Disclaimer: I don't own X-men: evolution. Nor will I ever.

Havens

By: PennyGirl

Part 6: Charlotte, Needles, and Infirmaries

Charlotte watched as her mother led the group of teenagers into the mansion. The leader was in the front of the group. Next to the woman called Storm. Charlotte remembered her from when she'd been a baby and had visited the Xavier school with her parents.

            "What are you looking at?" one of Charlotte's sisters, Murielle, asked curiously.

            Charlotte's other sister, Kensington, leaned around the tall girl and saw the group of X-men. "Ooh…is that them?"

            "Yes." Charlotte didn't even look at her sister as she replied. She stared at their suits, and at the clothes of those who had been in the building that had exploded. "They seem…frightened," Charlotte's other sister, her twin, May, said as she walked up and stood next to her to look down into the front hall.

            "That's because they are." Charlotte turned her back on the group behind her and went down the stairs, grabbing her belt off the banister as she did so. Her sisters followed her and other students watched from their places along the rail and on the floor, their small, or maybe just soft, heads peeping through the rails like kids in a jail cell. The whole school had come out to watch the arrival of the X-Men, the "Students," as they were called. Charlotte didn't even look at them as she walked by. She smelled their scents and got the one of the shifter, snapping on her belt as she walked out the door. Her mother watched her do this and called out, "Be careful!" Charlotte waved her hand as if to say, "Fine, fine. Whatever you say."

            The X-Men watched this and were kind of creeped out. That girl looked so much like Logan, and with all the crap going on right now, they didn't even want to know why.

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Kitty had not felt the bullet go in. Nor had she felt it when the doctors had removed it. The minute, no the second, it had gone in, she'd passed out. Later, she would not understand why she did that. After all, she'd been through lots of tough situations and gotten out a live. Why would a bullet wound be any different?

            When she woke up, it wasn't in the institute's infirmary, as she first thought when she opened her eyes. Instead, it was in large, well-lit room full of machines and mutants who were wearing lab coats and had stethoscopes draped around their necks. "Where am I?" she asked softly, her voice not even a whisper and her throat dry from she had no idea what. "Hello?" Kitty asked again. This time, somebody heard her.

            "Hello, are you awake now?"

            Kitty nodded and looked to see who had spoken to her. It was girl, almost her age. And she wore one of those white lab coats; just like the ones the doctors wore. "Who are you?" Kitty asked. "Where am I?"

            "I'm Charla. And you're in the infirmary. Are you feeling okay?" she asked, holding open one of Kitty's eyes and checking to see if she was reacting to the light correctly.

            Kitty shook her head. "Why am I here?"

            "You were shot. Charla, honey, get away! Go bug Ling, or something. Don't examine my patients until you're done with your training!" A doctor came over and gently pushed the girl out the way as she pulled out one of the small flashlights and checked Kitty's pupils. "How do you feel, sweetie?" the doctor asked, holding open Kitty's mouth and checking her throat. Kitty gagged and the doctor released her, smiling at the mutant as she coughed, a normal reaction from all her patients.

            "Where are my friends?" Kitty finally asked, looking around the room carefully. The doctor smiled at her again and Kitty saw that she was in an infirmary. An intensive care one, too. She saw the others who had been shot as well. Wanda was awake in the corner, glaring at a doctor who was wrapping restraints around her wrists. Toad was still unconscious in the bed next to her, with two nurses hooking an IV and a breathing tube to where they belonged. The doctor saw her looking and said, "The girl got shot in the leg, the other in the heart. Yours hit your shoulder but went clean through. It missed your heart, barely. Consider yourself lucky you got off so easily."

            "Will they be okay?" Kitty asked, looking at them worriedly because she did not want to be in this place alone. She didn't know where she was at all. And she didn't dare use her powers to get out.

            "They'll be fine," the doctor said, rubbing alcohol over a vein in Kitty's elbow. "And this might sting a bit."

            "Bitch!" Kitty screamed, going totally out of character as the rather large needle went into her skin. It was the most painful shot she had ever received, and she never wanted to feel that pain again. "That's not a 'BIT', you psycho!"

            "I know," the doctor said, becoming twins, then triplets, the quadruplets, and higher on from there as the drugs took their effects on Kitty's shot and tired body. "My students call me that all the time."

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Charlotte stood on the edge of the woods and pulled off her boots. Her younger sister watched and grabbed them off the ground where Charlotte dropped them.

"She's a dangerous mutant, you know," May informed as she pulled off her own coat and began to unlace her boots.

            "I know," Charlotte said. She flexed her hand and grinned when her blades shot out. They bounced the lights of the house off their steel, and Charlotte grinned at he reflection she saw in them. "But so am I."

