Believe me, I know. I'm very sorry for the wait and just being awful at updating. I would promise to be better, but I've got no idea if I can. Also, I've just published a one shot that ties into the story (Just Father) that you should seriously read after this. Before if you want spoilers, but after to better experience this chapter.
Guest: Well I hope you'll be happy with how that went ;) (Just Father might answer your questions better tho)
Life: Thank you sweety! Well, we'll see how the B-hood is doing a bit later, but this and Just Father might answer any lingering questions ;) (he did it on the phone, jsyk)
Arla Logan: Thank you so much! Jamie is just too cute tbh, Laura is so lucky ;)
LifeIsASacrificeWorthMaking: Thanks!
InternationalChocolate: I'm afraid that is confidential information for now ;)
Chapter 7: You Won't Be Able To Sleep Because Of Your Fluttering Heart
"Since when do they send out newbies on important missions?" Laura still wasn't fond of the interior of the lower levels, saying that they reminded her too much of the H.Y.D.R.A. base.
"Since the so-called newbies consist of a trained assassin, three ex evil-henchmen, a veteran of good versus evil fights and one actual newbie" Violette adjusted her top – 'It feels so good to be back in the old costume' – and started to lead her to the planning room. The rest of their team was already there. "So, what's on the agenda for today?"
"You better get serious and fast, Spectre" Wolvie didn't look nearly as sure about this as she'd prefer. "You're going to break into Magneto's base."
"What?" John almost fell out of his chair, his lighter falling to the ground.
"Why?" Piotr leaned forward, resting his huge hands on the table.
"We're still unsure of where he stands after Apocalypse" Logan casually took a sip from his cup of coffee and Violette could feel her stomach churn. She knew what Magneto was really capable of after she fought him in Mexico. "There's also a huge chance Mystique's there with him, planning to take over the Brotherhood once again or possibly building a new team."
"And we wouldn't want that because…" Violette seriously considered throwing something at Gambit.
"Truce with the Brotherhood is something Charles has been working on for quite a while" Wolvie crossed his arms over his chest, raising a brow. "And do you really want to fight an organized group of villains on a weekly basis?"
"Touché."
"Be careful, okay?"
"Kurt, you don't even know where we're going. We could be raiding an ice-cream shop for all you know" Violette giggled, standing on her tip-toes to give him a reassuring kiss. "I will be."
"And you better not go down in the first three minutes" Kurt pointed an accusing finger at Alex as if it was all his fault that she had to go. "She needs someone to watch her back."
"Don't worry, mon ami" Remy smirked, shuffling his cards. "I'll bring her back in one piece."
"Be careful around him" Kurt leaned towards her ear, whispering. "If he gets too friendly, just go ahead and kick him in the balls. Nobody even likes him that much, liebchen."
"Kurt!" She gasped, slapping his arm.
"What? It's the truth!"
"Alright, lovebirds, it's time to go" Alex tugged her away from her boyfriend and lead his team to the Velocity.
"Alright, so, Havok, Pyro, you'll be team Alpha" They could hear Wolvie's voice coming from the speakers as Laura and Piotr sat behind the controls.
"Team Alpha, cool" John quickly looked down at his palm, where Violette could see a very crude redrawing of the plans they were showed earlier with a huge arrow pointing towards where the entrance should be.
"The other team will consist of the Louisianans."
"Well, it's obvious who the favorites are" Remy leaned in towards her, chuckling.
"Colossus, X, you're staying back for obvious reasons. If it gets too hot in there, you join in, but only if it's really, really necessary. You know what you're supposed to do?"
They all shouted various affirmatives.
"Good luck."
The first twenty minutes of their mission went great. Gambit took a quick look at the sealed door on the base's roof and blew off its handle, before spraying the opening with something. Faint red lasers became visible, in a shape of a simple 'x' across the whole door. Gambit took off his coat before grabbing her hand and slipping through one of the triangles between the edge of the opening and the lasers. Spectre focused on turning him invisible and shivered once his whole body disappeared. Once Gambit was safely on the other side and standing on a ladder leading up to the opening, he blew hot air onto the touchpad next to his hand and mimicked the greasy lines. The lasers disappeared and Spectre grabbed his coat with her right hand and flew down, careful not to let go of him. She could see a camera right in front of the ladder and took out the Polaroid camera Wolvie gave to her during the debrief. They walked towards the bottom of the cam, looking around for another.
"The end of the corridor, right" Gambit whispered, reaching blindly for her ear and landing his mouth underneath her eye.
"Bit to the left, ami" Spectre rose into the air and Gambit's hand ran down her body and stopped at her ankle. She took a picture and winced at the loud shutter, quickly taking it and shaking her hand, while feeling Gambit press something into her calf. She took the tape and carefully taped the picture to the lens, counting to three soundlessly before letting the picture become visible.
