A/N: I have made a discovery. That discovery is that NOTHING motivates me to write like the knowledge that I ought to be doing my homework. Therefore…you have a new chapter, and I should be preparing to write a 45 minute timed essay about economics/politics/religion in colonial America and studying Environmental Science.
Also: dedicated to Missy The Least, because my phone is broken so I can't call you and talk to you but I really want to please take this chapter as an apology for my incompetent phone. (Ps: Y'all should check out her writing, it's awesome.)
Disclaimer: Don't own X-Men, don't own Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
The van was bumping it's way over bad pavement, her wrists were tied, and Raven was having a hard time not crying.
She was trying to concentrate on the fact that she was still with her siblings. Raven couldn't see them properly - there was some sort of sack on her head, which she found terrifying because Raven read somewhere that little kids could be suffocated by having bags on their heads, and God, that wasn't what she needed to think about now, but nothing else was coming to mind. She could hear Sean crying quietly, and Hank was leaning against one of her sides and Angel was on her other side. And she was almost certainly sure that Alex was tied by Sean.
So they were together.
She knew that Oliver was dead. Raven closed her eyes and tried to imagine that this was a dream, and she had fallen asleep over her homework. Things had been normal just a few hours ago. Oliver had been listening to Hank worriedly explain how worried he was about their Dads, Sean and Alex were playing with their stupid plastic dinosaurs, Angel was reading, and Raven was sprawled over her desk drooling on a textbook, and Oliver would wake her up with a snacks soon.
But that had been hours ago, and since then she had looked up from the quadratic equation to see that blood was spreading over Oliver's shirt, and Sean was screaming. And a second after that men and women dressed all in black had burst through the windows and shoved them into the back of a car, and had cuff snapped on their wrists and ropes wrapped around their shins and hoods yanked over their heads.
Nobody had taken the hood off her, but she'd managed to work her gag off herself. Not that it did much good. They were in some sort of van, no one was going to come rescue her if she cried for help.
And she was very, very, scared. Sean and Alex weren't answering when she called to them, not even with the muffled grunts she got from Angel and Hank, and Raven just didn't know what to do because God, she'd seen movies but Raven didn't know kung fu and she didn't have a gun and she couldn't think of a clever escape plan because whenever she did all she could think of was the fact that she had a bunch of siblings who were even younger than she was that she had to keep safe and she didn't even know who kidnapped them or why anyone would want them.
Raven took another deep breath (her head was beginning to swim again) and tried for the hundreth time to move her wrists. They were tied to a metal bar, and all that happened when Raven pulled was pain. Her whole body hurt. None of the people who hauled her into the van and tied her down had been gentle.
Oh God, what if this is some kind of, of, child slavery thing and we were just there, what if they're taking us to have our organs harvested or for prostitution oh God oh God we've got to get out of here.
For a second pure panic rose, and then Raven slumped back against the wall of the van, trembling. She could feel Angel shaking next to her too, and pressed her body as far towards her sister as she could. Angel leaned into her.
"Raven?" Angel's voice was scratchy. Raven realized that she hadn't had a drink in hours. She hadn't eaten either, and she was feeling faint.
"I'm here." Raven whispered back. She felt something stir on her other side, and realized it was Hank, trying to wriggle out of his cuffs. "You're just going to cut your wrists, they're too tight."
Raven realized with a sick feeling that Hank was nine and that meant someone designed these cuffs just to hold little kids.
"I think we're going North." He whispered.
Raven tried to think of what her parents would say.
Her parents. She clung to that thought. Her Dads had gone out to dinner to discuss something important, and that had scared Hank and Alex but not her because she knew that there was nothing as immovable as her Dads' marriage, just because they were fighting didn't mean they weren't coming home together, and when they got home their kids wouldn't be there. And then they would come to get them.
"How do you know?" Was all Raven managed.
"There's only one major highway that they could reach from the city without going by the harbor. I didn't smell the harbor, but we're on a highway. And that road goes North." Hank sounded miserable. Raven never appreciated how smart he was, not when he was doing goofy lab experiments in their house, but now his brain was whizzing away even when they were being kidnapped and Raven couldn't have been more grateful.
"You're really smart." Raven whispered. She couldn't seem to articulate anything else.
"What's going on?" Angel said, whimpering. "Who are these people?"
