Oh yeah, before I start this chapter, I have to say that the park is completely of my own imagination. There is no park in the Manhattan Lower East Side that at all resembles the park in this story. If there is, I haven't seen it, and that is the #2 place I am most often.

But the hotel is real. I've stayed there.

I never set a timeframe, but for this chapter to work, it is May 2nd in the chapter.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I exited the grove, my face still sporting tearstains from my eye makeup, but otherwise I seemed unchanged. Rogue and Remy rushed over to where I had emerged.

"What happened? Ya were in there fer ova two hours!" Rogue exclaimed as she hugged me fiercely.

"Oh. Well, a lot of stuff," I said quietly. I needed to find a way to tell them softly…

"Mignonne!" I heard a relieved Cajun accent behind me. He seemed a little shaken, probably because of the fact I had been hidden in the grove for so long. The way he looked at me…

"I met someone I know inside," I told them.

"Un ami from when y' lived here, mignonne?"

"I had no friends outside the group,"

"Then who?" came Rogue's quick reply.

"Think about my story Rogue, especially last words," I said the last two words extremely slowly. Rogue's eyes widened in her shock of discovering what I meant.

"Where is he?" she asked me softly.

"Coming now," I said in response, and the three of us turned to the trees we had been facing away from. He came through the trees and walked the few feet of distance between the grove and us. When he reached us my empathy picked up on slight nervousness from him. He slipped his arm around my waist though.

"Remy, Rogue, this is Wanderer, A.K.A Perry. Perry, this is Rogue, my best friend since I came to where I am living now, and Remy, my big brother," Wanderer still seemed slightly nervous, but he smiled.

"Hello," he said softly yet strong.

"Hello Wanderah," Rogue said. I could feel the tension ebb away. Soon we were all talking as if we had all been friends since we were small children. That was until Perry used his nickname for me. Remy nearly choked on invisible food and Rogue looked about ready to crack up.

"Lynnie?" they asked at the same time. I gave them both a death glare, just causing their laughter to burst through, and Wanderer nodded, causing them to laugh harder. I rolled my eyes and leaned against Perry, allowing him to hold me once more, thanking whatever gods there were that they didn't let him tell the origin of that name. We were staying here for 4 more days in a hotel on the Upper West Side. The professor was so nice as to reserve us two rooms at the Michelangelo. We had already agreed that Perry was to come back with us, stay with us at the hotel, and then come back to the mansion to join the X-Men. I still couldn't believe he was back, but I was ecstatic to see him again.

"Look Lynnie," he whispered in my ear, pointing up with one hand and still holding me with the other. "You can see the moon,"

I looked up, and there was the glowing gibbous moon, shining though the night, unblocked by the skyscrapers. I just smiled and turned to kiss him softly on the lips. He responded, his kiss as gentle and sweet as I remembered.

"Now why can't you be that romantic?" Rogue asked Remy interrogatively. I turned just in time to see Remy give her a quizzical look. Oh crap.

"Now its time for the cheesy innuendo, then she's going to respond in some strange way we may or may not understand, and he's going to kiss her," I said as if I were a commentator on a baseball game. Rogue gave me a death glare, the only one that outmatched my own.

"Y' look tres belle tonight, chére," he said in one of those suggestive tones he was known for.

"Tres belle my ass. Ah asked ya a question Swamp Rat,"

"Remy knows, chére. He's jus' not gonna to answer in words," was his answer before he kissed her. Perry looked at my face as I rolled my eyes.

"This happens often, doesn't it?"

"Every day of my life," I answered as the couple across from us came up for air.

"Well, Ah think its time that we headed back ta the hotel," Rogue said, simply ignoring my comment. I snickered but followed. Perry still had his arm around me. It was as if he had never left me. It was as if the group was still here. He was talking to me telepathically, telling me how much he loved me, telling me that he was sorry for leaving me. Rogue stopped a cab, and we all entered it, Remy taking the front seat, leaving Perry, Rogue and I to battle it out for who ended up in the middle. I ended up in the middle, seeing as I was the youngest of the three of us, even though Rogue and I were about the same size. Not that I minded sitting in the middle, between Wanderer and Rogue. The cab took 20 minutes to get back to the Michelangelo. There was almost no traffic, something strange for this city. I just shrugged it off and entered the hotel. Remy had his sunglasses, but I avoided eye contact with people because of my eyes. We were alone in the elevator going up to our rooms, so I was free to look elsewhere besides the ground.

