It's so cold! The high today where I live was -5 with at least -20 wind chill, probably more.


Kitty woke up to a rather nice view of the gray sky. She lay on the stone ground for a few minutes, slowly beginning to wonder why she was able to see the sky. As the seconds ticked by, she realized that the surface she was laying on was very hard, and she was cold and damp.

It wasn't raining, instead it seemed to be only misting. Shouldn't there be snow? Then she remembered that they were in Ireland. That memory brought back the events from the previous night. She quickly forced herself to her feet, drawing her coat close around her and taking in her surroundings.

She was in an alley, tucked away from the empty road. Her back hurt from lying on the hard ground all night, but that was the least of her worries. She cautiously emerged from the alley, looking around the deserted street. A second look told her otherwise.

A lone figure knelt in the middle of the wet road, its back to her so she could not at first make out who it was. As she moved closer she deemed the figure male, shoulders sagging in some strong emotion akin to grief and defeat. Another few steps and she recognized the trench coat favored by Remy LeBeau.

"Remy?" she whispered, voice hoarse from breathing in the gas during the previous night's fight. He did not move.

"Remy," she repeated, circling around him. She stopped short when she saw what he was holding. A single, black glove, identical to the pair Rogue was wearing. An image flashed through Kitty's mind; Rogue, pulling off one of her gloves. Her vision cleared and she knelt in front of Remy.

"Maybe… Maybe she's here, somewhere, in an alley like me," she suggested feebly, the valley girl accent drained from her by exhaustion and stress.

"Non. No, petite chaton. They took her. She's gone… Ma Chérie…" his voice was thickened by defeat. Kitty looked down at the glove despairingly. Something caught her eye in the weak winter sunlight, and she looked up to see what it was. A cell phone lay in the gutter, the screen cracked but still intact. Kitty snatched it up, instantly recognizing the black and silver design. She flipped it open to access the contacts list.

"Remy, it's Ariana's cell phone. We – we have to call –" she stopped for a moment, looking down at the name she had stopped on. "Remember? She told us to call him if – if there was trouble like this," Remy looked at the number listed, labeled simply in the bold black letters that went with the layout: Clay.


The ringing of a cell phone startled them all, but it was quickly picked up.

"Hey—"

"I don't really know how to say this, so I'll go with 'we need help and this is the number we were told to call'," the distressed voice of a teenage girl cut off Clay's words. He was taken aback for a moment; after looking at the caller id, he had expected to be answering a call from Ariana.

"Who is this?" he asked suspiciously. Instantly the rest of the boys quieted down and listened.

"My name is Kitty Pryde. I'm an X-Man, and I live at the Institute with Ariana,"

"Why do you have her phone?" Clay interrupted Kitty before she could say more. He put it on speaker as she replied.

"I – I'm following her directions. She told us to call you if anything went wrong," she stumbled over her words slightly as they tumbled through the phone.

"What's going on?" Clay's voice was instantly sharper.

"We were…attacked. I don't know who it was. They took her, and Rogue and Kurt. Just Remy and I are left," she told him timidly. "Where are you?" he asked quickly.

"B—Belfast," she stuttered. Clay swore.

"What were you doing there?" he demanded to know.

"Abel," she told him. "She saw something that told us he was here somewhere."

"What did she see?" Jax moved to stand beside Clay, staring hard at the phone.

"I – I can't remember… A man, I think. He had a vest on. Yeah, a cut, she called it. It was the same as the ones you all were wearing when you dropped her off, but it said Belfast," she explained quickly. "She told the fire to show her where Abel was. It showed us a bunch of stuff, but that was the clearest picture."

"Listen, Kitty. Stay where you are. We're boarding a plane to Belfast right now. We will find you," Clay managed to keep his temper in check, remembering that he was not angry at Kitty. Right now he wasn't even angry at Ariana. Kitty consented and he ended the call.

There was no need for explanation; the others had heard everything, and, judging from their grim, determined expressions, they were ready to kill whoever had taken their family.


Ariana woke feeling very damp and cramped. She uncurled from the ball she had been in, but the moment she moved a sharp pain pierced her head. She lay still on, as she slowly came to realize, a cold concrete floor. She listened intently, hearing only her own breathing. In the silence it seemed loud.

She didn't know how much time passed before she could move without the pain in her head. She stood up and put her hands out, feeling how small the space was: six feet by six feet. She could see nothing in the dark space, devoid completely of light. She felt every inch of the walls around her, searching for something, any little ridge that might suggest a door or a window slot. The walls were perfectly smooth and blank, denying her any hope of light or contact.

When she was through with her search, she sat wearily in a corner against the two walls. She put out a hand and willed her fire to come. When it didn't, she retreated into her mind. She scoured her mind, searching for the heat that represented her fire. When she did not find it, Ariana nearly panicked. She forced herself to breathe, calming herself and trying to think logically.

She abruptly remembered the events of the previous night, and a whole cast of questions and worries threatened to overwhelm her. Again, she forced her breathing to slow and her thoughts to calm. Time passed in this way, Ariana getting lost in her thoughts and keeping herself calm, for an undeterminable period of time until a shrieking creak assaulted her ears and bright, artificial light flooded the space.

She had to close her eyes against the sudden, blinding light, and the next thing she knew she was being hauled to her feet and half shoved, half carried along a too-clean smelling corridor. Two sets of footsteps echoed around them; Ariana's feet were bare. By the time she was able to open her eyes without more of the piercing pain in her head, she found herself roughly lifted onto a freezing metal slab and strapped down.

