It was a fairly quiet evening for the ghetto, all things considering. While everyone was upstairs playing a game together and some other couples ran for privacy away from the guards, a few sat in silence at a table. Xavier, Magneto, Hank, Logan and Danielle did not say a word to each other, not since the rowdy dinner from the hour before (with everyone crowding the downstairs and feasting on bread, butter and pickles), and enjoyed each other's company. Daken even was quiet for the two month old he was, sleeping peacefully in a small rocking crib at Danielle's feet. Every so often, she or Logan could push it gently when the baby grumbled, to keep him from waking, and would gaze at him lovingly.
Hank especially did not want to say anything. Ever since he arrived here from Brazil, he had been careful about what he did and said. No longer was the politician in play. Now, he was back to square one, when he was first with Xavier and Magneto and they were in search of Shaw, when he was a humble scientist that nobody really knew. It had been years and years ago, almost fifty to be honest, but it showed him much more than he could ever hope for in the years since. It taught him patience and survival, something he so desperately needed these days.
With so much silence between them, Hank wanted to break into a conversation, something the guards outside their door would not mind. He missed Danielle greatly and had to admit that seeing the Wolverine again was a relief, even if Hank felt that he wanted to still beat him for the pain he gave to Danielle. However, seeing that they too were as broken by their mission was they were was devastating. They achieved as little as they had in Brazil except welcoming a new child to their family and that had been a joy Hank did not think was possible, even with Logan. They had as many hopes set upon this and all of that had fallen.
Guards marched past them outside and yelled out orders to those in the streets. That alone was normal. Hank didn't really pay attention to it until it came closer to the house, when his human ears perked up. When he realized that the guards were coming down their driveway, he stood up at the table suddenly, rattling the glasses and plates leftover on the table. Logan stood up with him, seeing the same thing, and proceeded to stand between the door and Danielle and Daken, tempted to use his claws. Magneto and Xavier stayed where they were in their seats, anxious to see what was going to happen. They all did not hear anything happen outside, but soon held their breath, knowing that it was coming this way.
The door banged open, knocking over the curtain rod above their pantry doorway on the left. A series of guards entered, the head of them in the front. While all of their guns had been pointed at all of the mutants present, all of them had eyes for one person and one alone.
"No," Danielle whispered. "No. Not me."
Despite feeling the pain and nausea from the adamantium, Logan let his claws out. "You're not taking her without a fight," he stated.
"Move aside," the head guard ordered. "Move aside and nobody gets hurt."
"Logan," Danielle warned, seeing every gun now pointed at Logan and knowing that he would be a dead man if he didn't back down.
"Wolverine, let her go," Magneto added. "She'll be back."
"I promise that much, if Commander Hanks like her enough." The head guard pointed to Danielle. "Get her."
One guard stood down, putting his gun into a side holder and passing Logan. As Logan put his claws back into his knuckles, the guard grabbed Danielle and started dragged her by the hair. She screamed in fright and surprise, which caused a chain reaction even she did not expect. As Daken cried in his crib, Logan lunged, trying to get the guard to let go of Danielle, but was immediately pushed back midair and, as he landed on the floor, slammed in the stomach with a gun butt to disable him. Hank moved forward, in order to put a hand up to stop it, but was pushed back into his chair by the head guard, his head hitting the top of the chair hard. Warning glances between Xavier and Magneto stopped them from doing anything.
But those screams...between Daken and Danielle, nobody could concentrate, save for the one who was pulled her outside. As soon as Logan managed to pull himself up, trying to keep his weakened state away from the guards, he saw that Danielle was gone. The guards were leaving, shutting the door behind them and stomping away. The others remained hushed behind him, unable to move or be seen as revolting. Hank, the only brave one, managed to get up from his seat, picking Daken up and calming him down as Logan stared at the door as he continued to sit on the floor. After some minutes, after Daken quieted down and soon was cooing, Hank handed the baby to Logan. He took Daken without question as he stood up, hooking him into the crook of his arm.
Hank put a reassuring hand on Logan's shoulder, flinching when Logan pushed him away. "They promised her back," he said to Logan, wishing to someone that it was the truth. "It means they're taking her someplace and she'll be safe until her return."
While Xavier and Magneto had kept their opinions to themselves, knowing that it would be easier not to imagine the impossible and bring misery to Logan, Hank had been the man of action. He ignored Logan pushing him away and was saying reassuring words, mostly that they would not take a mother away from her children like this, but even those words seemed empty to Hank. After a camp and seeing a quarter of the world in travels just to help the world, he was unsure that a false sense of security was not apt anymore. Xavier would have more words than he would, but even the Professor's well had been dried.
