A.N
Ironic that I had twelve reviews for the first chapter in the original copy and only two now, in the improved edit. Ironic, but like I said I'm not too bother about receiving piles of reviews. Bugs (talk about loyal reader) and Angel LeeAnn, thank you both for very kind words that are appreciated greatly. Now on to the chapter –smile–
Note: Dialogue in italics means psyche speech.
-Chapter Two – The Best and the Worst-
The nights were the worst, far worse than the days. It was the one time when she was left terribly alone and abandoned in the sole company of her taunting memories from one month ago. The night was when she dreamed.
Each dream had one main common denominator – that there was never a face. Perhaps it was meant to be her one saving grace; that as she twisted and drowned in her sweat laced sheets she was not at least forced to endure seeing once again the calm and triumphant look in that man's red-brown eyes when he pinned her hard and tight to the rain soaked ground.
Sadly though, if nothing else, it only drew out longer and harder the dread and the pain of that night. It built on a performance of apprehension and always made her sick in the stomach to the point were she could almost taste the half digested food of her supper on her dry tongue tip.
It always started the same way as well, this relentless repeated nightmare. It started so calmly, so airily and peacefully. It started in the mansion, and ended in the alleyway.
She never saw anybody else there, Logan and Remy and Jean and the others were never there, and she was hardly even aware of their existence, if the truth were to be told.
She was naïve and alone and glad to be that way. She always started in the attic where she had only her plants to talk to, and only her plants did she want to talk to. They would always listen.
But this would only last a few wonderful minutes. The sun would only soak the wooden beams of her floor for a small while, and the sky would only stay an immaculate blue for a brief moment, before the replay began.
Suddenly she would be out on the streets of New York again, on a bitter New York night. There would be no blue, but an ebony overcast, and no clouds but a harsh grey moon, and no clean, dry air but a torrential clammy downpour, almost a flood from the skies that she had to battle through in a desperate search for refuge.
No matter how fast she ran, or how much she had to slow her pace to regain her breath, or how many times she had to stop to gather her scattered senses, or pick herself up from falling down in crevices and potholes, he would always be the same amount of few steps behind her torn and bloody heals.
And no matter how much she willed herself to turn right, into the streetlights of the road, to find perhaps one kind soul who would save her, or even to find a way home, her feet would always steer left, into the dark, damp, damnable alleyway. This was where he would catch up on her, and win over his final upper hand.
Many of the details were spared, but there was always that moment when he would lunge on her as a cheetah would a boar piglet and run his sharp yellow nails down her back. And then he would weaken her knees enough so that she would crash fall, before she would become so terrified that her immense mutant powers were no longer under her control, and the two would be soaked with the madness of the rain that was released in her utter insane terror. And then he would turn her over on her back and throw his fist into the left side of her face so hard that tiny traces of blood spurted from the bruise, until she passed out, only to regain consciousness a few minutes later, when the violation was being committed.
Tonight's nightmare was different. She would find herself awake at this point, or had every other night. She would shoot up in bed, eyes painful with tears and knuckles blue with gripping the sheets. But tonight her subconscious carried on, even as she fought for it not to.
She 'awoke' not to see his face above her though, as she had a month ago, but to find herself laid out in a shallow puddle, on her side with neither the strength nor the will to rise up and continue running again.
He was still there. He had his back to her, his chest forcing it to rise and fall in exaggeration with each greedy breath he took. He was on his knees in the rain, wet enough to strike a fever within himself, but too busy with something that she could not see to care.
The thing Ororo could not see began to cry.
It was a baby, new and helpless and only minutes ago taken from her mother's womb, to be welcomed into the world with cold shaky hands that had no intentions of cradling her and comforting her. It was her baby.
Some surge of strength shot through her so fast and so sudden that it hurt, and it hurt far more still for her to stand, but she noticed nothing when she realised what he had held roughly in his hands.
She could speak no words from her strangled throat but she mouthed a desperate 'no' as she tripped on her bleeding toes and reached forward for her child, her fingertips only just missing the thin wisps of white hair atop the baby's precious dark head, before he stood up and then on Ororo's hand, crushing every bone available to him.
She screamed in silent torment, then watched, as the forces of nature around them became his, draining slowly away from her and into his mindset, where he willed to use them for one sole purpose.
