Rogue has just gotten done watching Jake McCoy stomp off down the hall in a disgruntled huff when her phone begins ringing.
She almost doesn't answer. It's evening, after nine o' clock by now, and she's still standing half out of the art room door, watching Jake disappear around a corner after pushing him to talk. Worry for him wars with the good sense that she ought to mind her own business. On the one hand, the kids approaching a helluva crossroads, the situation clearly made all the more precarious by Jamie's prolonged influence. Someone needs to step in, right? But on the other hand, he's not a child. She can't force him to accept help if he doesn't want it. Besides, there's a pretty decent chance Jamie herself will find a way to set him straight eventually – if she can ever be bothered to come back around long enough.
Huffing a frustrated sigh as the phone goes silent for a fraction of a moment before whoever it is calls again, she stalks over to snatch it up. "Yeah, yeah, Ah'm here." She barks, far more aggressive than she intends to considering she didn't even stop to take note of who it is on the other end.
(And for heaven's sake, did she just answer the phone the same way Logan does when he ain't in the mood?)
"...Marie?" A familiar gruff baritone, sounding a little bewildered. "Ah. Bad time?"
Well. It would be him. "Logan." She greets him, blowing out a breath as she forces her mind to switch gears. "Oh my. Well good gracious, Sugah, it's never a bad time to hear from yah but Ah'll admit yah're the last person Ah's excpectin' to get a call from just now." Laying her accent on a little too thick to compensate. She curses herself.
"You sure? Cause I can -"
"No, no, it's just fine. Ah ain't busy at all. You jus' go on an' tell meh what's up."
There's an odd pause. "Maybe I oughta start with – how are things? Down there, I mean, is everyone...?"
"Bout what'd yah'd expect, Ah s'ppose, what with 'Roro still missin'."
"Right." He huffs a growl, the speaker just catches it.
"Sugah, what's wrong?" Rogue works to make her tone come out a little gentler, though he's beginning to compound her irritation.
"To hell with it. Look, I got a favor to ask yah, darlin', and I'm gonna apologize for it ahead of time 'cause I know it ain't a fair thing to ask."
She sinks back into the chair behind her desk, feeling a strange sort of exhaustion begin to creep up on her. "Spit it out or Ah'm hangin' up." The words leave her lips impulsively.
There's another pause. He mutters something to himself, cursing. "I'd call Jamie but last I really talked to her it sounded like she's got enough trouble to deal with, I don't know who else to... look, the problem is, I think Joanie and I are bein' followed."
Rogue takes a moment to process that information. "By who? Why?"
"I got half an idea, but it makes no difference. Everytime I get eyes on the bastards – I mean, Joanie's never far away and I don't wanna tip her off somethin's wrong, doctors say stressin' her outs a real bad idea. Somethin' about her blood pressure already bein' high and her appetite not bein' what it should. An' I don't know what these goons are after, last thing I wanna risk is leavin' her alone."
"You..want me...to come do the roughin' up for yah?"
"Yeah...I hear how that sounds now. But I been around long enough to recognize when I can't just bullhead my way outta somethin'. You know I wouldn't ask if I wasn't desperate. C'mon. She's almost seven months in, Marie, and there's three of 'em in the oven, I got a lot at stake and I don't wanna find out what the stress would do to her."
Marie reaches out calmly and grabs the whiskey bottle still sitting open on her desk. Pulls the phone away from her ear and swigs it straight, not even wincing at the burn. Brings the phone back up and closes her eyes. "Of course Ah'll come up and lend a hand. Anythin' for you, Sugah."
"Oh good. Great!"
They work out the details and he thanks her. Really thanks her, sounding so genuinely relieved.
She sets the phone down once he's hung up and swigs the whiskey again and then just stares down at the bottle and contemplates the fact that there ain't enough of the devil juice in the world to make this feel remotely ok.
"Fuck!" She spits the curse. It echoes off the walls of the art room. She almost wishes for there to be someone around to have heard her, to care enough to ask her what's wrong, but there isn't.
