I was awakened suddenly by a hand clamped down over my mouth. I reacted immediately. I bit it. I also thrashed and kicked, but since it was not a disembodied hand (the universe in which I live being one in which stranger things happen) but one which was attached to a very large, very strong man who had pinned me down, it didn't do much, and I was tangled up in the bedclothes as well.

So I bit down even harder, and was rewarded by a hiss of pain. I redoubled my efforts to get out from under whoever this was, and started to grind my teeth together, going for the bone. He said something when I got an elbow into the region of his solar plexus, and I was doing my best to draw blood when he suddenly replaced his with his mouth, and kissed me, roughly.

There was an unevenness to his lips—scar tissue. About at that point, my brain, which was only just catching up to my instincts, replayed what he had said when I got my elbow in. 'Jovian—'.

I had not given my name as Joviana to anyone. I had been using my old name. That, his lips, and the familiarity of his kiss, his smell, of everything else about him…

This was Victor. My Victor.

I bit him again.

But not as hard this time.

One moment we were fighting, the next—. Well, we were still struggling, but I wasn't seriously trying to fend him off any more. All the questions such as 'What's going on?' got set aside for the moment. I was extremely happy it was him, I was already in bed, and he was not in armor. I did keep struggling and thrashing as he got the bedclothes back, making him keep hold of my hands and my legs pinned down.

He seemed to enjoy this too, and when he got my nightgown hauled up—the material never tears that easily—he thrust his hand directly between my legs, and chuckled. I was already getting slippery.

Anything truly non-consensual would have outraged and terrified me, but that was not what was going on. This was more like a very, very grown-up version of make-believe, and we both knew it. It was an aspect of love making we had not returned to since that first time, and it was very exciting—for us both. If I was getting aroused fast, he was ready right now, and wasn't going to wait.

Even while I fought, I was kissing him back just as savagely, and I didn't do any of the last ditch self-defense moves I could have done. Plus, a giggle escaped out of me every now and then.

The bed set up a protest, creaking and groaning alarmingly, as he bend his head to ravish my breasts with his mouth, and I clawed at his back, hauling up his shirt so I could feel his skin. He moved his hand from between my legs to between his own, and a moment later had freed himself from his pants. Then he forced my legs apart and drove a magnificent erection home into me.

Sex between us just kept getting better. I was moving with him, enthusiastically, climbing the rollercoaster hill to orgasm. He was panting hoarsely as he thrust, one hand steadying himself against the headboard, which was banging against the wall in time with our rhythm, and using the other hand to give me what I needed. I was so sensitized that his touch was nearly painful. I bit his shoulder as I came, the spasms wracking me and wringing me out. It was glorious.

Then he let himself come—and it was then that the bed slats gave way, but by then there was no stopping him, not even though the left side of the bed dropped a good fifteen centimeters. I started laughing while he was still groaning, and once he got his breath back, he joined in too.

"You bit me!" he said, in mock outrage.

"I was only serious the first time. You came in here and started ravishing me! You're lucky I didn't manage to get my knee in like I did to Mastermind—you weren't wearing armor." I pointed out.

"Treason!" he accused me, chuckling again. "I had not planned to—not precisely—but the situation was too like those months when I thought of you, lying here, and imagined..."

"Oh--. I see." What an interesting image that was—Victor upstairs, frustrated, and me, here, equally so, but unaware…

"Yes. I do not care for this bed of yours. Its sense of timing is perverse and mischievous." he said.

"Don't blame the bed!" I laughed. "You're the one who broke it. I successfully achieved orgasm in it probably a thousand times over the last three years without ever once breaking it—although doing it alone was much less stressful on the bed frame. Can we get up? This is not comfortable." We had slid down the tilted mattress to rest against the wall, with me on the bottom.

"Certainly, my dear. I don't think it's broken—I believe the slats bent and slipped out."

He was right. After he put his informal mask on and I took mine off, we rebuilt the bed and got back in it.

"The foremost question in my mind is, 'What's going on?'" I told him. "Or, alternately, 'Who is responsible and how do we get them to put the world back the way it was?'"