"I don't know." Raven swallowed. She desperately wanted a drink. "But our Dads are coming for us. They probably got home and called the cops, and the cops are coming after us right now. Any second and we'll hear sirens and Daddy will be here, and Father…"
Raven was glad she couldn't see anything. That meant none of the others could tell she had started to cry just at the thought of having their parents come rescue them.
"They have to be hours away." Hank said.
"They'll come get us." Raven said, as soothingly as she possibly could when she was terrified. Oh god please, please, let them come rescue us.
"Dammit.
"What now?" Erik snapped. He resented the fact that they even had to take this pit stop, and blamed it on the fact that the car they had stolen had been manufactured sometime in the stone age. And on the fact that of all the places to disappear into, Logan chose the backwoods of Maine.
"I can't get into the Hellfire system, or the Guild database." Logan swore again. "They changed the passwords."
"You were relying on passwords?" Erik asked incredulously. The two of them were sitting in the horrible car, Erik in the back seat cleaning his guns, and Logan attempting to hack plans.
"They changed the encryptions and revamped the firewalls, but since we're supposed to be on some kinda tight schedule, I shortened the phrase." Logan glared at him. "And the wifi sucks."
Erik glared back at him, and was in the process of composing a properly pissy retort (one including the fact that Logan was the one who drove them a hundred miles through backwoods to lose any pursuers they might have had, and that he'd picked the damn gas station too, and whether he expected anything else), when a cup of hot coffee was shoved into his hand.
He took a sip automatically. The sugar-coffee ratio was perfect, and he shot Charles, who had just slid into the back of the stolen car with his own coffee, a slightly smug look. Charles glared at him.
"I ordered on autopilot, and by the time I noticed, I had already paid." His husband took a long draught of his own coffee. "Logan, what have we got?"
"They changed the codes." Logan reported grimly. Charles closed his eyes for a second. "I can keep trying, but it's going to take some time."
"What about your brother?"
"Vic's in Mongolia, and this is out of his clearance level." Logan said grimly.
"Damn." Charles opened his eyes and shot Erik a cold look. "Fine. Process of elimination then. The Guild has bases all over the world that are fit to safely house a group of hostages."
"Same with Hellfire club." Erik paused. "Not Antarctica, takes too long to get there."
"China and Russia are both out too then. Trips that long involve too many factors, there's far too much chance of something going wrong." Charles said. He settled into a crosslegged position, coffee cup balanced on one knee. "Japan has the best concealed weaponry, but same distance problem."
"They're just kids." Logan pointed out. "Not exactly hard to transport."
Charles and Erik locked eyes, both of their mouths twisting up in the same wry expression.
"You don't have any children, Logan." Charles said dryly. "I assure you. They're problematic factors."
"Not hard to think of drugs that'd keep em down." Logan said bluntly. Charles's eyes went cold, and Erik was suddenly very conscious of the gun balanced on his thigh. The logic was strong. Sure, several of the potent drugs Emma kept on her person could cause enormous brain damage, but Erik was no longer assuming his former coworkers had any kind of decency.
"We assume that they aren't drugged." Erik said finally, once he was sure that he could talk without flying into a rage. "And we assume that our employers know we're coming after them. They'd get them to a safe house as quickly as possible."
"Not the Middle East. We stirred up too much trouble there last month, Guild is keeping a very low profile everywhere East of the Mediterranean." Charles thought. "And Egypt is extraordinarily not hospitable to us since the snakehead affair."
"Hellfire Club is on excellent terms with several dictators throughout that area. And there are a number of wannabe warlords falling all over themselves to gain Hellfire club backing." Erik thought. "Only two have troops hardened enough to guard kids without batting an eye."
"Guild has a few strongholds in Canada that'd do the trick." Logan said darkly. "None of them are exactly hospitable places for an extended stay."
"They can't be planning to keep them there for very long." Charles said flatly. "There is absolutely no gain that can be gotten from wasting personnel guarding children, and it's a volatile situation just having five together."
"Could be split up." Logan muttered. He raised his hands off the keyboard when Charles threw him an angry look. "Just a thought!"
"No, that's how I'd do it." Erik said honestly. "Hostages can't be put together, that's basic training."