The baby was raised to the black skies of a variation of hell. There was where the blue lightening had taken full control. There was where he offered up the newborn, fresh and screaming, and waited for her end to come to him…
She sat up so fast she almost lost control of her senses again. An unreasonable amount of pain shot through every joint and backbone of her body, and squeezed her ribs so as she uttered an unattractive wheeze for a few minutes.
It passed though, as she waited and sat up pale and damp. Her head eventually cleared and she was able to once again lay clear witness to her surroundings – the attic at night in the aftermath of a storm. Not the attic in the midst of a glorious summer day about to be painted over by a torrential night downpour in the streets of New York.
There was commotion and echoing downstairs, so she was not alone either anymore in the grounds of the mansion. It was probably Logan. It was rare for him to sleep through a storm he knew was caused by her.
She felt not an inch of urge to go down and play out some social skills though. Neither did she want to lie back down and sleep but there wasn't a part of her ready to go down there and account for the storm, or to discuss the nightmares. She knew Logan would not push, but she also knew that just by sitting with him she would end up indulging some detail to him of the angst that had followed her tightly for the past month now.
Tentatively she began to lower her hot sticky back down onto the downy mattress of her bed, and head onto the several pillows she needed if she were to be in any degree of comfort. Her blue eyes continued to pierce unblinking through the murky darkness of the attic.
Only eight more months she had left, she kept telling Rogue, who had taken to counting the very days with her. Eight months on Monday, which was just now at one o'clock in the morning today.
She could hardly feel for the will to bare it even another morning.
. . . . . . .
"Ya promised y' know. The South like it when their folks keep their promises."
She listened to the sweet Mississippi twang through the rising steam of a sugary, perhaps overdosed tea. Not even its subtle soothing scents could numb her from the nagging voice beside her though. Although Rogue did always nag for a valid reason.
"Y' aint been outside this damn place for three days now. Some o' yer own fresh air outta do ya some good."
Another small grunt escaped from behind the waterfall of stringy white hair that was covering the gist of her exhausted washy face.
"An' ah'll just go pick a whole bundle o' stuff from the store that ah like instead if y' don't move your ass down t' the shops with us."
Jean bit hard down on her bottom pale lip. She had been ready for the better part of fifteen minutes now to chide Rogue with scorn, to tell her to leave Ororo be until the afternoon arose, but the Southern was best at convincing the worst to do exactly what they didn't really want to do, at all.
"Baby's gotta sleep somewhere as well."
Ororo warmed to the sliding movement of Jean's flat palm up and down the bony spine of her arched back, but it no more tempted her to move any time soon.
"Baby can sleep with you if you're so keen on it."
Rogue elevated herself onto the kitchen table and took great pleasure in swiping her friend's tea away from her loosely clenched fingers. It managed to raise the ever so joyous mother's head up from under her tangled head of hair.
"Don't you lie to me either an' tell me that damn husband o' mines aint been drivin' you crazy with all the games o' Solitaire he insists on mutterin' curses through, eh? Y' know nowhere in this mansion's safe from that. We know he needs a hobby, but until then, that's what yer gonna have to live with fo' anotha day if ye don't come out with us."
Ororo eyed her with utter contempt and a hideous frown. Rogue shrugged as she walked over to the sink and drained the tea away into the sewers, never to be drunk again.
"That's what they call tough love honey. Now make us two very happy women and go get dressed, huh?"
Jean pulled away loose strands of wispy hair from Ororo's tired face with slim, tentative fingers and a concerned touch. She no less glowered at her that she did the woman who had destroyed her tea though.
"We could already have gotten an hours shopping over with if you'd just have come along earlier. And I swear on Scott's life that if we disturb you tomorrow you can kill him."
A sour temptation for Ororo to smile seeped into her lips there and she lowered her head again in amongst the curtains of hair to hide it away as it emerged meekly on the corners of her mouth. Jean and Rogue no less saw it.
"That's it decided then. Ah'll just go flatten the back o' the car an' make room for the sweet stuff."
The swiftness of Rogue's green healed boots was somewhat amazing and she left the kitchen in no less time than it would have taken her to fly out. Outside the skies seemed to darken to a shady grey, but Jean dared not question it.
"I'm afraid she'll just carry you into the car if you don't come willingly."