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"Ouch!" Jean leaned away from the girl in a lab coat as she tried to hold a peroxide soaked cotton ball to a small cut on Jean's forehead.

"Sorry," the girl said, placing the cotton back on the cut and letting it go to walk away and grab a bandage for Jean's sprained wrist. Instead of it falling in her lap, like she expected to, it stayed there. The girl came back and noticed Jean's confused look.             "What?" she asked, grabbing a washcloth and removing a lot of dirt and grime from the area she was going to bandage.

            "Are you telekinetic?" Jean asked.

            The girl smiled. "Yes. I am." She began to wrap the bandage around Jean's arm and kept speaking. "I've also got some empathy; but the telekinesis is about it."

            Jean nodded and winced when the bandage got too tight. "Sorry," the girl said again. "I'm still learning how to wrap things."

            "It's alright," Jean answered. The door to the infirmary opened, and Scott walked in with one of the doctor's from earlier walking in behind him. "Hi, Scott," Jean said, smiling at her friend.

             "Hey," he said, sitting on the bed next to Jean and looking around the room at everyone else that was being treated. Which was basically the entire group. He scratched his head and Jean asked telepathically, What did she tell you?

            Zilch, he answered, and said, loudly, "Ouch!" when the girl who had been treating Jean pressed a soaked cotton ball to his forehead, just like she'd done to Jean. "Babies," she muttered, walking away to grab another washcloth and a pair of scissors.

            Jean giggled at Scott pulled her cotton ball off her head, revealing a cut that was very deep, but very short.

            "Hey," someone in the corner, Lance, said. "Where's Kitty?"

            "And Wanda?" Fred added.

            "And Toad," Tabitha put in. "Even though I frankly couldn't give a rat's butt."

            "They're all in the infirmary," the doctor treating them said. "It's the intensive care unit, and they're under close supervision."

             "Can we see them?" Scott asked.

            "Eventually," the doctor said. She'd been in the room for several moments, and was pulling back the tube on a syringe. She checked the amount in the vial, and put it back on the shelf. "Right now we're just making sure that they'll be alright throughout the night. The doctor disappeared through a side door, and the words 'Psychotic' and 'Bitch', could be heard from within. Everyone threw each other frightened looks, and the doctor came back in. She held up a new needle joyfully and asked. "Who wants the next one?" 

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 "Your daughters are insane," one of the doctor's informed the woman who had brought the group into the mansion as she walked down a long hallway with Storm.

            "I know," the woman replied. She opened a door and gestured for the Storm to follow her. She did, and blinked when the bright lights of an infirmary met her eyes. "Don't worry, you get used to it," she said, gesturing to the megawatt bulbs in the ceiling. "Bernie makes sure that you do."

            "Who's Bernie?" Jean asked, her eyes filled with yellow dots, her seat on a bed shared with Scott and some infant who had found her way into the infirmary.

            "Our head Doctor," informed the female doctor who came up to their guide. "She's thirty-five and enjoys sticking people with her giant needles." She glared at the woman who was obviously her boss and said, "I hope she gets the crap beat out of her. And when she does, I'm not going to be the one who's going to fix her."

            "Whatever," the guide/boss/greeter/insane-mutants-mother, said, pulling back a curtain to reveal a long row of comfortable chairs. "Please, take a seat," she said to Storm, who complied and sat on a wide chair of blue leather that could be found in any random doctor's office across America. "I'd like you to be sitting when I answer your questions."

            "About time," Lance grumbled from where he sat on the closest bed, thinking that nobody heard him. The female doctor scowled at him and stormed off to the part of the infirmary with the screaming intensive care patients. Everyone stared after her and their guide smiled, her long black hair making it especially pretty. "You get used to her too." The woman said as she sat on a round chair opposite the group and let them settle on their own before saying, "Any questions?"

             Everyone decided to spurt their questions at once. Who are you? How do you know us? Why did you help us? Who's the guy with the eye-patch? How do you know professor Xavier? What's the deal between you and the professor? Will you help us find our friends? And so on from there…

            "Chatty bunch, aren't they?"

            Everyone got silent and stared as a woman walked forward. Her hair was a deep gold, and there was a swirled tattoo over her left eye. "Whoa" was the word escaping every boy's lips before his jaw dropped. "Hi," the woman said, and walked through the door with 'Intensive Care' on it.

            The woman answering their questions smiled. "That's Allison. She's one of our doctor's and self defense trainers." The boys kept staring after the door and the woman said, "My name is Okigiga. I own this mansion and run this school. Hopefully, my explanation will answer all the questions you have.

            She explained, and they listened.

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            A/N: Hi! If you read this same exact chapter a few days ago, but it was gone yesterday, it's probably because it took it off to fix a few problems. But, it's all better now. Enjoy reading it, and make sure to review!