Author's Note

I do not own The Gifted.

Big thank you to thorn of roses2205 for the follow, LostWakingDreamer for the follow and review, and the two Guests and Ella Symphony for your reviews! All the support is appreciated, and to be honest with a rough time at the moment I need it.

To the Guest who asked about Otto's parentage: It's probably not going to be a satisfying answer, but the ambiguity is deliberate. In my mind/this verse, since Andrea would have helped raise Otto whether she was his birth mother or not she sees him as her son anyway. So that's why there are some suggestions and references to it.

He drove without knowing what he was aiming for. Lauren put her head between her knees, whispering and muttering frantically to herself.

Andy really hoped his sister was winning.

Blink and he was driving a truck through the snow – except it wasn't all snow.

Blink and they were back on the road.

The radio talked about their incident in Chatanooga.

They were calling it a deliberate mutant terrorist attack.

They were saying one mutant had been detained and two more were still on the run.

They were saying they were highly dangerous.

Andy turned the radio off.

They found a payphone at the side of the road and he rang his dad's mobile. It took a few rings before he answered.

"Dad?"

"Andy?"

"Yeah, it's me."

"Andy, Andy, where are you?"

"About an hour and a half outside Chatanooga I think, I'm not sure."

"Chatanooga? Did you go- Wait, that was you? The attack in Chatanooga?"

"It wasn't- It wasn't like that."

"Andy, two people are dead!"

He must have missed that part of the report.

"Is Lauren okay?"

"Yeah, she's fine, she's with me. Dad, what do I do?"

"Put Lauren on."

Andy glanced at his sister, who was still sat in the car muttering to herself. "She can't talk right now."

"I thought you said she's fine!"

"She is fine! She just can't talk right now! Look, what do we do; what do we do?"

"Okay, Andy, listen to me. I'm going to give you an address. We'll meet you there, there are people who are going to help get us out of the country."

The address was for a warehouse district. Their parents were already there when they arrived, running to meet them and pull them into a hug.

"Are you hurt?" asked their mom.

"What did you think you were doing?" demanded their dad.

"Okay, okay, touching reunion, but we'll have time for that later," announced a dark haired man in the doorway. "Come on, it's time to go."

"And who are you to give us orders?" asked Lauren. It was the first sentence she had said since they left Chatanooga and didn't sound like her at all.

"Lauren," Andy muttered. "Don't do this, we need you." He needed her.

Lauren raised her hands to her head, rubbed her eyes.

"I'm the man that's saving all your skins, for all that it's worth. You two have single handedly made it hotter for mutants everywhere. Let's go."

They were surrounded by Sentinel Services before they could. Andy saw Lauren reach for his hand and stepped out of her reach. She seemed to snap back to herself again and snatched her hand away.

That was when things really went to hell in a handbasket.

Two more mutants arrived and ordered them into one of the warehouses. Andy grabbed Lauren's upper arm, shouting for his dad to take her other side, pulling her along with them. Shields flashed in and out behind them, slamming into robots and smashing them to pieces.

They kept running.

The robots still cornered them in the hallway when the door out was sealed shut. The man that met them – Eclipse, the other man had called him – held them back with twin beams of light.

Andy shook Lauren's arm. "Lauren. Shield us."

She shook her head, moving her mouth as if making words but no sound came out. Andy shook her harder. "Lauren c'mon! We need you, I need you! Do something! Do the smashing thing like before! Shield us! Lauren!"

One of the men was having a similar argument with the green eyed woman. Lauren stepped forward and a shield flashed up across the hallway.

Blink and she was stood in a tunnel holding back bullets.

Blink and they were back in the hallway.

The mutant woman was holding green and purple energy between her hands, growing it into an image of another room. Lauren's shield cracked and faltered.

"Go!" screamed the woman. The man that had been arguing with her jumped through. "Come through, it's safe!"

Andy reached for Lauren.

Flash and she was a smaller woman in a blue dress.

Flash and she was her again.

"Lauren come on!"

She screamed, crushing one of the robots as it tried to fight its way through the shield.

"Lauren!"

One of the robots was almost through. Andy grabbed her arm and pulled her back. "Lauren go! Go!" He shoved her, harder than he expected, and she flew through the weird hole after their mom.

Flash and the robots were snarling dogs.

Flash and he was back in the hallway.

Flash and they were soldiers being ripped apart by an unseen force.

Flash and he was back in the hallway.

Flash and it was an armoured car bearing down on him.

He held his hands out, remembering all the rage, the anger and pain.

"Andy!" someone screamed from behind him.

The name didn't seem to fit right.

The robots and the car were ripped into a thousand pieces.

His dad grabbed his shoulders. "Let's go!"

They made it to the hole – and then his dad stumbled, fell.

Andy stumbled through the hole before he knew what was going on.

"Reed!" screamed their mom, rushing towards the hole as though to throw herself back through. One of the men grabbed her.

"Reed!"

"I can't hold it!" screamed the mutant holding the hole, and it collapsed into itself.

Their dad was left on the other side.

Their mom immediately began screaming and begging to go back to him. The mutant woman had collapsed, so that wasn't happening. Andy scrambled over to Lauren. "Lauren?"

Her mouth moved but still there were no words.

"Lauren!"

"We should have destroyed them," she muttered. "We should have destroyed them all."

Andy slapped her. Their mom cried out. "Andy!"

He slapped her again, harder this time. "Lauren come on! Snap out of it!"

Again there was that lightswitch moment, and she blinked at him, looking like Lauren again. "Andy?"

"Lauren?"

"It's me." She rubbed her cheek.

"Sorry."

"No, it- It's alright. I'm alright."

He nodded and pulled her forward into a hug.

Flash and he was tangled with a blonde woman on a bed.

That was not an image he needed while hugging his sister.

Flash and he was back in the… basement?

Yeah, some sort of basement.

They didn't have much time to talk, or explain to their mom, or think about their dad, as the mutant woman – Clarice – started losing control of her powers and erratically opening portals, or space holes as their mom named them. Lauren was left to close them as their mom set off with Eclipse – one of the men – to retrieve medicine to stabilise her. Closing the portals seemed to grow harder for Lauren each time.

"Why should we run?" she asked when the two mutants left with them, Thunderbird and Dreamer, started talking about evacuating the facility. "We should stand and fight."

Andy slapped her round the back of the head. She yelped and stumbled, shaking her head violently.

"You were doing it again."

"Sorry."

"You weren't this bad before. Why's it worse now?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "I think it might be something to do with my powers."

"Sorry, what's wrong with her?" asked Thunderbird.

"My sister and I have… flashes. Visions of some sort from the last people to have powers like ours."

Thunderbird frowned. "That's a new one."

"It'll be a bit like your foresight I suppose Johnny."

"Yeah, except foresight doesn't talk to you," Lauren said, stepping forward to close the newest portal to open. A small army was starting to gather on the other side.

"Or advocate being a murderous psychopath whose desired solution to pretty much everything is slaughtering it."

Andy thought back to that moment in the tunnel, tearing the robots apart. Had that been him, or the man in his head? The portal shrunk closed. Lauren stumbled back a few steps, panting. "Otherwise, yeah. Exactly like foresight."

Thunderbird and Dreamer exchanged a look.

"Not now," he said, and another portral opened.

Later then.

Later, they sat in a cramped 'office' with Dreamer, the red haired woman.

She'd asked if they wanted their mom there too, but they declined.

She asked if they wanted help with the whole 'memories from other people' thing.