AN: Damnit, these chapters always look longer before I convert them to HTML. Anyway, I was able to fulfil Rio's request, but unfortunately not Alan's. I think I've been a little unclear as to what exactly I mean by Bizarro Sunnydale- this is Sunnydale as it would be now if Buffy had never come to Sunnydale, she never arrived like she did in The Wish. I can't really fit a Bizarro world mutant into the story, since if Sunnydale was that screwed up, Xavier never would have sent the X-Men there. (I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt, anyway.) Anyway, I also forgot to introduce Tara in my character glossary, so that's down at the bottom of this chapter.
"I'll ask you again, Spike, why is that boy here? Did you turn him?" Angel asked.
"No, you stupid git, I didn't turn him. He's a speed demon. Gifted human, rather."
"Not much that can be done then…" Angel replied pensively. "When they come for you, don't fight them. If you bore them, they'll make it quick."
"Make what quick?" Pietro asked, knowing damn well what the dark haired, dark eyed vampire meant.
"Your death, boy," Angel replied stonily, bringing up his fist as Spike came at him again, until both vampires stopped still. They heard footfalls coming downstairs, lazily. Angel glanced upstairs apprehensively. That would be the girl, Willow. He never heard the vampire called Xander coming, but Willow liked to make her presence known and her arrivals drawn out. He looked fearfully at the white haired boy, who was very young and very beautiful, and thought that a quick death was not in his cards if Willow had decided to keep him for a pet. It usually took a week for her to get bored with a pretty human. If the boy was lucky, she would get carried away 'playing' with him and kill him by accident. That was the best he could hope for now.
The red-haired vampire appeared around the corner with a sad look on her face, her lower lip protruding slightly.
"Can't sleep," she pouted.
"Then what'd you come down here for?" Spike asked, taking another swing at Angel. "A bedtime story?" Willow smiled, baring sharp white teeth.
"No, silly," she looked at Pietro, who gulped. "A glass of warm milk." She unlocked the door to Pietro's cell and crept inside.
"Don't," Angel snarled, slamming against the bars of his cell. Willow didn't even glance up, closing in on Pietro.
"Five out of five for macho posturing," Spike muttered, sitting down on the floor resigned to being in a cell with his irritating self-righteous grand-sire for a very long time. "Zero out of five for effectiveness."
"Don't be scared little kitten, I won't hurt you very badly," Willow said. "I just want a taste, a tiny taste." Her hand snaked around Pietro's arm, pulling his wrist to her mouth as her demon self came out. As she sank her fangs into his skin, he shut his eyes. Vampire movies were full of shit, making the people vampires bit look like they were having fun, this hurt. A lot. Pietro twitched and opened his eyes as Willow lapped at the ragged flesh of his wrist. He stared at her hard. Her face was rapt as she drank his blood. She broke away, gasping.
"Wow…" the vampire said, blood glistening on her mouth. "You're not at all ordinary, are you?"
"What do you mean?" Pietro asked. Willow shivered, licking her lips.
"You taste like lighting and bad medicines…" she said, eyes wide. Her hand strayed to the top of her corset. "My heart's beating…"
"That's not possible," Angel snarled from across the way. "You're a dead thing, Willow, like us, and no boy's blood can change that!" She rolled her head to look at the dark haired vampire with dreamy eyes.
"You wanna take my pulse, puppy?" she looked back at Pietro, grabbing his unwounded hand and pressing it against her chest. "Tell him, kitty. Tell him how hard my heart's beating," she said, eyes wild and intoxicated.
Pietro snatched his hand away and moved away from her in disgust and rage.
"Oh, kitty wants to fight," Willow purred, advancing on him.
"Don't be an idiot," Angel snapped. "He's the only human speed demon I've ever seen, you think you can just walk outside when the sun goes down, find another one? If his blood gets you so hot and bothered, you'd better keep him in one piece."
Willow's face fell.
"Puppy's got a point. I have to take extra good care of you kitty, no matter how bad you are," her hand drifted over her heart again. "This feels way too good to use up in a day."
She turned her head over to Spike and Angel's cell.
"But I have to get my aggressions out somehow… any suggestions?"
Jean shivered as she concentrated. It was a very careful technique she'd been working on, reaching out into someone else's mind and seeing through their eyes. What she'd seen through Pietro's eyes for the past few hours was disturbing to say the least.
"She hurt him, but… now she's bandaging his arm… She wants to keep him alive."
"Who hurt him?" Rogue asked, her voice devoid of emotion as rage burned cold inside her stomach.
"The red haired vampire. Willow."
Tara looked stricken and asked,
"Wh what about Spike?"
Jean shook her head, looking pale.
"She's hurting him too, a lot worse… and there's someone else there, I can't make out his face, but he's trying to get Willow to leave Pietro alone, trying to make her hurt him instead. He says his name's Angel."
"Is it Warren?" Rogue asked, confused.
"No, different Angel. He's locked up with Spike. God damn it, I can't tell where they are, Pietro was unconscious when they brought him there." Jean winced flinching away from whatever Pietro's eyes were watching.
