Disclaimer: I don't own it, I don't pretend to own it, and I don't mean to offend anyone's sensibilities.
Thank You: Stelmarta for being there! Mom because I love her!
Spoilers: A Breed Apart
Liz swiftly fell into rhythm of life in Sanctuary. Staying up late on the 'night shift' with Shalimar, teasing Jesse about his eating habits, participating in mandatory meditation sessions with Emma, and kicking Brennan's overconfident bottom when he challenged her to a Kendo match. It was as if she'd always been there.
Curiously enough despite the almost twenty year difference in age, not including the two decades in 'storage', Shalimar and Liz were fast friends. The older feral seemed to understand that sometimes it wasn't so much her presence that was important, but it was that her actions made the actions of Shalimar seem more 'normal'. Liz didn't think it was odd to be nocturnal, have cravings for very 'rare' beef, keeping one eye open while sleeping or moving faster than the human eyes could follow. It was 'normal'. This confirmation of normalcy was an important validation for Shalimar and it rubbed off onto the other members of Mutant X as well. Jesse quit wincing when Shalimar and Liz set out to cook something, Emma decided that normal was as normal does, and didn't interfere with some of their more interesting habits, and Brennan and Adam, well they just acted as if nothing was different even if the pair of them were hanging from the ceiling or something else equally unique. Liz and Shalimar spent their nights monitoring the computers and watching old re-runs of Star Trek: The Original Series and Rugby, which Liz found, to her delight, was placed on late night sports programs. Bloody, violent sporting events and cheesy, sci-fi drama seemed to suit them both. It was quite satisfactory.
Of course to be friends with Shalimar inevitably led to a friendship of sorts with the resident psychic, Emma. That relationship was a little more tenuous. Emma knew just how emotionally jumpy Liz had a tendency to be, having experienced the full force of it firsthand. There was a certain amount of tension between them. Enough that both women danced in very diplomatic circles around each other, but not enough that Shalimar felt as if she was pushing them on each other. It was relaxing, Shalimar knew that the two people that she spent the most time with understood and accepted her occasional eccentricity and they accepted each other. The three formed a kind of trio, Emma slowly staying up later and later to enjoy their company and the other two waking up earlier so she wasn't a zombie the next morning. Curiously enough, the guys let it be. It was hard enough when the girls had been outnumbered, but now that the odds were even, more fun happened. It would have been a lot more fun if Brennan and Adam hadn't been such lazy butts and spent all of their time in the lab, but life couldn't be perfect.
Jesse adored her. When Liz was awake she was giving him lessons on emergency first-aid and trauma medicine. He actually had an understanding of the subject, enough to realize that she was so way beyond expert that he felt privileged to learn from her. In the meantime, during the long hours of the night when it was just Liz and Shalimar in the darkened Sanctuary, Liz spent hours going over medical journals and treatises to update on the newest advancements in trauma science.
Brennan was reserved. After getting his butt whipped by Liz in the Kendo match he was sure he could at least given a good showing in, he kept his distance. It wasn't really fair she'd beaten him; she was just coming off a fright that should have scared her shitless. Apparently that hadn't affected her reflexes, though; she was fast enough to catch even Shalimar off guard. Brennan wasn't sure he liked the effect that Liz was having on Shalimar. There wasn't much he could do about it and he wasn't sure if he really wanted to do something about it. He spent a lot of time with Adam, who was avoiding Liz as well, but for a very different reason.
The last time he'd seen Mary Elizabeth Braddock, he'd been an overeager, naïve twenty-something with a massive crush on the much older, more experienced woman. Somehow the tables had evened out. They were, at least in a mental timeframe, caught up in age. The torpor had slowed her down enough that she'd aged only a few years during the time she'd been under. His feelings were uncertain, to say the least. She was the one who'd set him on the path to creating Sanctuary, through her unwilling imprisonment by the GSA. He was determined to, well he was determined to do something Neanderthal and short-sighted and very male: he was determined to impress her with his abilities by 'fixing' her genetic difficulties and hoping she'd fall at his feet in gratitude. Not that this was his conscious desire, intellectually he convinced himself that she had no feelings for him in a romantic fashion and was preparing to suffer in silence for an outcome he'd foregone already. Somehow he knew this wasn't quite the right response, but he didn't analyze that feeling too closely. Therefore he avoided her and prayed she didn't notice. For the man of the genius I.Q. this wasn't too terribly smart, but people seldom apply the same common sense to affairs of the heart as they do to normal issues and Adam was not different than average, at least in this respect.
So his heart was pounding in his ears when he approached the sleeping reptile. She had stretched out on a flat rock that had once been a fountain in the pond; she switched the water off and used it to 'bask' on. There was a skylight directly above it; she absorbed the sunlight during the day. He walked up, stopped, and tried to think of a non-intrusive way to wake her up to give her the news.