"So homme. Would y' mind tellin us how y' came back from de dead?" Remy breached the topic we had left alone under unspoken agreement. Wanderer looked up. He had been telepathically talking with me about the time we had come to this hotel…well, we had the presidential suite and…that's all anyone had to know about that one particular incident. Except for how mad Foster was when he found us…yeah.

"Oh…Sorry Remy. What was that? I sorta missed what you said," he responded after a few seconds.

"So homme. Would y' mind tellin us how y' came back from de dead?" Remy repeated, a strange look on his face. He had mental barriers up. Damn his straight poker face. I couldn't read his emotions.

"I don't really know," Perry admitted, looking down at me. He was nearly 6 feet tall and I was stuck down here at 5'5''. Life isn't fair. "But I can tell you what I saw," he told us as the elevator door opened. We all walked towards our rooms at the end of the hall.

"I remember telling Lynnie not to cry and that I'd be back for her. I knew I'd see her again in her lifetime. I didn't know how I knew, but that's beside the point. I knew I'd be back. Now I forgot what culture its from but you all know the myth to get to heaven you have to bring enough food to feed two dogs, and if you only bring enough for one you'll be trapped in the middle?" he paused for recognition; when everyone nodded, he continued, "Well, that's what was there. I reached into my pocket and found two dog biscuits. I gave one to the first dog and proceeded to go to the next, but then this man who had been stuck in the middle approached me. He told me he was the angel of death, and told me that I could make a choice. I could go to heaven or go back to Earth and live again as if I had never left. But I could only choose once. I could not go back on my choice. He told me to feed the second biscuit to whichever dog I wished to pass by; the dog to heaven or the dog to Earth. I chose the latter," he explained. All three of us were watching his face as he told the story. We entered the rooms, which had a door adjoining them. It was nearly midnight, and Rogue and Remy bid us goodnight before heading through the door to their room. As soon as they were gone Perry gathered me into his arms and pulled me close to his body.

"You know the only thing I thought about for the last year was you," I told him softly as he gently rocked me back and forth.

"I was only thinking of you when I made my decision," He whispered hoarsely.

"What did you not tell during your story?" I asked suddenly, my empathy picking up his emotions. He stopped his rocking, and looked into my eyes.

"Shift…he still has to make his decision," he said softly. I gasped involuntarily.

"You know what all the others did?" she asked him, her eyes pleading for answers from him. He looked away from her pleading face.

"Foster and Giver…they moved on," he told her. She did the only thing she could do. She let her tears fall at this. She might just see Shift again, but her father and her sister were gone forever.

"Why?" she croaked, and he lovingly wiped away her tears.

"They felt that it was their time, my love. Trust me, I feel the same as you do. I begged them not to pass through, even Shift did, but they passed on. Shift was torn. He couldn't decide weather to come with me or to go with his father and his oldest sister. I told him you would be there if he came with me, and that just served to balance out the field for him," he spoke these words, and I abruptly pulled back out of his arms. He looked at me quizzically as I began to walk towards the door.

"Lynnie! Where are you going?"

"Knowing Shift, he followed you about a moment after you left. How long were you in this place?"

"11 hours, or so my watch said," he told me.

"You were gone exactly 11 months," I breathed. "So If I'm correct, one hour there equals one month here. So one minute, or one sixtieth of an hour, would be about 6 days…and one second would be about 9 hours here," she said. "You've been back for 8 hours. So Shift will probably be back within the hour," I explained quickly. I could feel his confusion, so I simplified my speech. "Shift will probably follow you. And mathematically, if my mental math his correct, he should be back within the next hour. And he'll probably show up exactly where you did,"

He followed me quickly into the hallway. We practically ran down to the street, where a cab picked us up after about a 5-minute wait. Perry clutched my hand in his softly. We were dropped off a few blocks from the park, a distance that we ran hand in hand. We stopped for breath outside the park. I checked Perry's watch. It was 12:39. We rushed through the grove, acquiring a few scrapes from going too fast past plants and trees. In the center, we found a small boy who looked about 13 sitting with his knees drawn up to his chest, crying out for Wanderer.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------