Disclaimer It's all Marvel's. No money made. Suing will profit no one.
Want? Take ... Have ... just lemme know where it's going :)

So sorry this has taken so long, nearly a year between updates. Ouch. RL kinda grabbed me and didn't let go and the urge to write took a while to come back. o.0

His hand was travelling to his face before he really awoke; the habit to check whether his eyes were covered so ingrained it was instinct, not thought. Instead of a cold metal visor his fingers found soft warm skin and made sense of it a moment later - a hand holding his eyelids down.

A woman's voice whispered his name and after a few more moments he felt nearly able to recognise who had spoken.

"Jmph?" He tried again. "Jean?" His tongue felt heavy and uncoordinated, the effort of holding his hand up was strangely tiring and he let it fall back to his side.

"You don't have your visor on so keep your eyes closed. Our powers aren't working but yours might be … maybe."

Her voice was tight and thin and, now, he could feel the tension in the hand touching him.

"Okay. Staying closed."

The hand withdrew and he missed the contact immediately, without the grounding it gave him his world was silent and black until little sounds and smells began to fill the void. Breathing, cigarette smoke, a rustle of clothing at his side.

"Who else is here … and where is here?"

"Gambit and Quicksilver. Quicksilver's ... asleep." While not able to see it, he could picture a slightly guilty expression to go with the tone on the final word.

"Asleep, asleep, or drugged, asleep?"

"Unconscious, asleep. I hit him a bit harder than I meant to."

"Oh. Gambit, what do you know?"

Complete silence and then Jean spoke again. "He's not talking but he looked up, that's more than he's done for me in the last hour."

"Shock or just scared"

"Could be scared …" Another rustle before she went on with more amusement. "Or not, now he's making some very rude hand signs. I don't even know what the last one was. I could describe it, if you want."

Scot rolled his eyes under their lids, almost opening them before squeezing them shut more tightly against the urge. "Feel free not to. Remy, talk to me - this blind leading the blind has got to stop."

Jean's hand, or at least he presumed it was hers, smacked his shoulder for the comment but a low mutter came from his right, eventually forming into words he could recognise. "You in the middle of a fifteen, fifteen, fifteen room. Walls, ceiling an' floor're adamantium. The door is molecularly bond and unbond t' the wall t' your left so it don' exist 'less someone on the outside hit a button. Happy?"

"I could be happier." He stretched his legs, pleased to find them responding to his commands at last. "How do you know all that?"

"Gambit got eyes, home."

There was a short flurry of noises he couldn't translate to an image in his mind, but when Gambit went on he sounded slightly winded.

"And he been a place like dis b'fo'. He be happy t' explain if y' call off the crazy red-head."

"Jean?"

He felt her brush against him again as she settled back and he knew the tremors in her body had nothing to do with fear. 'Never upset a red-headed woman' was a lesson he'd learned within his first week of meeting her, he would have thought Remy would have figured it out a lot quicker than that.

Slowly the events before he was drugged began to surface and he spoke outloud as much for his own benefit as anyone else's, trying to complete the mental jigsaw. "I saw Sabretooth and a guy calling himself Scrambler …" a vague memory of the trip down the corridor resurfaced through the haze and he cut across his originally intended question with another. "Scrambler. He knew you?"

"Oui."

A carelessly bland tone that gave nothing away at all. When nothing more was forthcoming he prompted further. "And?"

"And nothin'. Lot've people know Remy."

"And you knew him."

"Remy know a lot've people."

Well, that was getting him exactly nowhere. He changed tactics. "Who're they working for?"

"Sinister. He got 'tooth, Scrambler, Arclight, likely Scalphunter wit' him."

A thorough search of a steadily clearing mind didn't throw up any recognition of the names and he frowned at the unknown threat they resembled. "I don't know Arclight or Scalphunter."

"Lucky man."

"You know what I mean, what can they do?"

"Arclight real strong, tough. She makes tremors or a light bright 'nough t' blind y'"

"That'll be a real change. Scalphunter?"

"Grey Crow, he makes machines do what he want, but mostly he a gun man. He got honour, when he allowed it."

An odd thing to say and in an almost defensive tone, a nuance he might have missed if he weren't listening so hard to make up for the lack of vision. He wanted to ask how Gambit knew a bad guy so well to stand up for him, but it wasn't a priority just yet.

"You know what they want?"