"Are ye gonna do somethin' or are ye gonna stand there till kingdom come?" Liz lifted up her head and opened one eye. "Ye've been there for a good thirty seconds, are ye enjoyin' th' view?"
"Always" he said smoothly, covering his nerves with banter "I forgot you've some of the best senses I've ever heard of. You got a minute?"
She grinned, her black tongue flicking in and out lazily "For ye laddie, I've got a million. Whaddaya want?"
"Would you mind volunteering yourself for yet another set of experiments?" He folded his shaking hands behind his back to hide them from her sight.
"Ye mean ye've managed to come up with a way to fix me don'cha?"
"Yes" he agreed slowly "at least I think so"
"Well then, what are ye waiting for? An engraved invitation perhaps?"
"I…well; it's not a safe procedure. I can give you about an eighty percent chance, maybe less. I'm sorry." He rubbed his forehead and combed his hand through his hair. "If it were anyone else I wouldn't even consider it, but you're a nutcase and'll probably take the chance anyhow"
To his surprise she threw back her head and laughed, a rusty, sandpapery sound "Ye're absolutely right, Curly, I'll take the risks as they come. I dinna think that makes me a nutcase, though, more like a reckless adventurer."
"Yeah" He snorted, "Until something goes wrong and you end up on the wrong side of genetic meltdown."
"Then it'll be." She sat up and curled her legs under her, on the rock "Since when did you become such a bean counter? I remember a lad, who'd take any risk better than even odds and even then, some of them below it."
"He grew up." He extended his hand to help her up, not that she actually needed it, but he was a well trained gentlemen. She grinned at him again, taking his hand and allowing herself to be pulled up. To his surprise, and pleasure, she didn't let go of it, but tugged on it and accompanied him hand-in-hand to the lab.
"Now, I lay on this contraption and seven hours later I'm good as new?" she asked, as she lay back on the main cot in the lab.
"Well it's not quite that simple, but essentially yes." He tucked a pillow behind the 'curly mop' of her head.
"Can I sleep through this? It's about midnight, my time." She yawned, revealing her rather wicked looking teeth and forked, black tongue.
"Actually, it's probably better if you do. That's less for me to worry about." He grinned at her impudent flick of the tongue. "With any luck, that's all that'll be involved."
"Hey now, I can sleep on command. As a matter of fact, sleeping is something I can do without even being commanded to do it."
"Hmnm. One of us will be here when you wake up, depending on when that happens. So just lie back, and relax, this isn't going to hurt a bit."
"Aye that's what they say at the dentists"
In precisely eight hours twenty-seven minutes and thirty-four seconds from the beginning of the genetic re-sequencing procedure Liz woke up. Her first reaction was to ask 'who turned out the lights?' but this was forestalled by Shalimar gently removing the dark sunglasses that she had 'loaned' her to block the glare of everyday sunlight so it didn't irritate her eyes.
"Holy Mother of God" she breathed "I'm not cold"
"Nope" Shalimar grinned, "and you're not too hot either."
"Uhh," she slid off the cot and walked around in little circles, shaking out the kinks. "Feels like a brand new me"
"It is," Shalimar motioned to her to follow her into the room adjacent to the lab. Curious, Liz followed and was greeted with a large 3-D representation of her genetic structure.
"Whoa, that's nasty looking"
"Yup," Shalimar agreed "This is the 'before' photo and this…" She pressed a few buttons on the computer LCD "is the 'after' picture"
"Wow," Liz whistled in appreciation "What's all the green crud?"
"That's the mutated DNA, the feral and the elemental. You see, here on the old strand they just lifted whole blocks on genetic material and forced it into your helix. That's because you're not a New Mutant like the rest of us, we were born with it, and you had to have it forcibly implanted. See look here at the damage to the Genome it caused, but here on the new one, Adam deleted the 'extra' genetic material in the blocks of DNA and repaired the genetic 'damage' that the implantation procedure caused."
"Cool"
"Yeah, way cool" Shalimar smiled "You're still cold blooded, you still have a three chambered heart, you can still smell with your tongue, but you won't get too cold or hot unless the temperature drops or rises dramatically, you won't be so light or sound sensitive, and you don't have webbed toes anymore."
"Damn," Liz looked down at her bare feet and wiggled the now non-webbed toes "and they were useful too, I could swim like a demon."
"Sorry"
"Don't be, I can live without me webbing if I dinna have to be cold all the time" she gave Shal a lopsided grin "I think now that we've got something to celebrate. Is Emma still awake?"
"Yeah, she should be"
"Great, I'll grab some scotch; you can get the chocolate and well meet at Emma's for a nice little get together"
Shalimar smiled; a party at Emma's was always a good idea, especially if Emma didn't know she was having one "Race ya!"