"She can try…"
Jean sat carefully down on the chair next to Ororo's. Ororo had given up in putting any energy into her back, and sat with her head cradled in a basket of her own stiff arms.
"Just a couple of hours, that's all I ask. You'll feel better for it, since you've hardly been out in the last fortnight."
Jean gave her a gentle nudge on the shoulder with her own, coaxing her with everything she could, but fearing she was failing rather spectacularly. So she dropped her voice to the lightest and most delicate of whispered tones and tried a different, bolder approach.
"Nothing's going to happen to you out there. I'm not going to leave you… again. Certainly Rogue wont."
The remorse that weaved in and out ever so subtly through every fibre of every spoken word was beyond painful to hear. Ororo's shoulder's tensed in a stabbing shiver and she raised her head up and to the side to lock glazed blue eyes on guilt ridden green ones.
"You think it was your fault?"
It was more a statement of a donning realisation than a simple question, but either way it got a decisive nod from Jean. Ororo's lips parted slowly, almost warily to reply but in the second she took to draw breath to speak the kitchen door burst open wildly on its hinges again.
"You two, move it, now!"
Ororo started and Jean jerked up onto her feet. Rogue had no mercy or patience left to spare now, and on the same token neither Ororo nor Jean had a life to spare if they had to suffer her wrath. So Ororo got up in defeated.
"Give me half an hour to dress?"
The scowl that had torched Rogue's pale face split away with a beaming grin that almost broke her jaw. Ororo wandered passed her in the doorway with a smile of absolute scorn, but with a hint of genuine gratitude in her lowered eyes.
. . . . . . .
Rogue did always nag for a valid reason.
Bells had gone off in all three women's' heads. The dangerously sweet scents, the sickly beautiful sights, the lulling sounds, the shapes, the prices and the possibilities; they had stepped into a baby shop and in doing so tripped the wire that ripped free their maternal instincts.
Men were a rare sight here, prices were at a reasonable rate, each and every single object was made for the eyes to water and not a woman who knew her hormonal side well would be able to walk out of the walls of that store without clutching onto at least one lacy patterned shopping bag as she went.
For the three former X-Women it was likely a backup car would be needed, and then perhaps several rounds made in it.
"Goddess…"
She was hardly even able to roll the simple word off her tongue as a legible whisper. It almost failed to escape her throat, and just barely sat on her lips shakily as she stood at a marble tiled entrance, staring in horrified awe at the fifteen or so hundred feet shopping isles that challenged her ahead.
"Big, aint it. Dragged Remy in here once. Then ah lost him… Had to go to the checkout to collect him."
The other two turned slowly to Rogue who had raised her shameful closed eyes to the ceiling and brought her teeth down hard on her bottom lip.
"You two have no idea."
Jean took a step forward, pulling her astounded and bemused face from Rogue, not daring to say a word that may prompt the whole story being told.
"I take it we're not splitting up, seeing as there's only three of us. Ororo, got a preference on where we start?"
Jean's faced forward for a moment, herself in all honesty quite taken aback by the store. Her words glided quietly past the pregnant woman though, like water over her back. Rogue turned to Jean when a response was clearly not on the table for them. They nodded in almost perfect unison.
"Okay, we start in clothes then. Come on now suga'."
Rogue's words were tender, but mocking in the slightest touch with the gentlest of humour implied. She took one elbow and Jean the other, and Ororo's feet began to trudge forward, her mind still wishing so dearly that she was back at the mansion.
"Ah don't know what you're so quiet and pale about, this is the best part. This is the pre-birth bondin' bit, where, if y' don't count the boys already, y' aint got any nappy changin' or wailin' in the middle of the night to worry 'bout, but y' still have the fun of playin' with the baby's environment. Y' don't just have t' gush over the clothes anymore, y' get to buy 'em, well buy 'em an' put 'em to a good use anyway. An' y' get to decorate the room, and set up the cot, an' buy those shoes they'll grow out of in a few months, but what the hell if they cost forty dollars 'cause there so damn cute anyway. And the socks, aw the socks are the best part. All frilly an' lacy an'—"
"Rogue."
Ororo pulled her elbow away from the passionate Southerner, for her own safety she feared. She smiled though at her passion, a beautiful and rare smile that said she was genuinely amused.