Nothing happened. They were still unnoticed.
"One down, at least thirty more to go" She sighed, slowly lowering herself so that they'd maintain physical contact. Even when he was invisible, she could still tell he was wearing his shit-eating grin. "We take care of that one and you stay behind in the secured hallways, got it?"
"I do know the plan, Spectre" She had to mentally restrain herself from punching him in the face at the way he said her alias.
Once they did the exact same thing to the second cam, Spectre started to fly through the hallways alone, giving Gambit the green light once she was sure they were secure. He informed the team on their progress, watching her back and making sure they weren't being followed.
Once they've reached the place where they assumed the control room would be, Gambit repeated his previous lock picking technique and opened the door. The guard behind the panel was chewing a burrito, his eyes not even looking up from the screen as he waved them in.
"Jackson" He swallowed the bite, before wiping his hands on his uniform. "I bet you twenty on Mets tonight, alright?"
"I'm not that big on baseball, mon ami" Before the guard could respond, Spectre grabbed the back of his head and hit his face on the desk in front of him. "I'm more of a football man myself."
"The more you know" Spectre sighed, shaking her head. "Team Alpha, we're in."
"Since when does Maggy use guards?" Gambit pushed the man down from his chair and sat in it, resting his feet on the control panel. "And human ones at that."
"Good question" She reached down, putting the man in a position where it would be easier for him to breathe. "Since when do the X-Men attack random humans?"
"Touché" He saluted, watching as the rest of their team walked in safely through the west entrance.
Spectre's hand reached to adjust her mask, halfway through realizing that she didn't have it on. The only part of her costume that she didn't want back when presented with the option to. She was over hiding her face.
She sat down in the chair next to Gambit's, brushing her hair back and freezing.
"Didn't the guy say something about a Jackson?"
Gambit's eyes widened and as if hearing his name, a man opened the door and pushed a humongous red button next to it as soon as he saw them.
Alarms went off and a flash of common sense prompted Spectre to smash the screens displaying security footage before a bunch of guards seized her. Gambit was trying to fight off the ones who tried to capture him, but in an enclosed space and with a literal crowd blocking the way to the exit, a bunch of them eventually piled up on him. Spectre tried to kick the men off her, but one of them caught her ankles.
Violette caught Remy's gaze before eyeing the smashed monitors. He glanced at them before looking back, nodding as his hands stopped glowing pink.
It was a bit cliché, what with her and Remy being tied together back to back, waiting for Magneto to show up and no doubt start a long, overly detailed speech about his plans for world domination or something.
The only difference was that instead of ropes, they use metal cuffs that covered most of Violette's forearms.
"I think I can open them the traditional way" Remy started to move his fingers around, trying to reach his back pocket and brushing against Violette's butt more often than she felt comfortable with. "Sorry."
"Just do what you have to" She rolled her eyes, before staring straight at the metal doors in front of her, waiting for Magneto to swoop in with his long red cape and ridiculous helmet.
Instead of that, she was greeted with the sight of a normal guy in khakis and a polo shirt, carrying a baby in his arms and looking annoyed as heck.
"For heaven's sake" He sighed, rubbing his face with his free hand. The baby tugged at his shirt and the man sighed, putting it down. The baby stood up and started to walk towards them before he stopped it. "No, Luna, stay back. Pietro leaves her with me for one day, one day and you just have to show up."
Only then did Violette put two and two together and realized that this guy and Magneto were one and the same.
"Dziadziuś" Luna sighed with as much resignation as a toddler could muster and turned to face the man. "Cookie, please."
"I know I promised cookies skarbie, but dziadziuś is a bit busy now. I'll get you a cookie as soon as I'm done with these two" He patted her blonde hair and turned to the intruders. "These two are from Xavier's, you buffoons. They pose as much threat as a fly. Release them."
Violette and Remy watched in silence as the guards let them out of their restrains, before slowly getting up and massaging their sore wrists.
"Now, why are you breaking into my home?" Magneto stood in front of them in his Birkenstocks and honestly he somehow still looked intimidating.
"W-We-" Violette tried very hard to come up with something. "Well, it's suspicious when you have a large base with hundreds of guards, and stuff."
"Since when do you have a toddler?" Remy crouched down, looking at Luna with fascination.
"She's Pietro's" Violette hit the back of his head to get him to focus on the problem at hand. "So yeah, we just thought you might be planning to take over the world or something."
"So you're a grandpa!" Remy started to laugh.
"The reason why I'm heavily guarded is that there arose a new threat" Magneto picked up Luna, walking out of the room. Violette and Remy looked at each other before following him. "I have to take care of my family, for once."
