Chapter 50


Laura had her hands full who she ran into Jean.

She had two bags now; one full of clothes, the other of books, nearly all gifts from Mariko Yashida. Logan would have carried one for her, but he had his own bag over one shoulder and the other arm was occupied carrying a large white box of light cardboard.

The two girls ran into one another in the main hall, Laura aiming for the metal staircase, Jean headed for the kitchen with a trash bag loaded with scraps of carpet. Laura dodged adroitly out of the way, keeping the bags from hitting one another. She looked Jean up and down, noting the lack of recognition in her eyes.

Logan had told her what had happened, but knowing and seeing were two different things. Laura's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "You promised you weren't going to close your mind," she accused. "You said you'd help."

Jean stared back, bewildered and uncomfortable, and then turned reflexively to look for Scott to come help her. Her instincts were good; he was already nearly at her elbow.

"It's okay," he insisted, slipping an arm around her shoulders and taking the bag from her. "You're okay. You're okay."

Logan shifted the bag higher on his shoulder to free his hand so he could grab Laura's arm. "Easy, Kiddo," he insisted. "Nothin' here to see." He could feel the tension in her arm; she, like himself, was used to solving problems with claws. "Don't," he muttered warningly. "Take it easy."

"Everybody lies," Laura observed, her voice starkly pragmatic and yet also bitter.

Logan nodded. "Yep."

"I didn't mean to—" Jean began.

"Of course. Nobody's blaming you." Scott gave her shoulder a squeeze.

Laura dropped the clothing bag and reached into the bag of books. She pulled the paperback volume from the top of the pile and dropped it on the floor. Logan didn't have to look to know which one it was. Little House on the Prairie. Then Laura had both bags in hand again and was continuing on her way up the stairs.

Logan snorted, the only comment that seemed appropriate at the moment. He shoved the white box into Scott's arms. "Here."

"What's this?" Scott asked blankly.

"Kimono."

Another blank look. "What's it for?"

"Jean. A friend of hers from Japan sent it back with us."

"Jean has friends in Japan?"

"Did."

Scott shifted the box to one arm so he could ease the lid open and brush aside the tissue paper wrapping inside. The fabric under his fingers was blazing white silk, almost smothered in tightly packed red and gold embroidery.

"You might have to show her how it goes on, 'cause I have no idea."

"Ask Betsy. She lived in Japan."

"I lived in monastic martial arts training facilities," Betsy clarified, maneuvering past them with a can of paint in each hand. "Not geisha houses. Besides, Moira and Sean are due this afternoon, and we've got a flight back to the UK tomorrow morning."

"You're leaving?" Warren demanded, emerging from the library (presumably to see what was holding up the supply of fresh paint; he was splattered with the same shade). "Already?"

"Afraid so. You wouldn't know anything about how to put on a women's kimono, would you?"

"A what? And what do you mean, you're leaving?"

"Look it up on the Internet," Logan instructed Scott. "I gotta go reinstall a dozen security cameras."

He was out the door before Scott could even say thank you. He didn't need to see the box opened; he'd already peeked inside, seen the folds of tissue paper and the note tucked in amongst them.

My dear Jean,

I always found that this kimono brought me courage and luck. May it do the same for you. Choose your path wisely and well. I wish you every happiness.

Mariko Yashida


The Danger Room would take a lot of work to get it back to where it was.

It was pretty far down on the list of house repairs, but Logan didn't feel right just leaving it like that, day after day. Sure, it wasn't a necessity of life like heat or electricity or functional plumbing, but it was in many ways the heart of the team. Every one of the kids in this house had put in long hours here, many of them under his supervision, struggling to understand just what they were capable of. Figuring out who they were. Didn't seem right to neglect it.

He was sorting through the rubble, creating one pile of salvageable equipment and one of what was now garbage, when he heard a knock at the door. The door was frozen open, so it was a gesture of politeness.

He turned. The Cajun was leaning against the doorframe.

"Yeah?" Logan asked, pulling himself out of his reverie to deal with whatever crisis Gambit was down here to bring to his attention.

Gambit glanced behind him, checking to make sure the corridor was empty, before coming inside. "Je peux te demander service?" he asked.

French. Gambit didn't speak in full-on French too much these days, unless he particularly wanted a conversation to be private. Logan replied in kind. "C'est quoi?"