"Thank you, mother. Now would you like to tell us when you became so fluent in the language of pregnancy?"
Jean too watched her with great wonder and interest, and a half teased smile.
It did not dawn on Rogue until now, after she had calmed down from her small speech, to be embarrassed. A sniped of red quickly dashed over her small nose and crawled daringly up the sides of her slim neck. She dared to smile, but it was a sheepish smile accompanied by a sheepish scratch of the back of her neck.
"Ah'm just a baby lovin' kinda person is all."
They turned in synch into the fifth row from the left, the clothes isle.
"Found it."
Rogue stepped away somewhat quickly, all of a sudden finding the large benches of nappies they had fantastically fascinating. She was easily forgotten anyhow as Ororo took stock of her new surroundings.
"I don't know the sex yet."
Her timid eyes had latched onto a display of delicate pink baby grows. "Why are we here if I don't even know what colours to buy yet?"
Jean took her by the elbow again, guiding her deeper down as they were followed at the heal by Rogue.
"That's why you buy whites now, for their first few months and then appropriate styles when they've grown out of their first batch of clothes. Which wont take long. Here, aw look."
Jean's eyes became as lustful and soft as Rogue's had the second they had hit the entrance. With hands that now possessed the utterly gentlest touch they possibly could she unhooked a tiny white t-shirt from its rack. Ororo raised a sceptic brow.
"Did you pick that up because it has weather patterns on it?"
Jean raised her watery gaze up to Ororo, almost begging her with tears, as she stroked the t-shirt marked with a characterised sun on the front and on the sleeves cheery rain clouds, to take it.
"Jean?"
The redhead nodded meekly. Rogue grabbed it off her in haste before Ororo could shelve it again.
"If you think we're leavin' without this, then ah'm gonna make you sit in the car with the window cracked open. Jean, go get a trolley."
Ororo turned her head from woman to woman in quick succession but could not for what little energy and spirit she possessed keep up with either.
"Rogue…"
"Aw, damn, they've got matching socks! With rainbows on 'em an' everything. Would you look at that, 'Ro, would you— stop looking at those twins and come over here."
Ororo felt in a sudden breath-seizing jerk her wrist grabbed by the powerful grip of Rogue's hand, of which she was then led away from the sight her eyes had latched onto without her fully realising.
"Yes, they're gorgeous, but do you know why?"
Ororo turned back to Rogue, suddenly a half smile on her face as she opened her ears to the humour in the Southern's words.
"'Cause they've got matchin' poka-dot socks on, an' the only human beings who could every get away with poka-dots at all were babies."
Ororo bit the corner of her lip, her mouth fighting to rise higher again her stubborn will to remain sullen with her fellow shoppers.
"I could strike you down so fast right now."
Rogue began to rummage through white and black striped socks, although you could easily be forgiven for thinking they were some pointless invention to keep your thumbs warm.
"Y' could, but y' wont 'cause Jean's comin' right now with a hunkin' big trolley an' that's as good a lightening conductor as any."
Ororo rolled her azure vision over to Jean, and the king sized trolley she was pushing with great mirth.
"And you think I would spare any grievance if I struck you both down?"
Rogue decided, after carefully flicking at rapid speed, to un-shelf several pairs of stripped socks, and because she had fallen in love with the twin's footwear, some green and yellow poka-dot sets as well.
"Probably not, but then y'd be stuck pregnant in a house full o' guys. An' Hank's got a lot of conferences lined up fo' the next few months, so don't rely on him to be ya savin' grace."
Ororo sighed in great mental pain, drawing out the deep exhale until she won over another amused laugh from Rogue.
"Go on, pick a pair."
Rogue changed to quite the saleswoman as she ran her palm under the extraordinarily vast selection of socks available before them both. Her own choices had already been dunked into the trolley along with the now infamous weather t-shirt.
"Alright, these are… nice."
Rogue beamed, even at the unsure mother-to-be's scepticism. She took the tiny yellow-toed socks and threw them in with its friends before moving on with Ororo still in wrist to the baby grows.
"Oh ma Gawd, look at these!"
Rogue was gone before she could be stopped, although that was not an idea on anyone's mind. Ororo sagged on her knees and ran her fingers through her loose hair, daring to glance back only briefly at the gushing, weepy Jean.
