In which they finally, finally get to go home, and attempt to fully accept the fact that their hell (this one, at least) is truly over with.

Marie slept like the dead – and if she dreamed, she didn't remember it. She woke sore, but rested, and very relieved.

She'd curled up in the night, head against Logan's chest, the crown of her hair just brushing the neckline of his shirt. It was a little odd, really, just how well she could stay near him yet avoid killing him, even in her sleep. Apparently, that instinct had formed itself, without any conscious help from her.

While she'd managed a shower last night, her clothes were still filthy and stinking of smoke, and she wrinkled her nose. She didn't have many spare clothes back at the mansion, so once they were all recovered, they were going shopping, goddammit. If they were to build actual lives now, they'd need more anyway.

Logan was still dead to the world, so she crawled out of bed and tiptoed to the small refrigerator, pulling out bread, peanut butter, and jelly. Anathea and Lia had taken the room's other bed, and poor Lia wasn't going to be capable of making her own sandwich, so Marie would put one together for her.

They'd inspected her wounds last night while cleaning and bandaging them, and found that they'd healed exponentially faster than they ought to have. Sharley might not have been able to fix them entirely, but one of them had already scarred over, and the other two were firmly scabbed. Fortunately, none of them had hit either of Lia's eyes; her vision was obscured only by her bandages, and would be just fine once they were removed. Marie wondered how the others were doing – especially Clarice and Kitty, who had both actually died. She supposed she'd find out soon enough.

The hotel room, thank God, came with a coffee-pot and a small jar of French roast (appropriate), and she set it to percolating before her eyes scanned the room. It seemed odd, that it should look so very normal. After all she'd seen, all she'd endured, she wouldn't have thought it possible for her to think anything was normal ever again.

She still had a hard time processing the fact that everything was done. The nightmare was over, and she doubted she was the only one who was uncertain as to what the hell they were meant to do now. She doubted any of them would go their separate ways – they'd been bound together by the horrors they'd seen, and that was not something that could be broken lightly.

Anathea woke next, and crept as silently as Marie had done. She didn't look as though she'd slept well, the poor girl; her face was ashy-grey, and there were deep purple smudges under her eyes.

"What do we do now?" she asked, sounding very lost as she made herself a sandwich.

"We go home," Marie said firmly. "We go home and we rest, and figure everything else out later. It's not like we don't have all the time in the world, now."

"Home." Marie could see Anathea turning the word over in her head, and wondered if the girl had every really called anywhere home. She had, after all, come from a future just as nightmarish as the one Marie herself had left behind. "I think I must decide what that is."

Marie gave her a smile. "You've got a chance, now. This world has so many amazing things you haven't seen yet." She could understand why Clarice had so much fun showing stuff to Anathea and her group: it wasn't every day you saw that kind of wonder in another person. "Just wait until Halloween."

"What is Halloween?"

"Best holiday there is." Christmas had never really ceased being a bittersweet holiday for Marie; no matter how many good Christmases she'd had at the school, she never had been able to get over missing the way her family had done things. Halloween, on the other hand, had always been fun – not least because it was the only day out of the year that some of the other kids could let loose with their mutations without fear of reprisal. Jubilee had always dressed up as some sort of firecracker, and pretended her mutation was just some wonderfully elaborate special effect. "We'll have to show you what candy is, before you can really understand how awesome it is. Candy's sweet, like ice cream and Popsicles, but it's not cold."

Anathea took a thoughtful bite of her sandwich. "I never think this world is real," she said. "The books I read, they were wrote before the first Sentinel war, but I always think the world they talk about was imagination. I never imagined this."

"Well, you're stuck with us now," Logan grunted, rolling over and rubbing his eyes. "Don't let us overwhelm you with new shit. There's a hell of a lot more out there."

"We'll keep it from drivin' you nuts," Marie promised. "Gotta say, a lot of this is a little weird to me, too. And I don't just mean the ugly-ass clothes."

Logan snorted. "You just wait until the 80's roll around," he said. "You were probably too young to remember much, but I do, and I wish I didn't. One of those things I actually wouldn't mind forgettin'."