"Stop looking Jean," Rogue said, touching her shoulder lightly. Jean broke the link, falling back onto the bed and rubbing her eyes. "Tara, is there any way…?" Rogue trailed off.
"There's a guidance spell I can do, it should lead us to them. It's a little conspicuous."
"I get the impression that we're gonna get hassled if we're out after dark whether we're dressed in camo or clown costumes," Lance replied, sitting on the window sill and watching the sun hover about a palm's width above the horizon. "But if we move it, we can get the jump on them. Sun won't set for another couple hours."
"Do you have something of Pietro's?" Tara asked Rogue. Rogue swallowed hard and shook her head. Tara looked at Lance, who also shook his head. Tara's face fell. "I don't… I can't d..do the spell without something that's his…"
Rogue shut her eyes and bit her lower lip, clenching her hands, then spun around and smashed her bare fist into the mirror, shattering it. Jean and Tara, jumped, and Tara swallowed hard, edging away.
"She's not angry with you," Tara suddenly heard in her head. She looked over at Jean, whose sad but unafraid face reassured her. "She's angry with herself."
Rogue gritted her teeth hard, clenching her bleeding fist even tighter than before, letting the drops of blood that contained all the DNA that made her skin poison to everyone but Pietro fall to the carpet, the X-gene that she'd picked up from him that made her lightning fast soaking into the gray fiber to be forgotten.
I'm not gonna cry, she thought. I'm not gonna be weak. Crying won't help him-
Her last thought was cut off as she felt a hand fall on her shoulder. She opened her glassy eyes to see Lance standing behind her, reflected in the broken mirror stained with her blood. He turned her away from her broken reflection and silently put his arms around her shoulders. She just stood there at first, stiff as stone. Then he whispered quietly,
"It's not your fault, Rogue."
There was nothing she could do to stop herself from crying. She broke down, sobbing on his shoulder, throwing her arms around him as he held her tightly.
"Why couldn't I be like every other stupid girl in the damn world and carry something of my boyfriend's?" Rogue choked out. "Worn one of his stupid sweaters, or yanked out a couple strands of…," she paused, gasping for air between sobs. "…that goddamned perfect white hair… why couldn't I have held on tighter? I didn't mean to let go, Lance, I didn't mean to…"
"Shhh… Rogue, you didn't let him go. It's not gonna end like this. I know you two, you'll find each other. The devil himself couldn't pull you two lunatics apart, Rogue. You're too fucking crazy not to be together, no stupid vampires are gonna change that."
Rogue sat down on the bed numbly, her leadership shattered for the moment, still dwelling on how her simple act of not carrying some token of Pietro's had damaged her chances of getting him back alive.
"I never needed a souvenir, Pietro. I had you," she said to herself.
"Is there any other spell you can do, Tara?" Jean asked.
Rogue didn't hear the discussion that took place. She was too busy watching the blood drip from her hand, shutting her eyes as the pain in her hand paled compared to the pain in her heart. She wondered what people would think if they came into this hotel room and saw all the blood. Would they examine the DNA, see the mutant gene, and wonder what the hell had been there? Her eyes snapped open.
"Wait! That's not true!" Rogue said, startling everyone. "I have his powers. His speed powers, I mean, they'renottangiblebutthey'reinme-" she said, the very powers she spoke of kicking in as her voice sped up.
"They sure are," Lance said wryly. Tara blinked.
"I've never tried it that way before. There's no reason why it shouldn't work, especially if you still think of those… powers… as his."
"What do I have to do?"
"For starters, catch some of that blood in a cup and bandage yourself up before you bleed to death," Tara said. Lance grabbed a plastic cup sitting beside the ice bucket and ripped off its cellophane wrapper, holding the cup under Rogue's hand, catching the rapid drips.
"Is this enough?" Lance asked. Tara looked up from her bag and nodded. Jean dragged Rogue into the bathroom, found the first aid kit and wrapped her hand in gauze, the two of them moving back out to see Tara drawing a circle on the floor in green chalk. The green showed up clearly against the industrial gray of the carpet as Tara ground the marks in. Lance squinted at the things she was writing.
"Does that actually mean anything?" he asked skeptically. Tara smiled kindly.
"It means everything," she replied, dusting the chalk off her hands and picking up the cup of blood. "Thespia, I implore thee, guide us to the boy whose magick calls to the magick in this blood, swift and surefooted, lighting quick and lightning clever. Come," she said, pouring the blood into the center of the circle, "Come, come…"
Rather than splattering on the carpet, the blood stopped in midair, forming a sphere which burst into flame. It floated before the door like an insistent puppy waiting to get out. The three mutants and the witch looked at each other, then grabbed their bags of weapons, Rogue yanking on her gloves and throwing the scarf over her shoulders as they opened the door and followed the swift ball of garnet fire.
"Tell him we're coming, Jean," Rogue said.
Character glossary-
Tara: .She's a witch, not as powerful as Willow, and is Willow's ex-girlfriend in the normal Sunnydale-verse. Tara broke up with Willow after the second spell Willow cast to mess with Tara's memory (Willow was trying to make Tara forget something mean Willow had said to her.) She was the first person to say Willow was using too much magick. She stutters when she's nervous, she's beautiful and very kind.