Magneto had taught many things to them about captivity and without even educating them while inside except in words and actions from years past. Keeping silent seemed to have been one of them, something Xavier had taken to heart. Hank was sure that his best friend and teacher had nothing more to say, even to a father who might lose his mate and the mother of the children.
"I sure as hell hope so," Logan finally said after some time, his eyes still on the door and Daken in his arms. "I sure as hell hope they bring her back. If they don't, they're not going to know what mercy is. They won't know what'll mean to be safe anymore."
~00~
Outside the house, a jeep was parked. The guards pulled Danielle towards it, releasing her by the hair and restraining her by her wrists. Once she was forced onto a seat in the back, a collar was clamped onto her neck, almost choking her. Danielle could not think why they would put a disabling collar on her, but then remembered that the device at the entranceway covered the ghetto alone. The collar meant she was leaving the neighborhood. She was promised to be back, but where she was going was a mystery.
Without further ado, the driver waiting for them turned the jeep around in the driveway and headed east. Stopping at the gate, they signed a few papers and then drove on. Danielle did not watch where they were going, becoming more and more anxious as they pulled away from the personnel buildings and headed more towards the town. While it seemed deserted and had an obvious lack of life, signs of previous riots were rampant. Businesses had been pitted, windows smashed and houses destroyed, some of them to the foundation. It seemed that some of the buildings had been bombed too, by the way the black circles encompassed it.
After a bumpy ride some fifteen minutes away from the ghetto, Danielle found that they were around a downtown area. Although quiet compared to days past, noises came from a lone club across the street from where they parked. The guards pulled out of the seat by her arms and led her inside, guiding her up the stairs in the back of the room. Although full of lights, Danielle the place gloomy and lacking the glamor she knew most clubs had. While thinking that Teller could give an idea or three about what could be done, she also could not figure out why she was asked here, taken away from her family on a night like this.
Soon though, she was in an office. Although well lit, she too found this depressing. Deprived of all furniture except for a desk and chair and something large covered in a sheet, the only person who sat before her was the bleak commanding officer of the ghetto. A distant relation of the commander of the Kansas camp, Danielle only knew him by the name of Jerry Hanks…and a brutal man, at that. He never showed his face except when new arrivals came, but he was known to give an odd order or two. It had been rumored that Hanks made life more miserable than it already was for many mutants, but Danielle had yet to see evidence of that.
Hanks looked at Danielle with an expression akin to disgust though. Danielle could not tell what he was thinking, but used her assassin's skills that Roger and Jay taught her to study his stance. Although aging and obviously slow acting, Hanks' agility, shown through his inane hand motions to his guards behind her, had not changed since he was a younger man. He was impatient with his feet tapping, nervous through his shaking shoulders and thoughtful through his severe gazes at Danielle. He wasn't a person Danielle wanted to murder with at least twenty other people behind her, but if she was by herself, had nothing to lose and would not care, she could easily see herself slitting Hanks' throat from ear to ear.
Pushed forward to see Hanks, Danielle saw that he wasted no time in stating his purpose. "So, they tell me you're a talented singer," he stated, as if it were a repugnant fact.
Laugher escaped from Danielle's lips. "Is that all you needed me for?" she asked, relieved in many ways. "You could have just asked me and not dragged me here, Commander Hanks. I could have put on a show for you without a problem."
"One more comment out of you without my permission and I'll break my word and kill you slowly," Hanks warned, his eyes telling Danielle that it was no empty threat. "Now, I heard through some channels that you used to work at Phineas Teller's bar. Is that so?"
"Yes, Sir, but it was years before."
"They also say that you can come up with a song on the spot sometimes. Is that right too?"
"I can say that is true. Sometimes, I just sang what I wrote beforehand too."
"Then, prove it to me." Hanks pointed to the furniture covered with a sheet. "Play me a song and make it sound original."
Danielle gulped, walking over to where Hanks pointed and pulled the sheet, revealing a dusty piano and seat. Staring at it, she thought. She hadn't done what Hanks was demanding since she was a teenager. It had been long before her marriage to Leon Ellis, in a faraway place and time which would never come back to life. However, she had to do something. Hanks was treating this as if it were a life and death situation. It might as well be, by the way things were going, and might mean the end of her family too if she did nothing. She had to obey or die.