"Goddess, give me strength…"
. . . . . . .
-Six Hours Later-Three men and eight beers sat in the kitchen of the X-Men's mansion. Soccer was on the television in the corner and cards were on the table, in the most literal sense. Smears of peanut butter and scatters of white crumbs suggested they had eaten the bare minimum of a lunch, and the scorches on the cooker suggested they had at least tried to cook something hot.
It wasn't that Remy, Scott and Hank could not look after themselves when the women, and so it dare be said Logan, were out, it was simply that they lost most of the will to bother. If they were content with peanut butter and beer, then they could not see the reason for creating the fuss that was needed to make a more well-rounded lunch for the afternoon.
They may once have been superheroes in the most unpopular frame, but they were still only human at the end of the day.
The two main front doors opened, and as they groaned on their elder hinges they set the trio off in a heartbeat. Scott dunked the empty bottles in the recycling bin and Hank made use of his furry exterior by wiping clean the evidence of sandwiches from the table. Remy killed the soccer images from the television screen and arranged his cards in some fashion so as that perhaps it looked like they were playing poker. They all sat ruffled but 'innocent'.
The girls entered through into their domain not a few seconds later. Originally though the girls consisted of a lone Ororo.
Silence reigned supreme for the first few seconds of her domineering reappearance back home. Silence was all the men could conjure from their voice boxes at first.
Her hair was askew and her cheeks flushed a hot red. Her eyes were glazed and sported a handsome set of dark, blue bags under the bottom lids. They threatened with no good will to turn a shade of milky white, as the skies outside grew grey and murky. She walked with a slight limp of exhaustion as well and possessed at her heaving sides two white clenched fists, and it seemed, although it was hard to spot, as though her bottom lip was quivering. The right corner was swollen slightly.
"I," she spotted a half finished peanut-butter sandwich on the table at Remy's hand and grabbed it for her own, "will be in my room – alone. Brooding. And nesting. Alone."
A rogue wind howled through the kitchen as she turned on her worn heals and left.
Healed feet clattered through the hallway seconds after that, picking up volume until they reached the kitchen and came to a sharp stop. Two sets of amazingly bewildered eyes, and a pair of ruby shades, blinked in terrified silence at Rogue, who in turn blinked bemusedly back.
"Where'd she go?"
A finely filed black claw pointed up to the roof, where sets of storming footsteps could be heard making their way along to the attic staircase. Rogue spat a hasty thanks over her shoulder before she charged off, the men barely catching the sentence, "C'mon 'Ro, the kid didn't mean to throw the bottle at ya!" as she ran.
A third, slightly more timid set of feet rounded their way into the kitchen next. The men dared not to say a word, or to even breathe a heavy breath, lest they suffered someone's wrath. Jean simply smiled though, as she dumped only what was a minor fraction of the shopping bags left in the car boot onto the kitchen table.
"Let us all take a minute here, to prey a thanks that not a useless one of you had to witness the horrors that no person on this Earth, evil or good, should ever have to bear witness to; Rogue and Ororo shopping together."
She took a deep breath, and closed over her eyes as she gathered to her what strength of will and body she could salvage. There was little else left, but enough to aid her in opening her eyes again and catching her husband's sights.
"I will make the herbal tea. You three will unload the car."
She had never in her life moved men so fast without the aid of her mutation.
. . . . . . .
The room had not been used in many years. It was cold and grey, sporting a thin layer of scattered dust along any available surface and silky cobwebs in every high and safe corner. Handsome oak furniture lay dormant under thick creamy sheets and the bed was without a mattress. The shelves were bare, the wardrobe starved and the curtains forever closed so that the room sat in a constant dull darkness.
It had been Piotr Rasputin's room before his untimely death, not more than five years ago now. As with his namesake it was a colossal room, with magnificent floor space and an opulent marble balcony that only added to its grand scale. Although there was only one bed in the room three or four could easily have been fitted there, with a generous amount of room to spare for desks and other such furniture accessories.
Xavier had given him this modest palace for that very reason when he first moved in. It was a room for his art, more than for him. And he had adored that room for that such reason, and although now it was musky and abandoned it stood still in good condition and boasted still its glorious decor and size well.