"Half of them are under ten. None of them will be plotting escape." Charles said. But he took another long sip of coffee, and there was a coldly calculating look in his eye. "They should have the funds…oh, damn."
"What?" Erik asked sharply.
"They might be keeping them on the road." Charles slammed a hand against the seat. "They stay on the move until they think we've been taken out of the bargain, just to keep us running after them instead of protecting ourselves. Which of course we have to do."
"Goddamn." Erik sighed. "We essentially have no location, half the world as possibility, and the best killers in the world on our asses."
"Why thank you darling, stating the obvious is so extraordinarily helpful." Charles shot him a poisonous look.
"Agents." Logan said suddenly.
"I think Erik already made the point - " Charles began, and Logan hit the gas. Erik and Charles lurched in their seats, and hot coffee slopped over Erik's turtleneck. Charles managed to spare a moment to look pleased with that, and Erik shot him a glare. "Where?"
"Left side, Chevrolet and matching black fords." Logan yelled, and hit the brakes. Everything in the car shifted, and Erik winced when he heard the laptop hit the floor with a crash.
Erik scrambled onto his knees and looked out the back windows. "Don't forget the Volkswagen and the minivan."
Somewhere in him, Erik was offended at the fact that minivans were being used for purposes so against family values.
He drew his gun, and saw Charles doing the same, crouching on the seat and balancing himself with one arm. Erik was about to say something along the lines of "good luck" when Charles aimed and fired four precise shots. One blew out each tire of the minivan and it skidded, clearly out of control. That didn't deter the shooter hanging out the window from shooting, and the rattle of machine gunfire shook the Maine woods.
Logan swerved wildly, and Erik swore as he lost his mark on the shooter from the van, which was somehow still coming after them. "Charles, do you think you could perhaps shoot something helpful!?"
"Well excuse me!" Charles snarled. "The windows here are crap, maybe you should have found us a car without all of these blind spots!"
"I didn't pick the damn car!" Erik shot at one of the outlying cars and clipped the arm of someone leaning out the window with what looked like a military issue gun.
"You were there weren't you?!" Charles ducked down, and another spray of bullets came at them. This time, Logan veering off the road and onto the grassy way beside it wasn't effective, and all the windows shattered, sending shards of glass raining down on Erik and Charles. "Not even bulletproof!"
"Most cars on the street aren't!" Erik retorted. "Isn't there some way to open the back?"
"It's a hatchback!" Logan roared from the front seat, where he was bouncing up and down as they drove over the verge. Of course he didn't bother with a seatbelt. "Just a sec, I'm going to try for the highway!"
"The highway?!" Charles crawled over the seats into the open space in the back of the car, fumbling with the lock. Erik kept shooting at the cars behind them, trying to remember the last time he had this many people on his tail. As he recalled, it had been when he was leading the footmen of a drug cartel ring into a pit lined with explosives, and he'd had backup.
"It's better for evasive driving!" Logan spun the wheel and they lurched back to the road. Erik could feel the moment when Logan floored the car, and he heard Charles's body slam into one of the sides. "Can't you get the back open so you can return your damn fire?!"
"It's locked!" Charles called back. Erik rolled his eyes and began rapidly folding down the seats between him and Charles. Charles shot him a nasty look as Erik, being a practical person with far too much experience in guns and bad cars, shot out the lock.
The back hatch flew open. Charles hit the floor and immediately began firing on the closest car. Erik joined him.
"Fuck!" That was one of those words Erik never liked to hear his driver use. "You two busy?"
"Just a bit!" Charles yelled back, rolling as the car swerved yet again, this time veering over the yellow line and into the opposite line. Thank God there were no other cards around.
"The cars are bullet proof!" Erik called to Charles, who was shooting from on his back. The multiple bullets both of them had sent to the windshields of the cars hadn't even caused cracks. "And what the hell happened?"
"There's a blockade in front of the exit!" Logan shouted back. "I'm going to take us off the road, unless you've got some handy explosives!"
"Off the road?!" Erik fired at the underside of one of the cars. The only effect was a few sparks, and Erik let out a frustrated snarl.
"Again with the stating of the obvious." Charles said darkly. He moved into a crouch and fired three precise rounds. They cracked off the sides of the cars, but didn't seem to cause much damage.
