To Dusty, KS-fan, melissarxy1, Winter Fire, and HoneyBug17: Thanks so much for reviewing! I'm glad you liked the first chapter.

PS: Evan is present. This *is* an AU, after all. :P There will also be a couple OCs, but they have nothing to do with anything, they are simply there because...well, there are too few kids.

I'm not gonna have Todd say "yo" after everything. That's just stupid. And forgive me if there are discrepancies in Kurt's accent - it *really* annoys me. :P

-----

Kurt eyed his bunk up and down. It was an okay bunk bed, though plain, which sat against a window at the back of the room. Brown and wooden, it had not even the slightest hint of pattern along its beams. Instead the wood was perfectly smooth and looked almost fake. The space between the top and the bottom was sufficient, though whoever lay on the lower part would get a doozy of a headache if they sat up too fast during the night. Kurt figured, looking it over, that they had been forced to buy cheap beds because of the volume they would need, not to mention the situation they were in. It was all good with Kurt though, just as long as he had a place to sleep.

His bunk partner was Scott. Hank and Ororo had both decided that in every room an older mutant would have to be present. Scott, Hank and Logan were assigned to the boys' rooms, and Ororo and Jean to the girls'. Altogether there ended up being only ten boys and eight girls, including Jean, Scott and some of the newer students.

There were twenty one people living in one house; twenty one people hiding from society.

Because there were only four bedrooms, there was three bunk beds in each boys' room, and two in each of the girls'. The upper floor consisted just of these rooms, with a bathroom at the end of the hall. Ororo, Tabitha, Amara, and a new student named Silvia shared one room, while Jean, Kitty, Rogue and two new recruits, Mandy and Cris, shared the other. There ended up being a cot in one of the rooms. No one wanted the bumpy thing, but a compromise was made - all the girls agreed to switch off each week.

Hank was given watch over a slug of boys - Jamie, Roberto, Ray, Bobby, and Sam. Scott and Logan would sleep in a room with Kurt, Todd, Lance, and, much to the two Brotherhood boys' dismay, Evan.

Ororo's nephew had, of course, complained to the fullest. Why did he have to share a room with "Stink boy" and "Rock head" - the names he had so kindly given them - and Logan? "Auntie O" had sat him down and talked to him at length about the subject, and he had finally, albeit reluctantly, agreed with the arrangements.

Now he was grudgingly rolling out his sheets on a top bunk, balancing precariously on the edge of the bottom one. He mumbled something that Kurt could just barely make out, and the blue mutant looked sideways at him.

"You shouldn't say zhings like zhat, Evan," he said quietly. Evan was his friend, and he could understand that the mutant was frustrated and angry, but there was no need to speak about people like the boy had just done. Kurt wasn't thrilled that he had to sleep in the same room as Todd either, but he also realized that circumstances called for it. He had already been living in the same house as the two Brotherhood boys a week before, and Todd hadn't once harassed him with true malice in mind. The German figured that they were too preoccupied to do so. After all, three of their friends had been taken, disappearing without a word. Kurt had heard rumors around the mansion that Todd had come home to the Brotherhood House to find blood on the walls of their kitchen, and had refused to eat for days afterward. Kurt wasn't sure what to believe, but he knew that it had to be hard for them.

Evan snorted loudly, meeting Kurt's gaze.

"Those guys are no good," he said with finality, slapping his pillow onto the mattress and frowning. "You don't know them."

"I know zhat zhey've been--"

"Look, man, why do you defend them?" Evan climbed off of the bed, hands on his hips. He was suddenly, in a flash, angry as a bull. "They've done nothing but give you shit the last couple years! Pietro did nothing but give me shit! They all got what was coming to them!"

"Pietro could be dead Evan! DEAD! Zhey could all be dead!" Kurt shook his head, eyes wide. "Death is nozhing to talk lightly about, mein freund...not even vhen it's your enemy!"

Evan waved off Kurt's annoyance with an outstretched hand, and turned back to the bunk. "Do you really think they'd care if you were dead, man?"

"Zhat's not zhe point..."

"Just drop it."