More silence and he let it extend to a ten count before speaking again. "I know you're still there, Gambit, I can hear you breathing."

A snort of begrudged amusement and finally a response. "Don' know what he wants."

Now his head was clearer, the last of the sluggishness was retreating from his body as well. Slowly he drew himself up to rest back on his elbows and then worked on getting into a sitting position. Jean's cool hands returned as she steadied his progress. The darkness was getting old. He tilted his head from side to side, trying to get a fix on the dimensions of the room and where people were in it.

Finally he glanced to where he thought she was, then back to what he hoped was an empty part of the cell. "I'm going to open my eyes, is anyone in the way?"

"Only Quicksilver, does he count?" Her voice was hard; whatever Pietro had done to make her knock him out had clearly not yet been forgiven.

After a moment wrestling with his conscience, he turned slightly to his right. "Now?"

"It's clear. Uhm, does anyone know if adamantium could make the blast ricochet?"

The Cajun spoke up quietly. "Can, oui."

"How do you know?" He frowned without turning, just knowing he was about to be thwarted in his attempts to regain his five-sense happy place.

"M' staff adamantium."

"And you weren't going to mention that?"

"Don' matter, y' won't do nuthin'. He turned y' off too."

"You could have mentioned that earlier." Scot opened his eyes on the little room, still unable to quash the exultation at the clean colours he saw. Even the grey metallic sheen of the walls was beautiful and, if others hadn't have been abducted with him, he'd have been tempted to say it had been worth it just to see in more than shades of red.

Remy's next words abruptly bought him down to earth.

"Well, din't know fo' sure."

He swung around to face Gambit, ready to launch the deserved verbal attack but stopped as he saw him. The thief was sat in the corner, knees drawn up under his chin, as small a target as he could possibly make himself. The faded amusement in the voice was just defeat in the expression and his anger abruptly died.

Now he turned his attention back to Jean, she somehow looked impossibly even worse despite having failed to cram herself into a corner. Pupils so diluted he wondered how she was able to see any better than he had been able, so pale her hair was almost neon in comparison to her skin. "Are you hurt?"

"No, not … it's just up here." She waved a hand vaguely at her head as she rose to stand next to him. "It's so quiet. It feels like I'm missing half my mind."

The impulse to pull her closer was strong and tentatively he did so. She let him hold her in a loose half hug for a moment before drawing a breath and moving away with a more determined expression.

"Shall I try and wake him up?" She nodded disdainfully to the young man apparently still dead to the world and he noted the bruise spreading out over his jaw. Nice hit and probably not something Pietro would appreciate waking up to. He could sleep for a while longer and the peace was nice while it lasted.

"No, leave him for the minute. Think we're being monitored?"

"Prob'ly." One of the thief's thin fingers pointed upwards, though his eyes didn't follow it, remaining firmly fixed on the ground before his drawn up feet.

He turned a slow 360 as he tried to spot where surveillance equipment could be and found nothing. Gambit would be better suited to try but he clearly wasn't in the fight right now. It would probably take more than a pre-rally pep-talk to get him that way, so he concentrated on working a plan that required only himself and Jean.

Twenty minutes later he still had nothing and Jean had ceased looking at him confidently after ten. Even with Gambit and Pietro onboard, he just couldn't think of a way out of the cell. They'd have to make their move when the door opened but there was no way to arrange an attack plan while they were being monitored.

There wasn't much warning, just a hairline crack in the wall where the door would appear before the section slid away to reveal Sabretooth doing an impressively realistic impression of a door himself. In under a second he found he was wrong on two counts, two fast moving counts. Gambit unfolded himself in a lunge for the exit from the left while Pietro bought himself up into a sprinter's start before making a low linebacker's rush for the exit from the right.

Both playing possum. He should have known they would be, even drugged out of his wits. He joined the rush and felt Jean move next to him as she did the same and was fiercely pleased to see the shock in Sabretooth's eyes as the man took a step back into the corridor.

-0-

"Abigail?"

The woman took a step back despite the gentleness he'd attempted to greet her with. She was poised for flight, balanced on the balls of her feet and hands spread ready to propel her away.

Xavier brushed his mind over the thoughts of his students and their teachers, ensuring they made no aggressive action. He wasn't surprised to find Logan's instincts fighting against the strangely bird-like movements she was making that marked her clearly as prey. She spoke softly, darting looks around her, never settling on one place or person for more than a heartbeat. "Abbie isn't here. I'm Sam, her … sister."