Gambit reached into his pocket and pulled out his staff. No, not his staff—that, Logan remembered, had been blown to kingdom come the night they defended the house. The dimensions on this one were slightly off, too.

In response to Gambit's touch, the staff telescoped open with a snap. It gleamed almost fiercely in the light of the battery-powered lamp Logan had brought down with him.

Then it snapped again, and Logan raised his eyebrows. The gently curved blades on either end had not been what he was expecting. "Nouveau, ces-là."

He held up a hand, and Gambit tossed him the weapon. Logan knew the substance as soon as it hit his palm. The density, the hardness of it—familiar as his own fingernails.

"Peux-tu les enlever?" Gambit asked. "Je n'les veux point."

Logan tested the heft of the staff, the way the blades caught the air as he gave them a spin. Then he tested the edge against his thumb, though he knew that an adamantium blade fashioned by Magneto would be, and remain, perfectly honed. No wonder Gambit didn't want them. These were killing blades. And he was so young. Standing there in the middle of the wrecked Danger Room, his eyes glowing in the dark, was a cocky kid barely into his twenties.

People came into this space to learn what they were capable of. Gambit, it seemed, didn't want to know.

Logan pressed the button to flip the blades back into their housings, and handed the staff over again. "I maybe could," he told the thief, "but I won't. Someday you may need 'em, and I want you to have the choice."

"Je ne veux pas le choix," Gambit insisted, scowling.

"Tu l'as. Deal with it." Logan slapped him reassuringly on the shoulder. "You got this. Now you gonna keep wasting my time or you gonna help me haul this crap upstairs?"


Moira and Sean arrived at the house just in time for the first dinner around the new and expanded dining room table. Through either good luck or somebody's good planning, Moira ended up sitting next to Carol Danvers, who'd opted to help with the reconstruction of the house for a bit before going home and starting the annoying battle of trying to get her job back.

"And ye've had no recovery of your powers at all?" Moira asked, her voice full of scientific curiosity.

"Not that I've noticed. But the super villain over there did offer to throw me into his power-growing machine, so there's that to consider."

"What machine would this be, then?" Moira asked Eric, a few seats down the table.

"An enhancer. Certain types of radiation encourage the production of X-gene coded cells."

"I know that. But you've tried it? On living people?"

"Several, including myself."

"And it works?"

"Yes. Emotional reactions to the results are mixed, but it does work. Whether or not it would help Miss Danvers, however, depends a great deal on the current condition of her X-gene."

"Well, that's not too hard to find out. Have you published your results?"

"I am, as has just been pointed out, a super villain. We are not inclined towards publication, as a class."

"Sinister was," Gambit observed, snapping the household's bottle of Tabasco sauce briskly and efficiently over his food.

"I feel that applying the term 'super villain' to that particular individual is stretching the limits of the term just a bit."

"Carol," said Moira, interrupting the snipping between the men, "Would ye be able to come visit us at Muir? We could run some tests, get a sense of whether or not we could do anything to help you."

"That . . . would be awesome, actually," Carol responded, her face absolutely lighting up with hope.

"No promises, mind, but we can give it an honest try."

"One good chance is all I've ever needed."

"Moira's gonna try to get ya flyin' again?" Rogue asked.

"Cross your fingers."

Rogue obediently crossed them. "Good luck. Ah'd love to have someone tuh go flyin' with that don't need a piggy-back ride."

They shared a smile across the table, full of the solidarity of those who understood what it meant to lose flight and what it might mean to get it back.

"Yeah," Kitty quipped, "We might finally have someone who can chase Rogue down when it's her turn to do dishes."

"It is NOT mah turn!"

"It's Thursday. Thursday is your dish day."

"It was. Before the house blew up and we lived in space for two months."

"I don't make the rules."

"Professor Xavier!"

And as an argument broke out up and down the table about whether or not the dish schedule had been modified, something in the house—something in the team—finally stopped holding its breath.


Je peux te demander service? Can I ask you a favor?

C'est quoi? What is it?

Nouveau, ces-là: Those are new.

Peux-tu les enlever? Je n'les veux point: Can you take them off. I don't want them AT ALL.

Je ne veux pas le choix: I don't want the choice.

Tu l'as: You've got it.