lies like one already dead. He fumbles for his pulse, bypassing the wrist for the neck, assuming that Todd's extremities will have the least bloodflow of all if he's still-
No. Don't even think it. He's almost sure he's imagined it but nearly a minute later he feels it again; a faint 'thub-dub'. He lets out a sigh of relief. Todd's still alive. He's still alive.
The banging sound returns accompanied by what sounds like muffled shouting. He cocks his head. It's coming from the door! He carefully slides out from underneath the covers and darts over to open the door.
"Freddy?"
The dreadful looking, puffy-eyed, purple-nosed, face of Nightcrawler draws him up short.
"Mind if I come in?"
Wordlessly he steps aside. The x-geek stumbles over the doorstep and heads straight for the tousled mop of hair peeking out from Lance's position on the couch.
"I don't think I can take all of you. I'm- ACHOO – pretty sick if you hadn't guessed."
Pietro shakes his head dumbly. "Just get Todd out of here."
Kurt doubles over in a hacking fit. When it passes he takes the last few steps and pulls off the covers to grab the comatose Toad. This wakes Lance who lies as shocked as Pietro as Kurt bullies Toad's unresponsive body into an upright position and prepares to leave.
"Oh. I almost forgot! You are invited to stay with us as well. You'll just have to get over on your own."
A moment later the sick x-geek is gone; their little brother with him.
Pietro snags the abandoned blankets and curls back up on the couch next to Lance; draping the layers over the two of them before they lose the little warmth they'd managed to collect.
Lance wipes a weary hand across his eyes. "Am I dreaming?"
"If you are then I'm sharing it with you. And I don't think so. I was having a nightmare about a Sabertooth shaped snowman chasing me through Santa's village when I woke up. I don't think you can dream about waking up into another dream."
OoO
Lance checks his watch. He's been asleep maybe an hour. Freddy had left around nine hours ago then. He'd found help. God knows why the X-men, or at least some of them, are still here and not in Europe – maybe the elf had been too sick to travel? – but they'd saved the day and he'll even thank them for it… in the morning. Right now, he's cold, tired and more happy than he can remember being in a long time. Without the constant worry eating at his mind he's asleep again within minutes, Pietro with him.
In the morning when they wake to find Todd still gone and the smell of sulfur still hanging in the frigid air they just about flip out with the giddiness of it all.
"Guess what rockhead!" Pietro yells as he packs some of their frozen provisions in their two backpacks as a peace offering. "It's Christmas! Christmas Lance!"
Lance can hardly believe it himself. Last night had seemed like anything but the season of miracles and this morning they are looking forward to spending the rest of break, possibly even longer, in a mansion with all the latest gizmos including the miracle of a working furnace. Who knows. Maybe the flight had been canceled and Kitty will be there as well. He hadn't seen much of her in the week before break, busy as he'd been with making preparations and gathering supplies.
Literally before he knows it Pietro has them packed and ready to go and he opens the door to a sparkling winter wonderland. The path beaten out by Freddy leads away into the distance, a dusting of snow from the night before softening the definitions of the Blob's heavy imprints.
Lance shoulders his pack and sets off, Pietro in the lead. It looks like it's going to be a Merry Christmas after all.
Fin.
The end.
And they lived happily ever after.
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