"I don't know as yet. I have been gathering information, however," Victor continued. "I was in the middle of a communication when the connection was severed for no apparent reason. I turned to discover that my chamber was markedly altered in the split second it took for me to blink. Realizing it would be fruitless to call the castle consol and demand an explanation, I went to an alternate command center, one which I alone know of and have access to. From there I discovered what you, too, must have learned—of the grotesque impostors who sully and besmirch the name of Doom—and the memory of those who I once held dear."

"I was speaking to Boris, out at his horse farm, when it happened." I said. "You're right, I went to the Citadel—it was close enough to walk to, and I went by way of the river, avoiding the roads. No one saw me, and from the Citadel I hacked into a computer. I also erased the surveillance that did spot me. Then I left Latveria by way of the underground, and returned by the surface roads, where I applied for citizenship and asylum."

"The rest I know. I knew it was you—but until that venal harpy remarked upon your ring, I did not know that you, too, had not been affected by whatever or whoever has brought the world as we know it to an end—this time."

"Yes—this time. This kind of foolishness has got to stop happening. The world may snap back to normal like a rubber band every time, but all these dramatic changes are utterly unnecessary and trying to the nerves. Not to mention especially revolting in this instance. If you witnessed my encounter with those—imposters, did you also see how Benjamin Grimm is housed, and who it is that looks after him?"

"No. My mind was occupied elsewhere—I watched a few minutes of that dissolute puppy that goes by the name of my former ward, and his debased cavorting, and decided it had to be brought to an end. I accessed the medical files of those 'little playmates' who end up in the burn unit, and for that alone I shall see him suffer as he has never imagined—and the one who pretends to my name and my place, I shall rip his head from his body."

"Why—Not that I'm arguing or pleading for clemency for them, because I agree in sentiment if not to the particulars—but what was the specific reason?"

"My dear, I hardly like to speak of it to you. It is wretched, nauseating and obscene." he said, heavily. "The burns were not all external. At least one of those unfortunate girls will never be able to have children as a direct consequence of her injuries."

I had to be silent for a moment. "Ben Grimm is allowed to lie in his own filth, until Boris must clean it up." was my eventual rejoinder. "The imposter is a man without decency, feeling or honor. I am amazed that Valeria would allow her grandfather to suffer the way he does, but this family are all cut from the same cloth. I can only wonder what your mother—I mean, his mother—must be like."

"That is no more Valeria than the boy is Kristoff—or Christopher, as he now calls himself." spat Victor.

"Where is the real Kristoff?" I asked. "I knew his name, and that he had been your ward for a time, but he is never spoken of."

"He could be anywhere." Victor said. "Or, rather, anywhen, as he is traveling through the timestream with his purported father, Nathaniel Richards."

"Nathaniel Richards?" I asked, startled. "You mean Reed Richards' father? They're brothers—half-brothers?"

"Possibly, although I doubt it. I will admit that I was not wholly without fault in our estrangement, but it was Christopher who severed all connection, when he announced he was my enemy's half-brother, and was going to go off with his real father."

Oooh, whatever Victor had done to cause a rift, it must have been very bad. He admitted he had done something to his ward. I had never heard him acknowledge he was responsible for something going wrong before. "Why do you doubt it?"

"Nathaniel Richards is, to put it bluntly, 'an old nutter'. He abandoned his family to travel through time, which he has done for an unknowably long time, and is prone to claim responsibility for any number of artistic, cultural, and scientific developments in human history.

"He also claims that he fathered me, as well—which calumny against the honor of both my mother and my father, I have personally disproved through genetic testing."

"Kristoff should have demanded proof, then." I commented. "He whisked Franklin Richards around through time behind him for a while, did he not? I seem to remember that for some months Franklin was a teenager, before the entire business was made to have never happened. I don't think Nathaniel Richards can be a responsible person to be in charge of a teenager…Could it be he who is responsible for this world-change?"

"It is possible, although again, I doubt it. He is not a coherent enough individual to arrange all of this as it is—nor would he have the aggressively pro-mutant agenda the one responsible has. Come—now that my knees are no longer shaky from our extremely pleasurable exertions, I want to take you to the private command center, that together we may look further into these mysteries."

