Chapter 10:
Okay, I admit it. This is becoming quite ambitious. If anyone else would like to dabble in this universe, be my guest. No, still don't own them.
Alexandra sat in the garden and cried. It was unfair. She and Nicholas had spent thirty-eight years together. Thirty-eight wonderful years and three great children they even had two grandsons on the way. It was unfair that Kitty and Peter didn't even have a year. Natasha and Mikhail had more than a year, but they were saying his sanity was questionable. He was being transferred to Muir Island within the week. Natasha was staying here until at least after the babies were born.
So, it was a long slow road back as the Rasputins as a whole tried to heal broken hearts. The Pryde family took them into their hearts. When Theresa, Carmen, Wade, Kael, Joseph, Anya, and the various grandchildren showed up for the memorial service Theresa and Alexandra held each other as the other cried.
After the memorial broke up and everyone moved inside Logan and Theresa found Peter still seated outside. They both sat next to him Terri putting her arm around his shoulders. "She loved you very much," Terri murmured. He nodded still unsure as to where his life would go.
The Alexandra and Ilyana remained in New York after receiving a Visa from the government. Natasha went to Scotland to be near her husband after the boys were born. She named them Mikhail and Nicholas. Alexandra became a kind of den mother for the younger students at the school. Ilyana started school at Salem Center Elementary, and Peter simply disappeared. They woke up the morning after the memorial and he was simply gone. Alexandra sighed, "I'm not surprised. He never took these things well. First his father and then Kitty…" Ororo put her arms around the woman as tears threatened again.
Katherine Darkholme and Rachael Summers were born in mid-summer. Both were beautiful babies although Rachael's shock of red hair caused some amusement to the population of the mansion. Logan sat up late one night talking about that mission and wondering about Peter's whereabouts. Logan looked up, "Who was it we found who could put together a crime scene?"
"Lisa Sanchez is down in Dallas. Why, are you thinking about taking her out to Siberia?" Scott asked as Logan's cell phone rang.
"Hello? Oh, hi Lisa, we were just talking about you. Really? Thanks for letting us know, hey, could you go out to Siberia with us tomorrow? Uh-huh, well, we think it might answer some questions. All right, see you tomorrow," Logan hung up the phone with a grim smile. "She called to let us know that Peter's down in Dallas. He's working as a police sketch artist."
They both nodded as they went off to bed. The next morning Logan relieved Alexandra's mind before heading off to Dallas. Lisa looked somber and bundled up as she looked over the ruins. "Wow," she said into the echoing silence, "you guys really don't do things halfway, do you?" He watched as she started at one point and followed a trail only she could see. "My problem, Logan, is I don't see faces, only shapes, but I am familiar with the way Kitty looked enough to be able to follow her 'shape'." He watched patiently as she did what her own boss said she did best, she followed the trail. She stopped at the edge of the burn area and beckoned him over. She was bending over as he approached, "Is this significant?"
What Logan saw was the second of the two flash drives Kitty had taken with her. What was significant was that it wasn't burned. "She's not dead," he said with a smile."
"That's my guess. Two bodies, one of them hers, wound up here. A large man picked them up and carried them away. Before he found them however, she ripped this off her neck," he watched her shudder.
"Sabertooth," he said. He had no doubt who had captured his young friend. "You didn't meet Jubilee, did you?"
She shook her head, "No, but the other shape was female." She pointed in a vaguely northern direction, "He took them that way."
"Do me a favor, don't say anything to Pete. I don't want to get his hopes up," his smile was feral, "but that doesn't mean I won't be hunting."
When he got home that night he had a long talk with Scott, "So, if they've got them, what are they doing with them?"
"I'm going down to ask Hank a question. There was something odd I noticed about Kitty before that last mission," Logan muttered.
Hank answered their question frankly, "Yes, she was pregnant. She left before I could tell her," he took off his glasses and rubbed his tired eyes. "Look, let me be blunt. If she is still alive, I give her maybe three more weeks before the baby comes." The other two men nodded and contacted Kael. They needed his help finding his sister.
Wade came instead, as Joseph put it the other brother had a better finder. "I thought Kitty couldn't have kids," Wade said.
"No, it was a possibility, but not a certainty," Hank answered. They had also managed to get a hold of Doug Ramsay's gift with computers was rivaled only by Kitty's. If anyone could get information off that drive, he could.
"Wow," Doug was saying as he looked over the files, "no wonder they wouldn't want her to get away." The files were blueprints to a huge base. "I'm willing to bet if she hadn't pulled that out she would've made it back to the plane." A call was put out to Raven, she flowed in and her eyes went wide at the schematics.
"Do you know where it is?" she asked.
"No, and we don't have much time," Hank muttered. "We have information that they're experimenting on women and the unborn there."
