Disclaimer: I don't own the X-Men. Ilehana Xavier belongs to Corrinth. All other characters belong to me.
A/N: Thank you to all my reviewers out there; you really are all stars.
Scene 22"Any ideas?" Logan asked, cracking his knuckles and then his neck as he led the way to the front door.
"Non." Gambit replied as Bobby echoed the sentiment with a shake of his head. "Ce'st impossible."
"Nothing is impossible, Gambit." Xavier pointed out with a smile, appearing like a prophecy from the lower levels, Ilehana by his side. "I would have thought you of all people would have known that."
"You're not telling me that you're letting him use his telepathy again?" Wolverine began, addressing not Xavier but Ilehana. The blonde smiled sadly and shook her head.
"I can handle this." Ilehana pointed out, walking past her father, her partner and her friends to open the front door, to stare down the police with thoughtful eyes. "Who are you looking for?"
One by one the policemen turned to their colleagues, uneasiness and unreadiness making their weapons less lethal. Xavier nodded to Bobby and Gambit as all of the team noted students carelessly leaning out of the windows around the school, unaware of the danger. The two X-Men headed off to caution the teenage mutants, close windows and effectively prepare for war. As if on the breeze Ilehana's mental suggestions could almost be heard.
#Who are you looking for? #
#Are you looking for someone? #
#There's no danger here, why are you armed? #
#This is a school, why are you here? #
#Who are you looking for? #
The police slowly lowered their weapons properly. They didn't know why they were here, at a school, armed to the teeth and expecting a fight. They couldn't remember who they were looking for.
But then something changed. The sky darkened as a shadow passed over like an angel of death. The X-Jet returned at the worst moment imaginable, throwing the police into turmoil, distracting Vixen at the crucial moment. Now they wouldn't believe a thing she suggested! Damn Scott and his perpetually bad timing!
"Vixen..." Logan growled in the back of his throat, taking half a step forwards as if daring the police to shoot.
#"Stop."#
A whispered word. It took all of his effort to barely whisper it. But it worked. The police stopped aiming their weapons, stopped blinking, stopped thinking. He drew on the offers of help from his family, from Scott, Ororo, Ilehana and Kurt. Even Logan quickly grasped what was going on, didn't grimace as he felt Xavier's weak mental fingers clawing for energy, for strength. As Gambit, Jubilee and Iceman threw their support to Xavier, a bond tied the X-Men together at that moment that was deeper than telepathy. Threw themselves in to save him like lifeguards in a storm of telepathic temptation, fighting against his own exhaustion. A tie as deep as love? They gave all they could to save him, why not call it such?
As one, they felt their minds suddenly torn in too many directions, ripped away searching for those who were not part of the joining. Kitty, Rogue, Blaze, Colossus, Jean... Far away a chestnut haired brunette sat on a grass bank in a park, pouring over sheet music, wondering how she heard the melody on the wind. Was she being called home? In a coffee shop in Toronto, a young woman with white streaks in her hair took a double take at the polished glass in the window, wondering if she had just imaged her old boyfriend, her first love, standing just there? Blaze adeptly pushed all thoughts of Gambit away; that Mercury needed her was all she wanted to know. There was nothing, a simple absence, where Colossus had been not so long ago that threatened to tear asunder all remnants of the bond that gave the X-Men this sudden access to Xavier's telepathy, boosted his power beyond even Cerebro's capabilities...
But then somebody was with them. No, not somebody, a something. A power so indescribable that it swamped them and left them feeling like ants under a magnifying lens at midday. So weak, so helpless, so pitiful and so warm. With a light laughter at their predicament, she spoke inside their heads from a place so far beyond reason or reality she may well have been a dream.
#Back you go. It isn't time for you to be scattered. Back you go. #
Not one of them could explain it, nor where the strength came from to disperse to police with the essence of Blaze scorched from their minds. But Xavier's joy that finally, finally someone had reached back to him from the void, acknowledged his efforts and responded with equal delight at his being there, was so potent who she was did not matter...
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"I think when Blaze comes back you will have some serious explaining to do." Xavier's words to Matthew when it was all over, the jet landed safely and the police scattered. Gambit, disquieted, could only hope that Xavier was right, and that it was a matter of when and not if Blaze came home.
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"It's like, the whole world suddenly got bigger, y'know? Like it all just swung into view..." Mercury waved her arm about enthusiastically, near pelting Blaze around the head. Eight years without drink, and she'd started on whiskey. Tipsy did not describe it. "...Just like that. Ooh, I like him..." She batted her eyelids coyly at a very taken young man so much that Blaze actually turned her face away and pretended she didn't know her friend.