"We're going to have company soon." Erik warned. At present, there was a solid barrier of pines on each side of the road, and no way for Logan to go off road without crashing, and the agents were moving up on them.
"Couldn't have sprung for a faster car." Charles muttered.
"Could you focus on something else?" Erik sent another bullet at a gunman hanging out of a window. It only clipped him, but Erik found great satisfaction in the way the man's body flopped as he fell out the window and was run over.
"I'm out of ammo." Charles said flatly. He tossed his gun into the road and pulled a knife out of his pants.
"You always did think of the best things to do while the neighbors were over." Erik watched as one of the cars approached, and sent a bullet into the windshield close range. This time, a spider web of cracks appeared, and he fired another, shattering it altogether. Erik grinned. The driver was close enough for Erik to catch the queasy expression on his face just before the man's brains were blown out.
The man lost control when the bullet hit his forehead, and the car spun. It hit another car, and Erik felt another surge of satisfaction when they blew up on impact, sending a wave of heat and force out that was disproportionate to the size of the cars. There must have been some sort of bomb in the trunks.
"Will you two quit that?" Logan yelled, as he tried to keep their own car from similar fishtailing.
"No." Erik dropped to one knee. "I'm out."
"Oh, fabulous." Charles muttered.
"We're going to hit road in another mile!" Logan shouted. "Well, a logged section, anyway."
"A mile?" Charles turned away from the cars following them and crawled into the front seat. "Give me your gun!"
"No!"
"And keep your hands on the wheel, it's safer that way." Erik heard Logan swear, and the car jerked. Charles clambered over the seats again with a pistol in one hand. Erik's eyes narrowed.
"Where was that?"
"His pants, like most guns."
"Do we really need his presence to survive this?" Erik asked sharply.
"Can whatever discussion you two are having wait?" Logan asked from the front.
"Actually, yes, seeing as our bank accounts are frozen, and unless you plan to waste valuable time on grand theft…" Charles fired at the closest car - their pursuers had been much delayed by the explosion in their path - and glanced at the compartments on the sides of the doors. "All we have to eat are peanuts."
"I'm not actually allergic to peanuts." Erik said, keeping his eyes on the cars. "Car at eleven o clock."
"I see it, and what the hell do you mean you're not allergic to peanuts?"
"I was just working a toxin out of my system." Erik grimaced as the car lurched yet again.
"So you could have eaten my goulash?" Charles asked incredulously.
"No. I hate goulash." Erik groped for the bulky first aid kit stocked by the driver's seat. He yanked it out and hurled it out, throwing the case directly beneath the front wheel of another of the agent's cars. The car flipped.
"Fine." Charles let out an irritated breath. "I was never in the peace core."
"What?"
"Can you two save this for another time?" Logan said from the front.
"Then all of those excellent stories about teaching soccer to third world people - "
"It's football, for the five thousandth fucking time!"
"I should tell you I've been married three times. Car coming up on the left."
"Excuse me?" Charles took his eyes off the road behind them.
"It was for a case!"
"Names. Social security numbers."
"Emma was one of them. We had to pose as a couple for a case."
Charles let loose another bullet. "Logan! When we find the Hellfire club, I call the bitch."
"Could you two please just aim?" Logan sounded almost pained.
"I'm out of bullets." Charles sounded disgusted. "And you should know that I've been posing as a prostitute regularly for infiltration reasons."
"You did what?" Logan hit the brakes, and Erik and Charles were both thrown back against the seats. Erik lunged for a seatbelt and clutched it, failing to get to his feet.
"Get ready!" Logan yelled back. Erik was about to ask what they were getting ready for when the engine revved, and the entire car began to shake. Erik swore as they, along with everything else in the back, began to slide about. It felt as though the entire car was about to come apart.
Well. It looked as though Logan had found his back road. How incredibly wonderful.
Charles was thrown across Erik's lap. He glared up at Erik as the car made a sharp turn, and he was pushed closer. "Say. Nothing."
"I wouldn't dream of it." Erik lied. The car moved again, and he heard Logan swear. "What?"
"There's no bridge."
"What?" Charles tried to get up, and the car swung around again. "Logan, your bloody driving - "
"You try getting through a bunch of tree stumps, see how the hell it goes! And they blew up the bridge!"
"Then where the hell are we…" Erik groaned.