Carefully he extended his mind to hers, now, a feather light touch and no more. There was no sense of instability, none of the fissures he would expect from a fractured mind. But the resemblance was uncanny; from the picture he had seen it had to be her twin ... or clone.

"Are you with the FoH?"

"No, neither's Abbie, you have to believe that." She moved slightly further in, but away from the Doctor, still light on her feet and swaying from side to side in preparation to move quickly.

"I believe you. Why are you here, Sam?" He resisted deepening the mental contact despite the sense of growing urgency.

"We, she, I … I want to help." He watched her struggle with the pronouns with a growing suspicion.

"Are you a mutant, Sam?"

"Sometimes." The voice was small and scared and his impatience warred with his concern briefly before Rogue's harsh shout broke the tentative truce.

"Ah've had enough've this."

"Rogue!" Ororo's cry of warning came to late, the girl sprung quickly and her hand clamped around the bare skin of Sam's arm. A second later Logan tackled her away, but the damage had been done. Sam gave a soft sigh and crumpled, saved from hitting the ground by Beast as he scooped her into his arms.

Now Rogue had turned, holding Wolverine at bay with a snarl so near to feral as the man's own it was clear from whom she'd taken it. Her eyes blazed red and her fists were wreathed in vivid pink energy.

"Y' got t' get them gone. She one of his, he comin' fo' y' all."

This time he wasted no breath in trying to understand, just spoke quickly as he saw the fire-like flickering of the kinetic energy growing in strength. "Gambit, we're coming for you all. Release Rogue, she can't control your powers!"

The demon eyes turned towards him, head shaking. With regret he sent his mind out to forcibly cut the connection but discovered the girl was once more missing from the psychic plane.

Slowly the pink fire began to spread from her hands, weaving its way up her arms and across her body. Her mouth opened to scream that was finally her own before being filled with the crackling energy as it dove inside like a live thing seeking shelter. Logan's punch came out of nowhere knocking the girl out where she stood. The fire died abruptly.

Kurt teleported to her side in a second, easing her to the ground as the doctor gave his current patient over to Kitty's care and checked Rogue's health as best he was able without touching her. Finally he looked up. "Aside from a sore jaw, she doesn't seem to have suffered any ill-effects. Without medical equipment I can't make a certain diagnosis."

Kitty spoke up. "Sam's waking up. She doesn't look so good."

The girl didn't. Her eyes flickered open, one gleaming blue and the other brown. She bolted to her feet, screaming at levels the human throat should never be able to reach. The ceiling shook and Kitty almost phased through the wall as she jumped away in shock.

Ororo rest her hand on the girl's shoulder. "You are safe here, do not fear us, Sam."

"Becky's here, not Sam. Sam went away and left Becky alone."

There was silence for a moment before Xavier spoke thoughtfully into it, suspicions confirmed. "Becky, is it possible we could speak to Abigail, please?"

The two-tone eyes were hidden with a slow blink and when they appeared again both were brown. The woman whispered so quietly he almost didn't catch the words. "I'm so sorry."

"Where did he take them, Abbie?"

"I don't know, but Sam does … that's why I sent her to talk to you."

Now the mind he touched had a completely different form to earlier, no less whole but with the imprint of a completely different personality.

"Who did this to you?"

"Sam won't tell me. She writes me notes sometimes but she never says anything important."

"Otherwise, you can't communicate with each other at all?"

"Not really. I talk to them, her and Becky, but I don't know if they can hear me."

"Rogue's comin' out've it, Chuck."

Wolverine and Kurt were helping the girl to sit up; she looked around with an expression as perplexed as he'd ever seen on her. "What happened, ah don't …"

"I think, somehow, Jean and Gambit are trying to use you to communicate with us. You touched Sam, do you remember anything?"

"Ah … ah know where they are. It ain't far out, take the Blackbird and we'll be there real fast."

The words had barely left her mouth before there was a general exodus towards the hangar and the still, mercifully, intact plane. For a moment he considered asking a skeleton force to guard the institute but the idea was quickly dismissed, he wouldn't risk splitting them into smaller groups when Sinister had proved so adept at picking them off. Gently took Abbie's hand and led her at a more sedate pace after the rush, unwilling to leave their only source of information behind and concerned for her wellbeing. It was with shame he realised he'd prioritized so harshly but there would be time to converse with his conscience when his students were safely home.