They were in New York City; in a bar Blaze had never been to before, set in the mock-ancient foundations of some modern tower block. It was like a crypt down here, Blaze surmised, dank and dirty in some vaguely designer and possibly ritualistic way. Bottles and candles fought for attention on high shelves, cracked mirrors implied the clientele were not as beautiful as they thought they were. Blaze sipped her coke delicately as Mercury continued her tirade about how wonderful it was to be free woman. Free of prison, of her powers or of the mansion Blaze couldn't decipher, and Mercury was getting so drunk it was doubtful the steely-eyed woman knew herself.
There were familiar faces in the bar that Blaze was trying hard not to be spotted by. She'd tried to convince Mercury that they should find somewhere else, but like a red rag to a bull, Mercury had stubbornly pushed the smaller mutant aside and physically charged the bar as soon as she'd seen it. Mace and Poker, Wolverine's faux comrades, seemed oblivious to her presence there so far, but Blaze was carefully keeping an eye on them both. Had that really been less than a week ago that they had rescued Logan from their gang's clutches? Sometimes she half wished Logan didn't heal so damn quick, made his escapades a little hard to keep up with.
Suddenly Poker slammed down his tumbler of whiskey so clumsily on his table that his flailing arm caught the near empty bottle and sent it skidding to the floor. His head slumped forward, even as Mace shook his comrade in anger at the spilt alcohol, and the kid started to cough violently. Thinking that Poker was having difficulties with the strength of the drink, Mace dropped him back into the folds of their sofa in disgust, fighting a cough of his own and covering his mouth with one of his iron fists. Blaze's eyes narrowed dangerously as she saw his shock, pulling his hand away to find it splattered with blood...
"Yoo-hoo! Blaze!" Mercury giggled as she waved her hand in front of Blaze's face, then tugged friendlily at one of Blaze's fine curls. "Y'know we really should get booked into a salon, two hot prospects like us. Now it's just the two of us at last, we have to look out for one anoth..." Mercury cleared her throat heavily, patting her chest with her palm. Her other arm was still in its sling, and though her bruises were cunningly disguised by her make up, Blaze had to wonder if she'd made the right decision in removing Mercury from medical supervision so soon. Probably not, she grimaced as Mercury knocked back another gulp of her whiskey to kill her cough. Blaze couldn't remember the last time she'd made a good decision. "Is it me," Mercury continued, "Or is the room spinning?"
"Its you, Elle." Blaze sighed, sober in more ways than one. "You're drunk."
"And you're sober." Eloise pointed out, wagging her finger critically. "Did I ask you if you minded if I drank? You don't do you?" Her delicate eyebrows knitted together. "Did I ask you why you don't drink anymore?"
"Yes I'm sober, yes you have asked me, and no I don't mind if you drink so long as you don't throw up on me." Blaze replied, eyes glancing back to Mace and Poker. There was something really starting to worry her now, something she couldn't ignore. Still Poker coughed, but Mace was lay with his head cushioned by the back of the chair, eyes staring at the ceiling, totally vacant. Every now and then a shudder passed through him, like a smothered cough, or like he struggled to breathe. Were those welts on his neck? She needed to get closer; she had to know for sure...
"Where are you going?" Mercury retorted, outraged that her friend was wandering off. "I wanted to ask if I could braid your hair? I've seen it, all pretty with different coloured threads... We did have a TV in prison y'know..."
Blaze wasn't really listening, already leaving her bar stool and stealing towards the gang members. Some guy tried to block her, offer her a drink. She didn't smile as she waved him away, her eyes locked on the two mutants on the sofa. She passed right behind them, thief's eyes taking everything in a matter of seconds. Both men's skin was blotchy, as though irritated or inflamed. And their breathing was rough, rougher than the cheap whiskey they consumed... The same alcohol as Mercury was drinking. Blaze's eyes flicked anxiously back towards the bar, to her beautiful friend perched elegantly in zinc-black trousers and low kitten heels. Mercury choked, a wet sounding splutter that betrayed Blaze's worse fears.
In a sudden motion Blaze stormed back to the bar, though noticeably not near Mercury. A fist full of money and she had her own bottle of glorious golden whiskey. She didn't take the glass, or the change, leaving the barman shaking his head sadly at a girl gone so wrong. Instead she stormed in a fury of stiletto heels and long red curls up the stone steps to street level, and Remy's waiting bike. The roar of the engine was a challenge to the night, her heels kicking off the ground as she sped away down the street. Back in the bar, Mercury stopped coughing, wiped blood from her mouth and looked up to find she was alone.