Marie laughed. "I've seen pictures," she said. "What were y'all thinkin'?"

"I don't think we were," he said, with a grimness that was downright hilarious. "Everybody was too hopped up on cocaine. Only explanation for all that goddamn neon."

Anathea obviously had no idea what the hell they were talking about, but she didn't seem to mind. She appeared to be content to eat her sandwich, savoring it one bite at a time in a way much like Marie still did with all her food. Even now, actual, decent food remained a novelty, after so many years of the garbage she was fed in the camps.

"I oughtta go see if anyone else is up," Logan said, stretching. What sounded like every vertebrae in his spine popped like a hail of gunfire. "I feel like I got hit by a fuckin' truck."

Marie was quite sure he wasn't the only one. She brushed a feather-light kiss over his cheek, and went to brush her teeth.

It was pain that woke Clarice – deep, throbbing, stabbing pain that filled her entire abdomen. She needed some aspirin, and she needed it yesterday, but even the thought of getting up was more than she could endure. Even trying to sit up was too much; she choked on a hiss of agony halfway through, and laid back down in defeat.

"Aspirin?" The voice was Kitty's, and it made Clarice twitch – which, of course, hurt even more.

"Yeah," she whispered, barely able to say even that.

"Stay put. I'll get you a sandwich first, so you don't yarf any pills back up." Kitty winced when she sat up, letting out a mantra of "motherfucker" under her breath as she grabbed the shirt Clarice had left for her. She was so wrapped up in gauze that she didn't exactly need it, but it was probably the principle of the thing. The bandages on her back, Clarice noticed, were stained with dried blood, but not badly so.

Kitty's gait was uneven as she went to the mini-fridge, and her litany of curses continued, but she managed to put together a decent sandwich. "Eat that," she ordered. "I'll get you some water."

Quite honestly, Clarice wasn't certain how well she could eat, but she somehow forced the sandwich down. Kitty brought her four aspirin with the water, and Clarice gulped them down in rapid succession.

"You're going to be okay, you know," Kitty said, tossing back a few aspirin herself. "I mean, yeah, it sucks right now, but you'll get better. Just don't let any of the kittens stomp on your stomach for a while."

Clarice laughed, and immediately wished she hadn't. "Do you remember anything?" she asked. "About being dead, I mean?"

Kitty sat beside her on the bed, and shook her head. "No. I didn't even know I'd died. Everything went dark, and then I was awake again. I'm not even sure how long I was dead."

"Me either," Clarice said, troubled. "Not that I can even say that's really weird, compared to everything else that's happened." She still wasn't entirely convinced that the last week hadn't just been some exceptionally bizarre dream. "You want me to look at your back?"

Kitty gave her a somewhat dubious look. "Do you think you could handle it? I mean, apparently it's pretty gross. 'Sliced bacon' is the comparison I heard last night."

Clarice winced, the mere thought nauseating her a little. "I can try," she said. "It bled some, last night. You might want stitches."

Kitty snorted. "Not quite sure how I'd explain that to an ER doctor. Unless I said somebody tried to murder me, and I just didn't feel like going to the hospital right away."

"Good point. Come on, though, let's try to deal with this before everybody else wakes up and this room turns into a zoo."

Kitty hobbled her way to the bathroom, pulling off her borrowed shirt. Clarice followed, carrying a roll of fresh gauze. While she'd tried to clean up the bathroom a little, there were still more bloodstains than she was comfortable with. Then again, she wasn't sure she'd be comfortable with any bloodstains. She directed Kitty to sit on the edge of the tub, and hoped she hadn't signed on for something she couldn't actually handle. Though she'd spent years in a horrible, deadly future, she hadn't actually seen much blood; oh, their group had been attacked and murdered by Sentinels several times, but Kitty had always managed to send Bishop back and avert it. Which mean poor Bishop was the only one who remembered just how many times his group had been slaughtered.

"You let me know if this gets too much, okay?" Kitty said, pulling her hair out of the way.

"I will," Clarice said, knowing that she probably wouldn't, at least not until it was too late.