"Be ready to jump." Logan called, and Erik felt the familiar swooping feeling in his stomach that meant he no longer had his feet on solid ground. He felt Charles grab his hand - likely out of reflex - and jump.
An instant later, they both hit water. Erik surfaced first with a gasp, conscious of the fact that a current was dragging him downstream and that Charles was no longer holding onto him.
"Charles!" Erik craned his head around, trying to resist the pull of the current. The river was full of debris; tree trunks floated past him, or were locked against the massive rocks, and bits of grass and weeds went by at alarming speeds. More disconcerting was that Erik, despite kicking for it, couldn't feel any ground under his feet.
He was tall. That was a bad sign.
"Charles!" He shouted again, still craning around. He saw a glimpse of brown and for a second hoped, but it was Logan. Logan took an enormous gulp of air and went back under, to keep his head from being knocked against a tree trunk.
Erik was not so wise, and his head smacked into a log while he was looking upstream. He went under and felt water rushing around his ears. Erik kicked up, just barely getting his mouth above water only for another branch to scrape against his back.
Fingers bunched in the back of his turtleneck, and in another second an arm was wrapped around his waist. Charles pulled Erik up, panting for breath. He immediately released him and backpaddled, scowling.
"Aim for the rock by the oak!" Charles spluttered to him, coughing. Erik looked forward - this time, he was in time to kick off a rock and avoid being enveloped by a sticky looking pine bough - and spotted what Charles was talking about. It was a huge grey rock that looked like a glacial deposit, and it was leaning against the only oak in the pines.
Erik struck out for it, wishing that he'd opted for more water expeditions. The last time he'd been in the water had been a month ago, when Sean demanded that Erik play water-tag with the kids. That memory brought another surge of heat to Erik's limbs, and a fresh flush of adrenaline got him to the other side of the river.
Then it was just a matter of keeping himself above the water. Erik hated rivers in New England with a fiery passion, which was in fact helpful given the icy temperature of the water.
"That was the worst long distance swim I have ever had to do." Erik said flatly, as he hauled himself out of the water and onto the massive rock, several minutes later. He reached out a hand to pull Charles up.
Charles pulled himself up, avoiding looking at Erik's hand.
"Didn't you ever swim the Amazon?" He asked.
"Yes, and then I had a harpoon." Erik said snappily. Logan climbed up onto the rock next to them, panting.
"Jesus H. Christ, I am never doing anything with anyone married ever again." Logan groaned as he said it, stripping out of his leather jacket.
"It'll probably be a moot point soon." Erik said coldly. He began unlacing his shoes, and felt Charles shuck off his cardigan.
"That truck had our only tech in it. And our weaponry." Charles said, sounding the most defeated he had yet.
Erik got up and began to shake some of the water of his jacket. "We'll manage."
"What's with your ass?" He stared down at Charles, who continued to scrutinize him. "It looks wrong."
"I can't believe you have that much knowledge of what his butt looks like." Logan muttered.
"Marriage." Charles deadpanned. "Been staring at the same backside for years, it rather burns itself into the memory. So?"
"Spare drives." Erik said. He reached down and wiggled, undoing the zippers on the inside pockets (sewing interior pockets that were both waterproof and leadlined into everyone's pants had been Azazel's idea. Erik was still undecided as to whether it was creative genius or insanity.) and pulling out the contents. "I put one in the laptop to copy the files that Logan did manage to get. Just in case."
Charles smiled slightly. Logan rolled his eyes, looking a bit ruffled over the fact that Erik managed to steal files with him noticing. Erik sat back down and glanced over the tiny flash drive - it was still in perfect condition. So they still had something to go on.
"Hey, Erik." He looked up, and a hand came up out of reflex as Charles tossed something to him.
He blinked down at his hand, which was clutching a waterlogged packet of peanuts.
"I know about your appetite." Charles said. Erik turned away, unable to not smile just a bit.
A/N: P!nk's new album had something to do with this, I'm sure of it.
Also, I always pictured the imaginary city/town where Charles and Erik live to be somewhere in New England (because I live in New England and did you not know that Boston is the center of the universe? Dur.), so they drive off to Maine because Logan knows the terrain and because Maine roads are the worst. Seriously, there is a serious lack of gps.
Review? Please?