Ororo sat on the edge of the wooden frame of the bed. She hadn't lifted a hand to the curtains or the light switch and so she sat in the same dull darkness this room had seen for five years now. Her face was grey but her eyes still shone through clear, and she held her gaze onto the empty spaces that possessed the floor around her, wondering just how many beds could actually be fitted in.
Whilst engrossed in her thoughts something rare happened; her lips broke out into a small, genuine smile. She calculated that at least three beds could fit in here, and there could be three bodies living in here comfortably together. In wondering this she got up and began to slowly tread over the floor.
Dust danced at her ankles, sheets flickered in her breeze and the thin, sallow curtains that hid the balcony before her begged her to peel them apart. She tilted her head to them as she approached, her smoky white eyes both curious and cautious.
There was something else in this room beyond the furniture, the abandoned artwork, the air and herself. There was something restless and good-natured and Ororo had always believed in its presence, even if the others were… sceptical.
A few times she had been in here but she had never done any more than stand at the doorway or sit on the bed frame. Everything from the photo frames to the scattered sheets of paper on the floor to the curtains were left untouched and in peace. Now though she was curious.
The worn cracks in the window frame let through a part of the night, as a breeze not conjured by Ororo swept the perimeter of the room. Dust fled and paper scattered to the walls. The curtains rattled impatiently and she felt her wariness go up with her curiosity, her eyes glinting in the shallow spills of moonlight that fought their way through the flapping curtains. Her hand rose to grab the ghostly material, her fingers tight but gentle as she prepared to open up the balcony beyond the thin shield.
The door behind her swung open and she jumped, dropping the curtain and spinning round on a dizzy heel. Fresh light from the hallway flooded her vision and she squinted at the shadow that stood there, apparently looking for her.
"There you are."
It was Jean's voice she listened to on the breeze as it began to die and her voice that calmed her racing heartbeat as she stepped away from the back of the room. She even offered the friend a half smile as she approached her.
"If you're not in the attic and not on the roof you're in here. Dinner's on the table, in case you're hungry. Remy made cheeseburgers. Promised me you'd… appreciate that."
Jean's brow dipped in a curious frown and Ororo nodded as her smile warmed, assuring the redhead that the Cajun's gesture was apt. Thereafter there was a silence between the couple and Jean looked upon Ororo meekly.
"You know Rogue and I were only trying to help today, especially Rogue. She was beside herself with the idea, she just… wanted you to see the good sides to being a mum."
Ororo felt a heated remorse rise through her neck and across her cheeks as she gazed out at corridor and towards the stairs, realising only now how hungry she was, and how blatantly she had acted before. Not everything could be blamed on the mood swings…
"I'm sorry. I'm just… a little taken back by it all sometimes. It was hardly planned, it's not the ideal situation, but I should be thankful for what I have. I'm sorry when I lose sight of that, but it's nothing personal."
Jean smiled, giving the powerfully built mother-to-be a hearty pat on the back.
"I never took it to heart, don't worry, I understand. It doesn't take a telepath to feel your frustration. Just tell Rogue the same thing and it'll be like it never happened. Until 'attempt number two' tomorrow anyway."
On that note she took her hasty leave down the hallway, glancing once back at the horrified pregnant mutant and offering her a wayward smile.
"For Rogue's sake."
Ororo's eyes darkened as her brow dropped in a non-amused frown.
"Who's the pregnant one around here?"
Jean hovered her foot above the first stair and shrugged. "That's anyone's guess."
The frown rose to a confused stare and Ororo watched the enigmatic telepath take her leave to dinner.
. . . . . . .
Five Months Later
It was late, perhaps three or four in the morning, although there wasn't a clock or a watch in sight to prove this.
Rogue was restless. Of late this was not an uncommon trait of hers. She was bored and bothered at night and alert and overenthusiastic during the day. To say it was driving Remy crazy was a slight understatement as their marriage and vows were tested every moment of the twenty-four hour day.
She pierced her alert gaze through the night and laid sight on her 'better half'. It seemed she had driven him to exhaustion, as for once during her kicking, tossing and complaining he did not get up with her.
Tonight was one of a few recent nights were if she did not eventually rise from bed she would be driven to do regrettable things, most likely to who lay on her left. She threw the thick sheets that draped her warm body off, allowing a merciful breeze to swim through the cotton of her nightgown as she rose to her feet. She stretched and then eyed the en suite.