The gauze didn't want to come off – it had stuck to the wounds in several places, and she was hesitant to pry at it for fear of re-opening any of them. It took some creative applications of a damp washcloth to un-stick it all, and by then she was ready to gag.

'Sliced bacon' was an understatement. There were five wounds in all, but they were much further apart than the size of a human hand should be capable of it. The worst of them was a good two inches across, and had cut down right through the skin and deep into the muscle of Kitty's shoulder. The edges were ragged, suggesting her skin had been torn as well as cut, and although here and there were patches of pinkish scar tissue, most of it was scabbed. Some of the scabs were harder, and looked older, but others were nauseatingly fresh.

"Clarice?" Kitty said, trying to look over her shoulder. "Clarice, sit down before you keel over."

"I'm fine," Clarice said, swallowing her rising gorge with difficulty. "Just hold still."

"That's what she said," Kitty said solemnly. It was exactly the kind of tension-breaker Clarice needed, and for a moment she was giggling too hard to do anything else. When she finally stopped, she felt confident enough to get on with her work.

She probably wasn't as thorough about washing all the cuts as she should have been, but she doubted Kitty minded, since it had to hurt like a bitch as it was. The antiseptic salve would take care of anything she missed, and then she could get some fresh air and attempt to avoid throwing up her breakfast.

"You're doing that wrong."

She and Kitty both jumped, with the result that they swore and winced in unison. Clarice turned to find Erik, tired, irritated, and not a little blood-stained himself, glowering at her. "Go sit down and make certain your internal organs don't fall out of alignment," he ordered. "If the others aren't awake yet, they should be, so Ororo ought to go check – not you," he added, before she could so much as open her mouth. "If you die of internal bleeding, I'm sure someone will find a way to blame me. Go. Sit."

If she'd been in less pain – and been much less nauseated – she probably would have thrown some crack right back at him, but as it was, her stomach was threatening mutiny. As it was, she was happy to limp her way back to her own bed.

"Don't abandon me, Clarice!" Kitty said plaintively. "He'll pick all the scabs off and eat them."

It was a toss-up between laughing and puking at the mental image, but fortunately, laughter won out. It still hurt, but it was better than vomiting.

"You," Erik intoned, "are absolutely disgusting. Now hold still."

"Yes, Mother."

Clarice rolled her eyes. This was going to be a very, very long day.

When Logan stepped outside, he discovered that the afternoon was well on its way to being completely sweltering. They couldn't get to that plane (and its air conditioning) fast enough, in his opinion.

He found the Professor – his Professor – sitting out on the veranda, looking unfairly serene. You'd never know he'd spent most of the last night dealing with a group of creatures straight out of a deranged, acid-dropping lunatic's nightmares. It was damn reassuring, in a way Logan doubted anything else could have been.

"Ready to go home, Logan?" he asked.

"You have no idea," Logan said, and carefully didn't think of the fact that there was more than one reason for that. Professor had probably been traumatized enough, without that thought. "Right now, I'd just settle for gettin' outta this heat. Forgot how rare air conditionin' was in 1973."

The Professor laughed. "It's not the only thing I'd forgotten. Still, I would take a lifetime of this humidity over one day in the future."

Logan shuddered. "Don't remind me," he said. "I'm still not sure I wanna know what's happenin' to my body, fifty years from now. Especially if it's got nobody guardin' it anymore." If Charles and Magneto were back here, too, it only stood to reason that the others were roaming around somewhere. Maybe his future body was comatose in a ditch somewhere. He hoped Trask never got his hands on it – provided Trask was in any fit mental state to get his hands on anything.

"I would hope that fifty years from now is not what it was when we left it," the Professor said. "You've all certainly done an exceptional job of changing history in the last week. I hope you and Marie will stay at the mansion, when we return."

"That's the plan." Logan pulled his one remaining cigar out of his pocket – he'd brought it on the odd chance they'd actually survive long enough for him to smoke it. "Pretty sure younger you is gonna want to open up the school again. Marie'd make a good teacher, and I could find somethin' to do."

The Professor laughed. "You could teach, too, if you forced yourself to have a little patience," he said. "Mechanics, maybe. You're certainly far more knowledgeable now than anyone in 1973."