We got up, and I put on some clothes. "Is anyone going to spot us—or wonder with whom I was making so much noise so soon after I arrived in Latveria?" I asked.

"No—not so long as this flower remains alive." He took a rose from a glass of water. "Do you know the meaning of the term 'sub-rosa'?"

"Under the rose," I translated. "It means that something—a plan, a conversation, whatever—is meant to be kept confidential. Roses were painted or molded on the ceilings of chambers, especially legal or governmental ones, to remind people of that."

"You are correct. But why that particular phrase? Because the rose is the vital component of a spell that casts a sphere of absolute privacy around it, thus ensuring that a conversation cannot be overheard. Take the rose—the zone it affects is not large."

We left my room, and went down the corridor. "The painted roses have no effect, of course, being but a clumsy attempt to invoke the magic. The spell remains effective—if one knows how to cast it. What is more, my magics will go undetected by the impostor—since my power signature is effectively identical to his."

We reached an area of stone wall, which Victor caused to open, revealing a staircase leading down. "The stairs here are rather narrow, which is why I removed my armor. Watch your step, my dear…"

"Your impostor." I said. "Would you mind if I were to get in a blow or two of my own before you start in on him? I cannot bear to look at him, he disgusts me so much."

"I will hold his arms for you, that you might have a better target." promised my husband. "Here we are…" I entered a chamber that was lined with monitors and bristled with equipment on every possible surface. All of it centered upon a single chair, the only one in the room. "The seat is yours." he said.

I sat, looking at monitors that showed several different interior views of rooms in the castle. One was obviously Kristoff's, as several servants were doing their best to clean up the flame-retardant. The second was a splendid sitting room where Cynthia von Doom, in a wheelchair sat by a roaring fire and looked contemplatively into the dancing flames.

Another was a dressing room, where Valeria studied her reflection in the mirror while an attendant maid brushed out her hair. While I watched, Valeria held up her hand and studied 'her' new emerald ring, letting the light hit the diamonds that surrounded it, and making the green fire burn deep. The lady's maid must have hit a tangle and pulled Valeria's hair, because she winced, and, half-turning, backhanded the woman across the face, drawing blood.

The woman cried out, dropped the brush, and clutched her injured cheek, while I heard Valeria's voice, made ghost-like by the low volume, say, "Now look—there's blood on my ring, and emeralds are delicate! Clumsy cow!"

"She will grovel and beg your forgiveness on her knees when she returns your ring to you." came Victor's voice from above me.

"I would rather she begged her maid's forgiveness." I said. "I don't need for her to grovel to me. I wouldn't enjoy it. I would rather put this behind us as quickly and expediently as possible—for I don't want to dwell on the possibility that I might become like her—greedy, covetous, indulgent of myself and my children, abusive to those around me."

"You could not become like her. The real Valeria herself would never have become that—." He paused. "You surprise me yet again."

"How so?"

"I had anticipated with some dread a show of jealous insecurity, coupled with demands to know all about my association with the real woman, and tearful pleading to hear that she means nothing to me anymore. You show no sign of wanting to start a scene."

"I hope I would never do or say anything so boring." I could not keep a smile out of my voice. "I am humanly curious, and I would like to hear your side of the matter—but Boris had already told me something about her, when we were talking earlier, and I reached my own conclusions about your relationship with her."

"These conclusions were?" he asked

"That you and she do not sound as if you would have been very compatible in the long run. One might as well try to empty the ocean with a teaspoon as to thwart you in your ambitions—it cannot be done, and even if it could, what would one do with all the water? There's more to it than that, but—what is Kristoff doing now?"

Out of the corner of my eye, I had seen the teen enter his suite and heard order the servants to stop what they were doing and leave him alone until he said otherwise. Now we watched as he opened a drawer of his nightstand and, glancing around him furtively and guiltily, reach into the very back of it, coming out with a packet.

"Drugs." I said, disgusted. "It lacked only that."

"Never mind him at this moment." Victor said. "The imposter has come to pay a call on his mother."

TBC….

A/N: It is likely thatvery soon I shall start puttinga PGversion of this story up. To my surprise, and of necessity, it goes in some different directions, and requires different dialog in places. Just thought I'd warn you all...