Carefully sitting down, Danielle played with a few keys, remembering how to work a melody from childhood lessons from her mother and grandmother, and worked out a phrase in her head. She looked at Hanks, meeting the same steely eyes, and went back to the piano keys. Then, she glided her fingers through a song she knew to be recycled, something she recalled Vinnie humming to her one night many years before, and started singing.
I keep going to the river to pray,
Cause I need something
That can wash out the pain.
And at most, I'm sleeping
All these demons away.
But your ghost, the ghost of you,
It keeps me awake.
My friends had you figured out.
Yeah, they saw what's inside of you.
You tried hidin' another you,
But your evil was coming through
These eyes sitting on the wall,
They watch every move I make.
Bright light livin' in the shade,
Your cold heart makes my spirit shake.
Ooh, I had to go through hell
To prove I'm not insane.
Had to meet the devil
Just to know his name.
And that's when my love was burning,
Yeah, it's still burning.
I keep going to the river to pray,
Cause I need something
That can wash out the pain.
And at most, I'm sleeping
All these demons away.
But your ghost, the ghost of you,
It keeps me awake
Each time that I think you go,
I turn around and you're creeping in.
And I let you another skin
Cause I love living in the sin.
Oh, you never told me
True love was gonna hurt.
True pain, its own desert,
True face that I never learned.
Ooh, I keep going to the river to pray,
Cause I need something
That can wash out the pain.
And at most, I'm sleeping
All these demons away.
But your ghost, the ghost of you,
It keeps me awake.
Give up the ghost.
Stall the haunting baby.
Give up the ghost.
No more haunting baby.
I keep going to the river…
I keep going to the river to pray,
Cause I need something
That can wash out the pain.
And at most, I'm sleeping
All these demons away.
But your ghost, the ghost of you,
It keeps me awake.
Danielle stopped singing, belting out an appealing ending on the piano before stopping. She turned confidently back to Hanks, expecting some sort of negative comment. However, his reaction seemed a little more calculating than anything else. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully, as if the sight was pleasing to him, and motioned to some of his men. After quietly conferring with some of them (something Danielle was dying to listen in on), Hanks turned to Danielle, but directed the words at his men.
"Get her a haircut, get her some makeup and find the clothes Roberta left behind," Hanks ordered promptly. "She'll fit the bill perfectly. Besides, I think she'll be our weekend entertainment for the time being, before something better comes along."
"What…?" Danielle had no words and didn't have time to react. She felt herself being yanked from the piano seat in the office and down the hallway, shoved into a dressing room and left to rest on her knees with her back to the door as it slammed shut behind her.
Danielle studied the room before her, cold and drafty as the rest of the place. Before her, there was just a seat with a mirror, some old makeup in a case and dresses in hangers in a closet next to it. Behind her, someone knocked on the door, possibly for the haircut Hanks had ordered. Danielle did not answer and allowed the person in without saying a word. She folded her hands, as if in the prayer motion her grandmother had taught her as a child, and felt the cold steel on her neck as locks of red and white hair were cut away in a stylish way.
Within minutes, Danielle followed through the same motions she went through as a teenager, seeing herself alone for the first time in a long time (with perhaps a guard at the door to ensure her compliancy). Putting herself before the mirror, she looked at her reflection, aware of the many flaws her body betrayed in the more than ten years she was away from the stage life and being a mother. She then pulled out the dresses in the closet, tossing one after another on the floor until she found the least seductive one (which wasn't much better than the others, she noticed). As she slid her own clothes off, she put it on, adjusting it here and there, and sat before the mirror, applying makeup she knew would cake her face like a clown. Soon satisfied with her appearance and not at all like the nearly thirty-year-old she was, Danielle walked out of the dressing room, allowing her captors to take her back downstairs.
Leading her to another piano just off of the dance floor, Danielle found herself surrounded by a million eyes that watched her every move. She cleared her throat, wishing for a glass of water to quench her dry throat, and walked over to her seat. She waited for the lights to dim some more, cracking her knuckles as she thought back to another song her brother had taught her year before. When her fingers decided to be brave and work the song out, she sang softly at first, but louder as the others called for it and sang along the ending with her.
Simona, wish I was sober,
So, I could see clearly now.
The rain has gone.
Simona, I guess it's over.
My memory plays our tune
The same old song
I would call you up
Every Saturday night
And we'd both stay out
Until the morning light.
And we sang, "Here We Go Again".
And though time goes by,
I will always be in a club
With you in 1973,
Singing, "Here We Go Again".
And though time goes by,
I will always be in a club
With you in 1973…