The en suite played secrete home to the experiments that would soon hopefully prove her unsure hunch. Rogue, by nature, was a heavy sleeper with a restful mind. So by all rights and laws of nature what was happening to her shouldn't be, unless it had a just cause. She could think of only one of these causes, seeing as she was not suffering from anxiety of anything.
Behind her Remy flinching in his sleep, grunting gracelessly before he settled on his stomach, left cheek buried snugly in the pillow. Like a puppy he was most adorable and preferable when he was asleep. She smiled fondly before turning back to the white en suite door, nerves beginning to punch at her pulse and heart rate. She tried her best to assure herself that the outcome that gnawed at the back of her mind was a highly unlikely one. It was a futile assurance.
Very carefully she wrapped her grip around the brass handle of the door and pulled down, making hardly a noise as the catch released and the hinges bent forward. Remy was silent and content in sleep.
Her keen eyesight was able to guide her on with the flickering of grey moonlight that made its way through the bathroom window alone. She dared not touch a light switch and instead moved with the moon and the fact that she knew the bathroom tile for mint green tile. With little bother she found the mirrored medicine cabinet and opened it as discreetly as she had the door, which she had shut tentatively behind her.
The cabinet was hardly full, but there was enough of her packs of tampons and nail varnish that Remy would not touch even if her life depended on it for her to be able to hide the small cardboard package she had bought the other day at the chemist. The pregnancy test.
As she pulled it out from between the tampons and a bottle of 'wicked metallic kiwi' nail polish she felt a tremor run through her fingers. A smile also itched her lips, but she quickly restrained it and kept her thoughts detached and on the instructions written on the box. Easy as they were she carried them out within five minutes, after the twenty minutes it took her to gather herself and remember then re-read the instructions. Then she propped the little stick on the sink unit and began the last agonising instruction to wait five minutes.
She only had to wait five minutes. The whole mansion only had to be silent and still for five minutes. It was all she needed at four o'clock in the morning, just three hundred small seconds. She got two minutes and fifteen before horror struck.
Terror ran through the skies in the body and spirit of white-hot lightening. It shot through the mansion as a gale of ice, cutting through the warmth of blankets and walls and was powerful enough to stir eyes wide opened.
There was a raw scream that ripped hard through the household. Outside the elements lashed out harder, thunder, lightning, rain and wind all posing their full potential as the lawns outside became drenched, the trees bent and the house threatened with furious vibrations that tore through the ground. Inside faired no better.
Doors opened in a consecutive line down the corridor. First Jean and Scott's bedroom, then Rogue and Remy's, then Logan's.
"Ah got her!"
They simply watched in pale, mortified confusion as he bolted past, his bare feet hammering down on the windswept carpet. Every dark, coarse hair across his body shot back in a horizontal slant, his lips twisted together and his eyelids barely apart as he fought his way onward through the indoor tempest.
Then suddenly the gale changed course and he was being propelled forward violently. A toenail snapped as he dug his feet in and cursed on the icy current. He was at the door to the attic now but not Colossus himself would have been able to open it. So Jean did.
Holding on desperately to the frame of her bedroom door with one white knuckled hand she let the other go and used it to vent her concentration as she focused sharply on the door. Logan turned round briefly as she whispered fear for the worst in his ear, but he simply shook his head.
She felt the door handle give way and let her muscles clench in anticipation and strain. Scott did his best to morph his body into a shield but it was not a task accomplished easily.
Then the winds changed course again. Like tugging on a rope where the person on the other end thought it would be amusing to suddenly let go, Jean suddenly fell back taking her husband and the door with her.
Logan threw himself against the wall. The door by any means did not miss him as the catch tore across his left calf, leaving behind a handsome gap in the skin and releasing a generous spill of blood almost immediately. The winds scattered it across the wall and the carpet, making the mess for Logan.
Little concern was spared for the injury however as in the second it took to made its mess it began to close again. He grunted and then felt himself propelled forward again onto the winding stairs up to Ororo's beloved attic.
Jean began to gather herself up, still half in half out the bedroom with Scott hung over her. He anticipated her next move before she made it. She looked angrily down at the hand that had grabbed her wrist as they both stood four-legged on the carpet.
"No, Jean!"