"What is that threat that you mentioned?" Violette looked around the kitchen they were lead into.
Magneto set Luna down on a chair and gave her a cookie from a porcelain cookie jar. It was bizarre.
"A team of mutants, unsurprisingly" He offered them both a cookie and Violette took one, while Remy refused. "They call themselves the Hellfire Club. They've been around for longer than any of us and finally decided to do something about the do-gooders that have been meddling with their plans for a while."
"You mean us" Remy leaned back in his chair before setting his feet on the table. Magneto smacked him with a rolled-up newspaper. "Okay, merde, I'm taking them off."
"Not only you, but also the people associated with you" Magneto brushed the crumbs off Luna's face. "That's why I'm living in a large base with hundreds of guards."
"Oh."
"Exactly" He sighed before standing up and handing them their communicators. "Now, could you tell your teammates to get the hell out of my home? You all are not as subtle as you'd like to believe."
Needless to say, they failed their mission.
"But we did find out a few things, mon ami" Remy threw himself into a chair, shedding his coat on the way.
"We did too" Alex put down a floppy disc, before taking a seat next to the Cajun.
"I'm all ears" Wolvie stood in the middle of the room, arms crossed over his chest. Violette was pretty sure he had to restrain himself from choking them all.
"An organization of upper-class mutants is basically trying to kill us all off" She stood behind Remy, leaning against the cool, metal wall to clear her head. "And I think Magneto retired from being a supervillain. He offered us cookies and just let us go" She asked Remy not to mention Luna. Pietro didn't exactly ask her to never tell anyone, but she wasn't one to advertise the fact that one of their ex-enemies had a child. He had enough on his mind.
"We might know why actually" John took the disc and inserted it into the main computer. A bunch of files appeared before he clicked on the one titled 'LD'. A school picture of Lorna pulled up on the screen, her age, name and home address all appearing on the screen. John started to scroll down. Alex suddenly became very interested in his own shoes. "Here's her birth certificate."
There didn't seem to be anything out of order with it. Her full name – seriously, who named their child Lorna Sally – date of birth, place of birth, names of her mother and father.
"What are we looking at, exactly?" Laura walked over to the computer, trying to find anything out of order.
"Her parents are Susanna Dane and Max Eisenhardt" Wolvie walked up next to John, his jaw set. "Going by aliases Eric Lensherr and Magneto."
They agreed to leave the issue of talking about it with Lorna to the Professor and swore not to tell anyone. Still, Violette felt as if she needed to tell Pietro. She had to stop herself from calling the Brotherhood as soon as she stepped out of the room and just made her way upstairs, planning on sleeping the bizarre mission off.
Kurt spent the day worrying about Violette and doing his homework. It was his senior year and he needed his grades to be as good as they were gonna get, after all.
He was in the middle of another session of worrying when something knocked on his window. He ported onto the balcony, surprised to see a raven pecking on his window.
A raven with eerily yellow eyes.
He stepped back and watched as it turned into his mother, ready to bolt at any moment.
"Kurt" She breathed out, something resembling a sad smile appearing on her face. "How are you?"
It was definitely the weirdest Kurt has ever felt.
"G-good" He nodded, swallowing. "What are you doing here?"
"I just wanted to check up on you" She reached over to touch his cheek, retreating before her hand even brushed his skin. "And your sister?"
"Rouge's fine" She was better than fine, happier than Kurt has ever seen her but Mystique didn't need to know that. "Why-"
"Do you think we could see each other next week?" She looked scared and uncertain and Kurt has never seen the woman like that. She was always ready to strike, oozing power and confidence. Something inside him shifted. "I… I know you said you didn't want to have any contact with me, but… I just want to know what is going on in your lives."
He looked out onto the grounds, seeing the thin layer of snow slowly melt away. America looked so much different in winter than his homeland. Dirtier but also more welcoming. The winters he remembered were harsh, but left the town looking innocent and straight out of a fairytale.
"Okay."
She nodded, smiling shyly. She left a card on the railing before turning back into a raven and flying away. Kurt took it into his hands, brushing his thumb over the phone number.
There was a knock on his door a second later and Kurt ported back in, yelling come in. Violette walked in and he immediately wrapped his arms around her, burying his nose in her hair.
"How did it go?" He asked, still hugging her as close to his body as possible.
"Got some info, nobody's injured, pretty good" Her nails scratched his back delicately, sending shivers down his spine. "Thought about seeing you before hitting the hay."
"I was so worried, but I'm glad you're okay liebchen" Kurt took a step back, looking her over, giving her a chance to notice the card still in his hand.
"What's that?" Before he had the chance to dismiss it she yanked it out of his grasp and looked it over. "Kurt, we're so talking about this after I've gotten some sleep."