She tucks the bottle back into her desk and begins looking up flights to Alberta.
…
"Oh." Sarah freezes like a deer in the headlights when she sees him.
"What?" Jake questions, confused. She's the one intruding, really. It's late and he'd only come outside after speaking with Rogue because he'd been sure no one else would be around.
She blinks down at the cigarette in his hand. "I. Uh, I'd forgotten that you're on those, those things now. I caught a hint of the smell through my window, and since neither Logan nor Jamie are here..."
Realization dawns. He nods. "You thought it was a student.
"Yeah." She fidgets with her sweater some, clearly uncomfortable. "Anyway. Sorry Jakey." The pet name slips so easy from her lips; she scowls at herself.
His brows furrow. "You had the nightmare again. Didn't you?"
She goes ridged, visibly tense. "How could you possibly...?"
He rolls his eyes. "Well, you said you smelled the smoke through the window, you'd've had to open it for that. Since it's been raining all day I figure you wouldn't have though to open a window unless there was a pretty good reason you needed some air..""
Silence for several beats. Sarah looks down, fidgeting with her sweater some more, seeming oddly almost bashful. "You sound like her. You've always got an attitude now, you never talked like that before."
She's..not wrong, if he's honest. He doesn't have the patience he used to and it shows in his tone, though it's questionable whether that has anything to do with Jamie. He shakes his head, trying to clear it. "You had the nightmare."He says, firmer.
"Yeah." She sighs, shoulders slumping now. "I had the nightmare."
"Wanna talk about it?"
She brings a hand up to rub at her arm. "Maybe."
"Was it the same as before?"
"Yeah. About the same except..."
"What?"
"Except at the end. It-it wasn't my mother I saw. It was me."
Jake's eyebrows shoot up. "Oh. That's..unsettling. So, wait, you – you died then?"
"Yes. I saw myself..well, I didn't really see it, that's when I woke up but the strangest thing is..." She hugs herself, suddenly seeming small and very thin. "It wasn't..it wasn't him I saw. He didn't do it."
"What do you mean? Who did it then?"
"Who else do we know that would – I mean, that would be equipped to -"
Jake's eyes widen. "Jamie."
"Yeah."
"I don't understand. I mean, not the you dying part. People have dreams of dying, it happens sometimes I think, but..."
"But replacing him with her." Sarah sounds almost on the verge of tears. "Why would I dream that? Why would I, I don't understand..." She buries her face in her hands.
Jake takes a last drag of the cigarette, puts it out in the ashtray nearby, heaves a sigh, and strides across the deck to wrap furry arms around the tiny redheads shoulders. "Hey. It's just a dream, Sarah. I mean, a weird one, yeah. But still just a dream."
"I'm not sure they are just dreams anymore. I've got this awful feeling in the pit of my stomach, like somethings coming." She rests her head against his chest. "Jake, there's something I haven't..." She hesitates.
He runs his fingers through her hair. "You can still tell me anything, you know." She always did, before. Used to be there wasn't a single secret about her he didn't know. The thought crosses his mind not for the first time, he'd been unfair to her in that way. She'd always been so honest, but he'd been unhappy with things way before he'd finally broken up with her and there remained a lot he'd never told her.
She pulls out of his embrace, gentle but firm. "You smell like..those things and... What've you even been up to?"
"Oh. Erm. I was just..." He scowls at himself. "I'm sorry."
She shakes her head. "No, you're not. You're enjoying this. You know, I saw you sneak off with Sparrow earlier, and that wasn't tobacco I smelled on you when you came back. If you want to play the bad boy at least have the guts to do it like Jamie and just let it be what it is. I can respect that on some level."
He shrugs, unperturbed. "Fair enough. No more apologies. It just..is what it is. Now what were you going to tell me?" He's not about to just let her off the hook so easy.
Wiping at the tears that had been building around her eyes, she shakes her head. "Nothing. I just need some sleep, I think." She turns as if to head back inside.
