A/N: uh oh I think I was gone too long. No one's reviewing!! Ack! That's ok, it's only been a day. Take your time. I'll just sit here…and wait…and write aimlessly…and plan future angst…and remember details from the Two Towers which are making me want that movie like NOTHING ELSE!!! *sigh* but I must wait patiently like everyone else.

            At dinner, the rest of the X-Men seemed to have the same ideas about the food shipment as Sabere.  Logan, as expected, ate enough for three, but the others only picked at their dinners, and Jean ate nothing at all.

            Scott finally put down his fork and looked up at the others, a quirky smile on his face.  "Well, we could always start doing take-out."

            Xavier shook his head, started to say something, then changed his mind and just left the table.  Sabere forced herself to finish the last of her meal, trying not to wonder if she'd be seeing it again later that night.  She left the room without saying a word to the others, but she could hear them standing up and clearing the rest of the table.  The students leaving the cafeteria were subdued and far too quiet for her liking, and as she joined them going up the stairs, she heard Kitty behind her insisting, "The base was empty.  I'm sure everything's fine.  The base was empty."  But hers was the only voice, and no one seemed to believe what she was saying. 

            Sabere returned to her empty room and dropped on her back on the bed, absentmindedly fiddling with one of her knives while floating a dozen marbles around the air above her in an exercise the Professor had taught her.  Then – bamf – her concentration was broken as Kurt entered the room.

            "Couldn't knock, could you?" she grumbled, gathering the marbles and returning them to their pouch.

            "I thought you would want to know.  Kitty just fell through the stairs into Cerebro.  On accident."

            "Well, yeah, would you just pop through the floor and fall down like that?" she retorted, trying to cover up the cold fear that had just gripped her stomach – it was actually happening.

            "Sabere, you don't have to act like that.  Just because the others doubt you doesn't mean I do."  She could read the concern in his face, but refused to show anything on her own.  "You and I both know that the food was drugged.  And you are not the only one who is afraid."

            Sabere took a deep breath, clutching her pillow to stop her hands from shaking.  "Is Kitty okay?"

            "She's fine.  She is just lucky she got control again before she fell further into the ground."

            Kurt sat down next to her on the bed, a small and far from humorous smile on his lips.  "I imagine I will be seeing a lot less of you now – considering I'll be teleporting in and out of the mansion God knows when."

            She shuddered and hugged the pillow to her chest.  "Is that what will happen?  Are we all going to lose control?"

            He put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close.  "I don't know.  No one knows.  We can hope…"

            Sabere leaned against him, wishing they could just go somewhere, anywhere, and get away from what was sure to come.  "Kurt, we could end up killing each other.  If we all lose it, who knows what could happen."

            "There's a happy thought," he murmured, smiling a little.  "God will take care of us, and if His will is otherwise…" He sighed and kissed her forehead before standing up.  "I'll see you on the other side."

            Kurt teleported out of the room before she could say anything more, and she curled up on the bed as if to protect herself from the coming night.

* * * *

            Xavier sat in the dank underground chamber of Stryker's base.  The helmet-like device around his head was constantly buzzing in the back of his mind, ruining his focus and slowly driving him insane.  And there was Jason, poor Jason sitting in his own wheelchair, wanting only to please his vicious father and ready to torment or kill anyone who got in his way.  The room around them vanished and Xavier was in Cerebro – not his, but the rude copy that Stryker's men had made.  He could faintly hear the screams of pain and distress around him, in him, everywhere – some he recognized and some he did not – he tried desperately to stop what he knew he was doing, killing off his students, his friends, his X-Men, but he would not listen, and Cerebro went on, murderously reaching for every mutant on the face of the earth –

            And then Jean.  She was standing outside the jet in the snow, both arms outstretched as she freed her friends and held off the oncoming flood with her own supernatural strength.

            Jean, come back, don't do this – but he couldn't stop her, none of them could, and the flood roared over her, around her, carrying her away in its coldness – she couldn't fight it – wake up –

            Sabere sat up in shock, trying to sort her own thoughts from Xavier's unshielded mind. 

            =Jean, I need your help – hurry =

            Sabere cupped her hands over her ears as if she could block out the purely mental assault, and squinted in the darkness at her room.  Almost instantly she was overcome by a brutal headache, and she gasped as she fell back on the bed in pain. Then she shrieked as she saw what was going on around her.

            Everything in her bedroom was flying around her bed.  The lights started flickering on and off, revealing in a freakish glow the chaos she was inadvertently creating.  Her knives chased each other in circles, slashing the walls, the chair, anything they came close to, including the edge of her pillow.  The headache raged on, and in the commotion, she saw Kurt appear and disappear in less than a second near her door.  One of her marbles struck her in the cheek, and she desperately tried to reach for her control, trying to stop this before she killed herself –

            And the headache vanished, and with it, the telekinetic storm in her bedroom.  Everything dropped to the ground – except the knives, which were embedded up to their hilts on either side of the door – and the lights stayed on, illuminating the torn-up wreckage of what had once been an orderly room.  Kurt appeared in her room again and collapsed on the end of her bed.  Sabere rolled him over hastily, and he groaned and squinted up at her, then stared at the slash in her pillow and the knives sticking in the wall.

            "You were wrong, Leibe," he whispered hoarsely. "We are going to kill ourselves."