The two stood in silence for a moment before Evan sighed heavily, pushing past Kurt and exiting their room. The blue mutant continued to stand where he was, staring straight ahead, his eyes heavy and moist.

What had things come to?

-----

Todd placed a greenish hand over his equally green tinted face, groaning loudly as Lance announced he was going out. The young, frog-like youth couldn't understand what his friend saw in that stupid valley girl. Yeah, she was pretty...but she was also brainless, selfish, whiny, bratty, mean...

"I know what you're thinking Todd..."

Todd Tolensky frowned, cocking an eyebrow.

"No you don't, yo. Ya move rocks, not read minds!"

"I don't have to be telepathic to know what's going through your head," Lance retorted, pushing an odd strand of hair away from his face. "It's written all over you."

"Fine then, guess what I'm thinkin'."

Lance grinned, turning to face the boy in front of him full on. He put on his best "Toad" voice. "Kitty's so stuuupid yo! I don't like her yo! Why does Lance, yo, go out with her, yo, when, yo, there are other, yo girls --"

"I don't say 'yo' that much!" Todd growled, crossing his arms and eyeing Lance up and down. "But yeah, that was pretty much what I was thinkin'...yo."

"Well, mind your own business then. I'm going out."

"Whatever."

And with that, Todd was by himself.

The kid sighed. What was he supposed to do alone? He was stuck in a house with a bunch of geeks who would probably pay money to see him beaten/mauled/thrown out/killed...or who would gladly turn him over to the government. He didn't exactly want to hang around these people.

He squatted down on the scuffed tile floor of the kitchen, chewing on his lip and thinking.

He didn't mind at all that the house was old, nor that it was falling apart. It wasn't, in fact, much different than where the Brotherhood had lived most of their time in Bayville. Todd didn't even care that he was being bunked in a room with Fuzzy, though he was irritated that they had put skater boy there as well. He knew the kid hated him, but that wasn't the problem. Hell, most of the kids in the place hated him. It was the fact that Evan announced his hate so readily. At every movement, every word, Evan was on him about something. It down right pissed Todd off, but what could he do about it? His staying here was the only protection he had from whatever was after the mutants. He didn't want to jeopardize that safety at any cost.

Todd eyed the kitchen around him, soaking up the details. The room was filthy, the surface beneath him cracked, the walls smudged...There was a giant chunk missing from the floor in the corner, and pipelines could be seen underneath. A black spider made its way up one of the table legs, and for a moment Todd contemplated having himself a snack. There was about an inch of dust on the window sills, and the cupboards were mostly likely all bare...

It looked a lot like the kitchen at the boarding home. The kitchen that he and the boys had squabbled in many times, the kitchen that never held any food, where Lance would complain about finances and Pietro would zip around just to annoy him. It was where Fred could often be found, his large rump hanging out of the open fridge. Wanda would sometimes sit in it, staring out the window.

There was a flash in his memory, a blip of something...

Blood was suddenly splattered before his eyes.

Todd gasped, jumping backwards and into the counter. Red was slowly spreading across the cabinets, long streams of it decorating the pastel yellow of the walls like a painting. It dripped in rivulets down the counters, pooled on the floor.

The walls read "die mutie", the words painted in crude, bloody handwriting.

The room smelled of death.

And then it was all gone.

Todd let out a small sob, his breathing hitched and broken. It was what he had found in the kitchen the day that Wanda disappeared. Freddy had never come home. He had been seeing it in his mind ever since, like a horrible nightmare or something from a slasher movie. The room had reeked of blood and pain and death.

Later, Lance had discovered that the locks on the house had been broken, that their rooms had been vandalized, that there were more angry words on the walls of their bathroom.

Todd cried.

Wanda was gone. He knew, somehow, that that blood had been hers, that the odor in the room was the smell of her death. She was dead, killed somehow in their home, her blood painted on the walls. Lance had tried to explain to him that Wanda was too strong, that she could have easily taken on an army, but Todd knew. Somehow, Wanda had been taken. Fred had been taken. Pietro had been taken.

It was just Lance and him now, the last of the Brotherhood living with the X-Men.