His brows furrow. The tone of her voice... "Sarah." He grabs her arm and pulls her back, a little forceful. "You weren't here when Sparrow and I snuck off, I'd watched you drive off to buy groceries not ten minutes before."
"Who exactly do you suddenly think you are?" She glares down at his hand. Her voice is dangerously quiet.
"You couldn't possibly have known what Sparrow and I were doing earlier."
"One of the students saw you and thought I should know. Let me go."
"Half the students were getting their own fix from Sparrow all through the spring and summer, the girl had enough plants growing back behind that old garden shed to keep the whole school happy, and we all would know far better than to tell you about it, Ms. Stick-in-the-damn-mud. I'm only gonna ask once. How the hell did you know?"
"Just let me go, I'm sorry I said anything."
"I'm sure you are, but you're still gonna answer the question."His grip on her arm tightens. He backs her up towards the railing of the patio, cornering her.
"Jamie didn't scare me when she pulled this routine, why the hell would it work when you pull it?" Sarah brings a hand up to her glasses as if ready to remove them. "Let me go or this will not end well."
You think you're tough. He thinks it, but says nothing out loud. But I can smell you. You don't know me anymore, and it scares you, doesn't it?
"Yes!" She blurts all at once. "Yes, it scares me, ok? Booze on your breath and talking like you do now. You might as well be a complete stranger and this isn't helping, please just let me go!"
He releases her arm and backs away, hands up in total surrender now. Sarah Jean. He just thinks it again; his mouth never opens.
"What?" She snaps out loud.
I'm not saying anything.
She stares at him, eyes wide. A trembling hand comes up to scoop an errant lock of ginger curls back behind her ear. "Oh."
"Telepathy was never part of your mutation."
"The telekinesis wasn't either." She murmurs back quietly. "Not until mom died."
"Why now?"
"I don't know. It's..it's not the most consistent either. Some days I hear everybody. Others, nothing, or maybe only whispers. God. I live for the 'nothing' days, Jakey. You have no idea." She hesitates, blowing out a breath, and then goes on, stilted now. "Do you think, just maybe, you could get me some of the -"
"No serum." He answers, voice half a growl. "I'll help you deal with this, you know I'll help however I can, but I won't help you run from it like that. I can't. In fact, I wish Dad had never invented it at all. It isn't right, trying to be something we just..aren't. It doesn't work like that, ok?"
"Alright." She says quickly. "Alright, that's fine. I'm sorry I asked. I just...I'm sorry." She darts off back inside.
He just shakes his head, and lets her go.
…
He shuffles down the hall gingerly, a plate full of food in one hand, a cup full of orange juice in another. He hardly knows why he bothers. His father only ever really picks at the food offered him; most of it will get cold before someone comes around to just throw it away.
"Good morning." Jake says quietly as he enters the room and sets the breakfast down.
The center of the room is dominated by a round table with a screen at one end; a map is displayed in hologram form above it. Hank McCoy appears to be studying it, quite closely it would seem, seeing as he doesn't acknowledge his sons presence.
Jake clears his throat after a moment. "Dad."
"Oh. Oh, Jacob! Yes, good morning. Forgive me, I was -"
"Yeah. I know what you were doing. You get another lead from somewhere?"
"I had thought, maybe...oh, but I've cross referenced it with several other..."
Jake gives off a sound that might, just maybe be a growl of clear annoyance, cutting his father off. "Have you slept?"
"A little."
"I brought breakfast."
"Thank you, my boy." Hank makes no move to reach for the food.
Jake rolls his eyes. This is about the most they ever really converse since Ororo had been taken. "You could, yah know, eat it for once."
"I'm not terribly hungry."
"You're probably on the verge of starving yourself, at this point, just eat the damned food, will you, old man?"
A staring contest ensues.
Jake rarely questions his father. Or at least, he never used to. He has always had nothing but absolute respect for the older man, and never felt a need to give attitude before. But there's a thought that's been weighing on him recently, and the monotony of the past months, going through the same exact motions everyday, it's left him feeling increasingly too exhausted to keep holding his tongue. "Mom wouldn't want this."