"But what if he can't reach her? What if he can't get through the storm?"
"He's done it before, he can take her now."
"And what if he can't get through mentally? I've got to get up there, talk to her, coax her out of whatever mental trap she's caught herself in. Scott I've got to go up there!"
Rogue and Remy watched from two doors down as the couple fought through their mental confrontation, Jean doing her best to break free from the grip that kept her down but Scott holding his ground with her, just.
None of them ever saw this coming, probably because neither had Ororo herself.
She fought on hard and long against the monster who had her baby held up high to the merciless elements above. No longer hers to control they had become wild and reckless, smashing the natural balance so that there was now only thunder and lightening and rain, no sun, or snow, or gentle breezes. She quickly grew to fear what was once hers as they made her cold and feverish and her world dark and in favour of him.
The child screamed, almost suffocating itself in its first few shaky moments of life. The air was ripe with the tortuous sound and lying only feet away from him Ororo could see that he was growing tired and frustrated with it. It would mean no less to him to kill the newborn than it would to destroy the mother.
He began to call her name, shouting it as if he were calling for her to come to him. She flinched as she backed into the ally wall, sitting herself in a bloody puddle as she asked herself the terrifying question, "How does he know my name?"
He wanted her again. She brought an arm up to shield her bruised face, preying that this was just a dream, despite how real the pain was.
Logan found himself in a hurricane as he stumbled into the attic.
She cried as she begged for mercy and rain poured through an open window above her bed, drenching her. As she yelled thunder mirrored her tormented anguish and as she thrashed in the crazy tangle of her bed sheets lightening filled the black skies.
The wind had no direction in the attic. It threw the man desperately trying to reach her from one side to the other, back and forth viciously as he growled and grunted, fighting on as fresh cuts and bruises came and went. He had no backup and preferred it that way. Any more than just him there and when she woke up there could be tragedies that would never have been necessary.
She screamed as he began to turn, his face slowly coming in to the limelight of the hot blue lightening. She would do anything to avoid that face, anything, any act of violence or defence. But as she shut her eyes she continued to see him turn, continued to see him slowly reveal himself.
She thrashed her body, kicked he legs and shielded her face. She fought blindly and hoped that if he dared come near her she would land a lucky strike.
Instead his hands clamped down on her shoulders and he forced her to open her eyes.
"Darlin', wake up! Whatever it is, let it go!"
She took in a sudden deep greedy breath and sunk an electrified fist into his jaw. As he toppled away from her she sat up and backed into the headboard of her bed, her eyes wide and her mind blank with only one image burnt in front of her.
It did not take her any more than a few seconds later thought to realise her mistake. It was not near black eyes that looked up pleadingly at her as the man began to pull himself up, but instead weather-beaten blue ones that stuck a familiar look to her.
"Logan!"
She stood up off the bed but could walk herself no further as she watched Logan stand with her, flexing his jaw and smiling wryly as he looked at her.
"Don't worry 'bout it 'Ro. From you ah've taken a lot worse."
He watched her eyes mist over even as the storm in and around the mansion died down.
"You alright darlin'?"
To be brutally honest, she was far from it. She had suddenly become uncharacteristically pale and was drenched in sweat with bedraggled dirty white hair clinging to her tight face from the subconscious struggle. She was drained clean of most energy, both physical and mental.
But it was none of that that made her go light headed before she fainted. It was the searing pain in her stomach that made her collapse into Logan's arms in a heap, he catching her just before she smashed her face in against the hard wooden floor, or landed atop her ever-growing bump.
She was left with the burning notion in her failing consciousness as arms wrapped around her frantically that she may just indeed have succeeded this time in killing her unborn child.
Rogue watched as the party left down the stairs for the garage, her face pale and her tongue silent, Remy gone from her side in an instant. Even though she had been deprived of those five measly minutes she had needed, she was blessed now with invisibility as she disappeared unnoticed back in to the bathroom. She switched on the light this time and grabbed the test from the side of the sink. She hadn't time to absorb its readings before the door was opened behind her and she hastily threw it in the bin.
"Y' comin'?"
She nodded to her deeply worried looking husband, grabbing a change of clothes with him before they left for the garage together. She said nothing and kept her main priority her friend, the news she had just learnt coming a shadowed second.