He was breathing heavily, tears streaming down his face and shoulders heaving up and down. Why? Why Wanda? Why his love?

She had never returned his affections. The scarlet witch had eventually become nicer about them, but she'd never looked at him the same way he looked at her. It didn't matter though - in Todd's mind she would have come around. In a dream, he'd imagined them kissing passionately by the beach, like he'd read once in a magazine. Chicks dug that sort of thing. He'd given her flowers, bought her chocolates. They'd gone to a movie, gone to the beach.

Of course, in his dream he wasn't pale and slimy. He didn't reek. He didn't eat bugs.

Who would kiss a person who ate bugs?

There was a soft implosion next to him, and Todd nearly jumped out of his skin. Smelling the familiar odor of burning brimstone, he quickly wiped at his wet eyes in a lame attempt to get rid of the tears.

"...Todd?"

Kurt had noticed the wet shine on the boy's cheeks, and knew right away what it was from. He stood looking at the boy before him, faint worry etched into his eyes.

"Are you okay?"

Todd nodded slowly, biting his tongue so he wouldn't say anything stupid or mean. He turned his face away from the blue mutant.

"I'm okay, yo...thanks..."

Kurt merely nodded, unsure of what to say. His tail thrashed noiselessly behind him.

"Um...do you know ve are in zhe same room?"

"Yeah."

More silence. Kurt blinked twice, wrinkling his nose. What was he supposed to say to a former, apparently crying, enemy? He took a tentative, two-toed step toward the 'Toad', willing his tail to stop moving.

"Look...Todd..." He paused, going over the words. "If you ever need to talk, I vill listen...okay?" There, he'd said it.

Todd turned around, a puzzled look on his features. Did Fuzzy just say what I thought he did?

Kurt swallowed. "Look, Todd, ve're all in zhis together, ja? Ve can't keep hating forever..." For a moment Kurt's mind flashed back to Evan, but he shook it off.

"O...okay..." Todd looked at the fuzzy mutant, and suddenly felt lighter, almost better. Under normal circumstances, maybe he would have scoffed at Kurt's offer. But now...he felt grateful, and relieved. "Thanks, yo, that's real...nice and stuff."

Kurt smiled a bit, mentally sighing in relief that he hadn't completely freaked Todd out. His eyes shifted over the kitchen, and suddenly he remembered why he was there.

"Do you zhink zhat Herr Logan has bought any food yet?"

-----

Evan stalked through the house, his mind ablaze. Why did Kurt insist on always doing this? Always defending those stupid delinquents?

"Evan?"

Spyke stopped, his muscles rippling in concealed anger. Auntie O was slowly walking toward him, her eyes soft and kind like always, but with a hint of sadness hidden in their depths. She was worried for her nephew, for his health and for his mind. Evan was an angry child, with an easily provoked temper and uncontrolled rage. The African woman was afraid that, under the circumstances, this rage would mean harm - either to him or someone else.

"What do you want Auntie O?" Evan said quietly, forcing himself to calm. He could hear Kurt's voice coming from the kitchen, mixed with Todd's, and he was suddenly tensing up again.

"Are you all right?"

Perhaps putting him in a room with the two Brotherhood children had not been the wisest of decisions, but she had told herself that it would be healthy for him. He needed to get used to it, and isolating him from his enemies would do nothing to help.

"I'm fine, just peachy."

The weather witch coughed, knowing he was anything but "peachy". She looked at him as a mother would a small, lying child.

"Evan..."

"Look, you know what's bothering me! I'm stuck in a a shithole with a bunch of idiots who think that sitting in this place will save them from the world!" Evan shook his head. "It's not going to save us Auntie O, nothing is... We're all going to die and you know it." He spat out these last words with such hate, such accusation in his voice, that Ororo had to take a step back from him. Did he really think that they had put him here to die, to wait out his death?

"We're not going to die Evan," she whispered. Evan laughed at her, his anger and disbelief evident.

"You're just as stupid as they are."

TBC...

Yesh, kinda bad chapter, but oh well. I am sorta rushed during the week because of school, and this weekend will be full, so I wanted to get it done. Please R&R!