"Jacob."
"No, don't do that, listen to me. Mom wouldn't want you to just – to do this, whatever this is. The obsession, it's getting nowhere."
"And you would have us all just forget about her instead?"
"What? Of course not, I just think, if you haven't found her yet, after months of -"
"She's out there somewhere and I cannot just -"
"Look, even if she is, we have nothing to go on and -"
"If? What do you mean, if?"
There's a moment of tense silence as Jake tries to calm himself. "I just mean that, for right now, maybe this is it. Maybe there's nothing more we can do for her and someone has to keep this place running. Sarah and I and the others, we're trying but we're not -"
"So leave." His father barks abruptly, a growl reinforcing the harshness of the words.
Jake tenses. "What?"
"That's what you want, isn't? You were out of reach when we were captured. You wouldn't even answers Sarah's calls, you made it fairly clear you weren't much concerned with anyone but yourself."
Jake's fists clench. "I've barely left the stupid grounds the past few months. I've done whatever anyone here needed me to without complaint, I'm the only one that still bothers to beg you to eat something because you bite everyone else's head off when they try!"
"But you would leave again in a heartbeat if someone gave you reason to." His father replies, and he sounds so coldly angry.
"You think it's my fault Mom was taken. I get it, okay?" Jake feels sick to his stomach. "But it's not like I could've known what was going to happen!"
"You should've been close! You should've been ready for any possibility, like we taught you!" Hank is all but snarling now. "Instead you were off doing God knows what with -"
"So I'm just never allowed to leave? To do something, anything else with myself? Just because perfect Sarah's fine with it, that means I have to be too?"
"Sarah understands that some things are more important than satisfying selfish personal whims! If you want to run off with your new fling and ignore your responsibilities here, be my guest, just don't expect me to tell you it's okay."
The sick feeling that had taken hold of Jake is abruptly replaced with anger. His heart beats hard and fast in his chest and for a strange, uneasy moment he has the irrational urge to pick up the plate of food his father probably won't touch and throw it at the man. Thankfully, the urge passes quickly, though his anger doesn't dissipate an ounce. His frustration culminates in a growl, low and aggressive and challenging in a way that seems to almost startle Hank, but Jake opts to storm out of the room instead of finding out where it will lead them.
…
"This is a bad idea."
"Yeah, well, that's why we didn't involve the others. And to be fair, you didn't have to agree to this."
"I know. Things just aren't right with your mom gone, I did kinda get where you were coming from. Someone's gotta do something. But now we're here I'm just..."
Jake sighs. Sarah's not wrong. With the increasing reports of mutants being abducted or just plain vanishing without explanation all over the map, what they're doing here is insane. At the very least he should've had them stay on the jet, just take a look from above and leave.
"What the hell are those things? I've never seen anything quite like them." Sarah sounds almost in awe.
"Isn't there a sim in the Danger Room...?"
"The things in that sim are bigger, clunkier. They move like robots. Look at those things out there, this is something entirely different."
She's right. The things patrolling the gated courtyard before them are smaller and their movements are smoother. He can't begin to guess what they're made of, but the material appears way too flexible to be any simple sort of metal or plastic.
"Well, we're here now. How about a closer look?" He starts moving, creeping closer to the tall fence.
"Jake!" Sarah hisses. "Are you nuts? Get back here, we need to get out of here!"
But Jake's determined. He's sick of sitting around and feeling useless, he needs...
The fence is topped with barbed wire, he's not dumb enough to try climbing it. But there's a gatehouse further down the line with a guard there. He creeps along the treeline, keeping to the shadows as much as possible. One of the strange robots is stationed not far away, maybe if he can just creep past...
"Jake, wait, I think there's -" Sarah's voice is a shout this time, a desperate warning.
He steps out into the light a little too far and there must be cameras he hadn't noticed. An alarm begins blaring. He darts back into the trees, but this does him little good. The sound of men shouting is heard seconds before the whirring hum of advanced machinery reaches his ears.