She began to struggle, her mind taking too long to process each thought and action. She was left alone for a few quiet moments before she heard a door open and shut and a whole team of people in white coats came into her field of vision. A spike of fear pushed adrenaline into her bloodstream, but her eyes held rage-filled fire.

The doctors did not speak. They moved around the room silently, apparently preparing materials for some sort of procedure.

After a few minutes during which the tension Ariana was feeling kept growing, the instruments were placed on a tray. A doctor moved to stand over her, his expression concealed by the medical mask he wore. He pressed something against Ariana's immobile arm. She felt the brief sting of a needle puncturing the skin, but there was nothing to be done about it.

Ariana felt the cold substance enter her bloodstream. It did not hurt, though she had expected it to. The doctor backed away and placed the needle in an empty bin. In only moments Ariana began to feel drowsy. Her eyelids drooped, but she fought to stay awake. Her struggles were in vain; within minutes she was completely unconscious, and the doctors gathered around her to perform their duties while two scientists looked on.


Áedán leaned against the stone wall of a small bakery, watching the deserted road dejectedly. He was waiting for the girl from the café. He knew immediately when he caught sight of her features that she was a mutant. A mutant just like him.

He had no physical mutation; instead, he had a sort of sixth sense. Every once in a while a flash of an image would accompany the feeling, but he rarely practiced it. Instead he chose to ignore the ability, hide it away; a fact he was coming to regret now as he recalled his displaced sense of dread from the previous night. His brothers knew about his mutation, and therefore tried all night to get it out of him what the feeling meant.

The only problem was that though he often received feelings about certain things or courses of action, he sometimes felt things for happenings that he knew nothing about, or feelings he was unable to decipher, mainly due to lack of information. This was one of those times. He turned as a voice spoke softly from behind him.

"I don't think the lass is comin' brother," the voice held a heavy accent, indicating it was a native speaker. Áedán recognized it as one of his SAMBEL brothers.

"Yeah," he said, pushing off the wall and walking toward the three bikes parked a few feet away. With his gaze on the ground, he was able to spot a slip of paper crumpled and lying forlornly in the gutter. He bent and picked it up, unfolding the paper slowly. His heart skipped as he recognized the note he had left the girl the last time he had seen her.

There was a small, neat hole punched through the upper right corner of it. Beside the hole was a spot of blood. He looked at the empty street as though trying to see the events that he instinctively knew had taken place the night before, though what had happened he could not conceive. He only knew that the American girl his sub-conscious had pushed him towards had been hurt.

"What is it, Áedán?" another man asked, coming to stand beside him. Wordlessly he held up the note.

"Going to find her?" he asked. Áedán nodded tightly, anger rising within him. He glanced around once more before tucking the bit of paper into a pocket inside his vest. They headed to their bikes and disappeared, intent on finding the American mutants.


Kitty and Remy waited in the dining area of the hotel. It was only seven o'clock in the morning, so they were taking part in the continental breakfast offered by the hotel. Kitty picked half-heartedly at her waffle. In front of Remy sat an untouched cup of coffee, slowly growing cold while they waited for SAMCRO.

Remy glanced up at the sound of footsteps on the tile in the lobby. Kitty noticed this and turned in her seat in time to see four men and one woman entering the dining area. Since Kitty and Remy were the only two in the room, it was obvious who the group was looking for. The clothing and the general appearance and attitude of the SAMCRO group identified them to the two mutants. Kitty stood up, but Remy remained seated, eyes without a glimmer of hope.

"Umm…hi," she said. Two of the men took positions on either side of the doors. The other two sat down across from Kitty and Remy, and the woman pulled up a chair. Introductions were made and they got directly to business.

"Tell us what happened. Start at the beginning, your arrival," Clay said.

"Well, we got here, and we came to this hotel and got a room. We were, like, really hungry so we went to the café down the street. There were some guys from the club here there, and one of them kept staring at Ari," she told them.

"Wait, explain," Jax interrupted.

"Their vests said Belfast, and they mostly ignored us until this one guy just started staring at Ari. She wasn't even facing him, but maybe he, like, saw her ears or something. Remy told her that he kept staring. We left and he told us some stuff, I think he said 'eyes are on you' or something like that.

Anyway, we didn't think about it much and the next day we went and checked out almost every adoption place we could find. I think we missed a few, but we went back to the café and the guy gave Ari a note. She didn't open it right then, so we don't know what it said. After we ate we were going to check out one more place, some church place. It was just down the street from where we were, but we didn't make it.

Some guys attacked us. They threw a couple of gas canisters toward us and we kicked them into an alley, but the wind was blowing toward us. We fought like crazy, everything Logan taught us was actually useful, all those Danger Room sessions, but the gas affected us and we lost. They took Rogue, Kurt, and Ariana. Remy and I got away, I guess, but I don't remember much after I tripped over the curb…" she trailed off for a moment.

"I woke up sometime this morning. Remy found Rogue's glove," he placed it on the table, but did not take his hand away from the black material. "And I found Ariana's phone. That's how I got your number," she finished and sat quietly, waiting for a response. The expressions on the men's faces, and Gemma's, were grim but determined.

"First I think we need to talk to this man you spoke of," Clay said.


No school today 'cause of how cold it is, so it's lucky I was able to get internet to put this up. Anyway, Áedán is my new oc. I like his personality, but only a bit of it has been shown so far.