Logan snorted. "True. It's worth a thought, anyway. I don't know that I can plan much of anythin' yet, though. Not so soon after…all that shit."

"I don't blame you. I think we'll all need a little time, once we're home. Last night is not the sort of thing one gets over in a hurry."

Wasn't that an understatement. "So what do we do about Alfred?" he asked. "I mean, even if Kitty manages to put his heart back, we can't just let him run around, but we can't exactly send him to prison, either. Might make the law look at us a little funny, if we just dropped off some guy with no records and said 'here, have fun'."

"That," the Professor said, "is something best dealt with once we're back at the mansion. We have an entire trans-Atlantic flight to think about it."

Hank, who had come shuffling out of his own room, groaned. "Don't remind me," he said. "I'm not looking forward to that." He was no longer his blue-furred self, and his complexion was downright pasty.

"You sure you can handle it?" Logan said, eyeing him doubtfully. "It's a long-ass flight."

"I'll be fine," Hank said. "But I'd like to be off soon."

"You and me both," Logan muttered.

Though they all wanted to get home, nobody was particularly happy on the ride to the airport. Half of them fell asleep again, and the other half grumbled. The bottle of bourbon made the rounds more than once.

Once they'd reached the plane, Clarice portaled inside to corral the kittens before Hank opened the cabin door.

Marie climbed in first, mostly so she could be settled before everyone else got on – while it was unlikely she'd manage to kill someone by tripping over them, she didn't want to risk it. She fetched up by the mini-fridge, a bottle of sparkling water in her hand, waiting until everyone was on board and the kittens could be released again.

Logan joined her, stealing her water, apparently content to let the others handle stowing all their shit. Given that he'd loaded most of it, he couldn't really be blamed. "Hittin' the fabric store tomorrow," he said, apropos of absolutely nothing. "Want you to come with me and test a few things."

Marie blinked, wondering what in the name of mother fuck that had to do with…well, anything. "Need a little more information, sugar," she said.

He gave her a smirk that was pure sin. "Fabric," he said. "Kinda need some for…some things, and it's better if you pick out what feels best."

Comprehension dawned, and her face heated. "…Gotcha," she said. "I think I can arrange that. You know, take some time outta my busy schedule."

He laughed, and carefully tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "You do that. Gonna get the Professor's credit card, if I can. Buy the best shit they've got."

"As long as it's not actual shit," she warned. "There's kinky, and then there's disgustin'."

"What's disgusting?" Clarice asked. She was tiptoeing through the maze of legs and feet, a kitten in each hand. She almost tripped over poor Anathea, who spilled water all over her legs. "Sorry."

"Something that apparently fails to be kinky," Erik said, wincing as a kitten climbed his bandages. "Best not to ask, I think."

Clarice wrinkled her nose. "You're probably right. Have a kitten." She shoved one at Marie, as though using it to ward off any unwanted disgusting kinkiness. The kitten, not liking being used as a tiny furry shield, squeaked and bit her thumb.

Marie laughed. "C'mere, you little fuzzy thing," she said, taking the kitten and ignoring Logan's long-suffering sigh. "I missed you little critters."

"Oh, not you, too," Erik sighed. "They are not critters."

"Says you," Kitty said, letting the white one crawl up her arm and sit on her shoulder, like a little fluffy parrot. "Somebody wanna make sure the stripy one doesn't go too close to Alfred? I'm not sure he won't eat it."

Marie looked at the man in question, who had been stuffed just behind the cockpit on the right side of the plane. He didn't look capable of eating much of anything: she didn't know if he was drugged, or if one of the Professors had shut his mind down for a while. Either way, he looked as threatening as a slug.

Anathea must have disagreed, because she snatched up the kitten and handed it to Lia. The girl herself appeared slightly dazed, which made Marie wonder if someone had given her something stronger than aspirin. She certainly didn't seem to be in any pain, which was what really mattered.

Beside her, Janek looked so forlorn that Marie wasn't sure if she should laugh, or smack Erik for being such a smug bastard. If Kitty figured out what he was doing, she'd smack him herself – but she seemed much too occupied with her kitten, which was currently chewing on her hair.