Sarah spits curses. "Jake, they're sending one of those, those things."
"Yeah, I can see that!"
"We don't know what this thing can do, if it follows us all the way...?"
"Just keep-"
A different sort of noise reverberates throughout the forest surrounding them. A moment passes and something hits a tree just to the left of Jake. He feels the heat of it, it singes his clothes and the force of it sends him stumbling and nearly falling flat on his face.
Wood snaps and cracks audibly. The massive old tree tips slowly and then falls all together, the severed end charred as though...
"My God. Sarah, it's like your powers!"
"Yeah, except someone turned up the heat even higher!" She answers, sounding horrified. "We have to go faster, c'mon!" She coaxes him, sounding desperate.
"Keep going." He barks, switching abruptly to a different tactic. There's a larger branch in their path. Adrenaline might just be giving him the strength needed to lift it.
Something pricks at his arm somewhere in between, the spot tingles strangely. But he's too preoccupied to think much of it.
The ground shakes as the security..robot..thing moves in closer. Jake takes hold of the large branch and throws the whole of his not inconsiderable weight into swinging it around. It hits home, knocking the robot backwards, though not terribly far. Sarah yells at him to starting moving again, but...
He staggers a bit as the tingling in his arm spreads and then slowly begins fading to numbness. "Woah. I don't. I don't feel right." He stutters, grabbing at her arm in a desperate bid to find something to help keep him upright. He tries to keep moving but the numbness is spreading still and his visions going a little blurry. The jet isn't much farther, and the robot is still following, but he doesn't know what hit him. He trips over a tree root, half stumbling, and falls, bringing Sarah down with him and knocking her visor off in the process.
"Jake!" She's shrieking at him, sounding desperate, so scared. "My visor, I can't -" She paws blindly at the ground around her, eyes shut tight.
The robot comes closer. Something flies through the air, Jake sees it this time, some kind of dart. Its aiming for Sarah, but it stops just before it reaches her, sitting suspended in midair a moment.
How had she...?
Her eyes are open. But her powers aren't activated. It makes no sense, she'd lost that ability months ago.
Her expression hardens. Something behind her eyes shifts. She brings a hand up and with a flick of her wrist the dart flies off to hit a tree several feet away and fall uselessly to the ground.
"Sarah." He slurs. "Are you ok? What are you doing?"
She gets to her feet and steps over him, placing herself between him and the strange robot. She holds out a hand and the robot is lifted into the air, slowly. Sarah shakes with the effort, but her expression remains hard. Just for a moment her eyes seem to almost glow with a strange, fiery sort of light.
She balls her hand into a fist and swings it around. The robot flies to the side and into a tree, the same as the dart had moments earlier, though this time the impact isn't as heavy and the thing still isn't rendered completely inert. She has bought them some time though.
His legs feel like jelly, he couldn't hold up his own weight if he tried, but he doesn't need to. Sarah reaches out to take his arm, taking on far more of his weight than she should be able to, likely with the further aid of her telekinesis. "Move with me." She tells him, calm and collected, using a tone that doesn't sound like it belongs to her. "Only as fast as you can." She's growing worryingly pale and he can he hear her heart rate increasing.
"Stop." He tells her, because something strange is going on. "Stop it, I can keep going, you need to -"
"I'll be alright, Jacob. Just keep moving with me." The way she says his name.
An eerie feeling twists his stomach, worse than everything else that's just transpired. The look on her face, behind her eyes. The tone of her voice. His instincts scream at him, that's not Sarah.
They make it to the jet.
The robot is following again. Sarah gets him inside and sprints over to the controls, shutting them up safely inside as the engines beginning whirring to life. She looks sickly pale now, beads of sweat forming on her forehead and cheeks. He's dizzy, feels almost drunk, and his limbs might as well be weighted with lead, but he manages a sluggish trek over to the chair next to Sarah.
"Not strong enough yet, just not strong enough." She's murmuring, still using a voice that sounds wrong somehow. "We'll have to – Jacob. Are you still with me?"