"Animals!" she muttered angrily. She stalked upstairs to make contact with more people, try the ordinary way to find this base.
"So," Scott said into the silence, "How do we get Peter back here without getting his hopes up?"
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Peter was lost. The day after Katya's memorial he was on the road. He didn't want to be where he would be constantly reminded of her. He would keep in contact with his Mother and sister. His father and Katya were gone and he never got the chance to say good-bye. He got on the bike that he "borrowed" from Logan and headed south.
Early spring was a beautiful time for the eastern seaboard as the trees put on their full foliage and the birds revved up to find their mates. He didn't know or even care where he was going. Several weeks passed as he drove. He refused to watch the earth as she awoke from her long nap and put on her best spring clothes.
It was when he was staring at Dallas' West End and Lisa was calling his name with a puzzled look on her face that he realized where he really was. She had gone out for a night on the town and caught the light rail to Union Station. It was there that he found her. As he looked at her he realized just how much she looked like Kitty. She ended taking him home and putting him on the couch.
The next night she took her latest "lost soul" home to her mother. Mrs. Sanchez took one look at him and gave her daughter a long look. He moved in to the spare bedroom the next day. Neither could resist a wandering spirit, especially when Lisa could back up his unfortunate story. The next weeks found him exploring his new home. He soon located a Hobby Lobby and found himself picking up a sketchpad and pencils.
Peter's first experience with Tex-Mex cuisine was quite an education. He ordered a cheese enchilada platter and ended up choking on the picante sauce while everyone around wolfed it down like it was ranch dip. His Russian born appetite had not prepared for the spicy food he had just ingested. The next day he had pizza. The Sanchez's lived in a modest three bedroom home in the northern Dallas suburb of Garland. It didn't take long for him to fit in to the neighborhood. They were largely descended from immigrants and immigrants themselves.
Peter fell into the sketch artist job accidentally. He was sketching a little girl sitting at a corner café when Lisa looked over. She whistled, "Wow, you're good. Need a job?" He cocked an ironic eyebrow. She dragged him to her boss who took him to the police department and managed to get him a job. They were even talking about training him for forensic reconstruction. Sketching what Lisa saw, putting a face on bones, that sort of thing.
He heard her make the phone call to the mansion, she'd been having dinner with the family when she picked up the phone. He sighed as she talked to Logan. "Yeah, sure, see you tomorrow," she hung up the phone. "Huh, Logan wants me to see something at the mansion."
"There been an accident?" he asked.
"Something like that," she replied. "It'll be good to get out for a while. Good thing I'm off tomorrow."
He watched as she headed out the door. They had fallen into an easy relationship that hadn't progressed any further than friendship. Lisa's mother shook her head, her daughter didn't lie easily. Fortunately, Peter still couldn't read her easily. She'd get the full story out of her tomorrow.
Two weeks later Logan called, saying that they'd found another Omega Red base, this time in the Ukraine. He agreed to go on the mission. He wanted blood. He wanted a measure of revenge for his father and his Katya.
Hank watched Peter as the meeting commenced. Logan had teamed the two of them together along with Rahne, whose nose might come in handy, to go down and free prisoners. Hank's presence was essential as there was no telling how close these ladies might be to delivery. Hank followed Peter as he and Rahne went through the breach in the wall that more explosives caused planted by Wolverine. Everything was a smoky mess, as Raven pointed out, it looked a lot like the last mission of this kind that they had gone on. With one exception: giant killer robots were stomping their way.
"Sentinels?" Rahne exclaimed, "These guys are serious!"
Peter looked up as Logan and the others looked grimly toward the robots. Logan looked at Peter speculatively, "Do you think you can toss me at them?" Peter grinned back at the older man and grabbed a hold of his belt. The toss was quite spectacular as Peter's aim was quite good. Wolverine started tearing through the first Sentinel's eye. All eyes were distracted as Peter's team headed into the building.
The smoky confusion separated Peter from Hank and Rahne. Hank and Rahne worked their way downstairs. He heard voices but he counted on Rahne to keep everything separate. She nodded her head and lead the way. Her werewolf form kept her senses sharp. They found the medical bay and took out the guards and most of the medical staff. They went along freeing women and young children as they went. Many of the women were pregnant and some of the women looked like the experiments went terribly wrong.
Soon they heard a scream of a woman in great pain. They heard another voice trying to calm the first desperately. Rahne wrenched open the door and Hank hurried in. The women were on the floor. Both were pregnant one clearly in hard labor. Hank knelt down to examine the first woman. She was very close to giving birth.
"Okay, look at me," he said, taking her hand. "On your next contraction I need you to push." Hank heard a great inrush of air as Peter found them.
Who are they? Why is Hank and Peter so stunned. Well, next chapter will be up on Saturday. No, I'm not mean, I'm just plain cruel. Please R&R.