Children, Marie thought. I'm flyin' with a bunch of children. She looked at Logan, hoping he'd be able to read her expression – which was something of a mistake, because she found him locked in a staring contest with the ginger kitten.

"We're all mad here," she muttered, quoting Lewis Carroll.

"Well, duh," Kitty said.

There was still a little light left when they landed, so loading the second bus was no difficulty. Ororo just wanted a shower and some clean clothes, and she'd happily toddle off to bed once more. She hadn't managed a nap on the flight, though almost everyone else had.

Crowded though it was, they'd given Clarice one of the bench seats, so she could properly lie down. She'd got paler and paler as the flight went on, despite having a sandwich and more aspirin foisted on her, and Ororo worried about just how badly mangled her insides might really be.

Kitty fussed over her for a while, too, but she had to be in a great deal of pain herself. Eventually Ororo shooed her off, and she went to snooze on Erik like she was an oversized kitten herself. It had to have hurt, but surprisingly, he didn't complain. For some reason, Ororo found that worrisome rather than sweet.

Because Clarice was so laid up, Rogue was the one who crated most of the kittens, none of whom were happy about it. The chorus of meows and squeaks at least kept everyone awake, more or less, on the bus ride home.

Home. They were going home. No more Memories, no more nightmares (at least, not of the supernatural variety); Ororo could scarcely believe it. They could relax, and do whatever they wanted now, without a proverbial Sword of Damocles looming over everything they did and thought.

When they finally reached the mansion, Marie and Logan were the ones who manhandled the kitten-crate inside. Though they let the little things loose in the usual room, they didn't stay there themselves – no doubt they wanted privacy, and that was as far as Ororo was willing to go with that thought.

Clarice, by now, hurt so much that she couldn't even walk: Hank carried her to the kitten room, and went to fetch her something stronger than the aspirin she'd been swallowing the whole flight. Ororo worried that they were going to have to take her to a hospital, and figure out some explanation for her half-healed wounds.

"I'd better stay with her," Hank said, "just in case. You go get some sleep."

"I might as well stay, myself," she said. "I'm a far more familiar face. Is she running a fever?"

"If she is, it's very low-grade," he said. "I'll take her temperature before she goes to sleep, but I think she's just suffering from the pain of her injuries. I mean, she was dead for a while." No doubt he wanted to run tests to see just how that was possible, but he'd have to run them later.

Erik came in, scanned the room, and grabbed the white kitten. "You need to look at Kitty's back," he said to Hank. "I did what I could last night, but I'm no doctor. And she needs a real painkiller."

Ororo looked at his chest. Some of the gauze was stained with dried blood – obviously his own wounds had opened again while they were flying. "And you don't?" she asked, giving him a thoroughly unimpressed look.

"I can take care of myself," he said shortly. "I am not the one who died last night."

Ororo snorted. "Word of advice? Don't ever, ever, ever imply that Kitty can't look after herself. Especially not within her earshot. And definitely don't keep reminding her that she was actually dead for a while. She won't bring that up until she's good and ready."

"Believe it or not, I'm not a complete fool," he retorted, with more than a little asperity. "I just want to make sure she isn't going to die again. You can hardly fault me for that."

"No, I can't," she said. "Just…be careful, okay? Normally Kitty's almost impossible to really piss off, but nothing about this has been normal. I don't think she'd hurt you on purpose, but if her nightmares are bad enough, she's perfectly capable of killing you."

"I'm aware of that," he said. "I know what happened with the girl, Tara."

Ororo's eyebrows shot up. "She told you that?"

"She was rather drunk at the time, but yes. As I said, I'm not a complete fool. Hank, when you get a moment, come with me. If she falls asleep and we have to wake her up to check her injuries, she won't be happy." Which meant, of course, that she'd spread it around with a big shovel.

Ororo shook her head. While it was good to be home, she was fairly sure that didn't mean their problems were over.

Of course your problems aren't quite over, Ororo. It's just that what you all face now won't be so potentially lethal – just annoying. Next chapter will contain the long-awaited Logan and Rogue Happy Fun Times, among many other things.