"Yes." He slurs. "Still here."
"Hang on. I'm going to get us up and then set the autopilot."
"Someone still has to land us."
"You're going to land us. I won't make it that far."
"Me? No. I don't -"
"It won't be the prettiest job of it but you'll manage."
"How could I –"
"Because." She glances sharply at him and her eyes are strangely aglow again. "I'm going to tell you how."
.
He damages a wing on the way down and almost certainly does a number on the landing gear as well. But he's impressed he managed it at all given the state he's still in and the fact he'd had no clue what he was doing. There's no call for even minor celebration, though. His ex-girlfriend is passed out cold in the seat next to him, deathly pale and breathing shallow. Even the fitful landing didn't rouse her, but the thing that proves the most concerning, is the voice that told him what to do. It spoke to him only in his head, in the end.
And it wasn't Sarah's.
.
"You've been drugged, Jacob. Hallucinations would hardly be surprising." His father's voice is calm, controlled. "Please, lie down, you should rest, we can talk more in the morning -"
"But you saw the state Sarah's in! Something happened to her out there and I know what I heard!"
"You were so young when last you would've heard Jean's voice, you could've been imagining any number of strange things."
"She told me how to land the jet! How did I manage to put us down if it wasn't her?"
"Sarah must've -"
"Sarah was unresponsive!"
"It'd still be a far more plausible explanation than that of a woman more than ten years dead whispering in your ear!" Dr. McCoy's voice raises a bit, but he pauses afterwards, taking a breath. "I've already decided to go easy on you in light of the fact that the ordeal you went through as a result sounds to have been consequence enough. We'll talk more in the morning, alright, my boy? For the moment I'm just glad that you both made it back alive."
"I told you the name she left me. Look into it. Please. If the name belongs to a real person then I can't have been making the whole thing up, right? Right?" Jake's hands shake violently as he wrings them. The fur on his cheeks is growing damp with tears. He's a mess and he knows it but he can't let it go. He needs his father to believe him.
"Alright. I'll see what I can find but please, please. Lie down and rest for me." Dr. McCoy's voice is fraught with real worry as he covers Jake's hands with his own, gently stilling them. "You'll feel better once you've rested."
Jake nods slow. "Yeah. Okay. Fine." He lies down, and his father leaves him.
.
He dreams of robots and redheaded women with eyes of fire. He wakes up wishing that one of those women hadn't been Sarah Jean Summers.
.
She's in the kitchen the next morning, playing absently with a strand of her hair as she stares down at a plate of untouched toast. Her eyes are hidden behind rose tinted glass once again. He's startled by the sight of her. She'd been so pale the night before, seemed so clearly unwell, never mind the fact that she'd been fully unresponsive. She looks fine now, albeit perhaps a little melancholy.
"Sarah." He murmur.
She looks up slowly, and a smile abruptly graces her lips. "Oh! Good morning! Well, not really morning. I was getting worried, you slept so long."
"I'm fine. Uh. A little hungover, sort of. But Dad says I'll be fine."
"Some food would probably help. Want me to make you some eggs?" She gets to her feet.
"That's fine, I can make them for myself. But wait, are you alright? Because last night was... I mean, Jesus."
"I know we botched the whole thing. But hey, we're both like, still alive, so. Good enough?" To spite what he'd said, Sarah makes her way over to the refrigerator, pulling out a carton of eggs. "And at least we can warn the others about those strange security drones we saw. Somethings definitely going on with that, I've never heard of anything like them before."
"Yeah. There's that at least, I guess, but that's not what I meant. I mean, what you did, with your telekinesis, you were amazing! But..."
"What?" Her confusion seems genuine.
"You really don't remember. Do you? Something happened. You fought the robot...thing... off but you weren't well and I heard..." What had he heard? It's all a little fuzzy in his memory now, as though he'd just been dreaming, and his head is aching.
Sarah glances back at him, a question in her eyes.
"Never mind." He murmurs, rubbing at his temples, and quietly decides to leave it at that.
