Chapter 9

(Angela)

It took a few weeks for the mansion to settle down over the "DDR Incident", as I'd taken to calling it. None of the kids were dumb enough to ever say anything to his face, although it wasn't uncommon to see a bunch of them suddenly stop what they were doing when he entered a room. Scott, of course, never let him live it down, which I think was good for Logan. He was still plotting revenge for the whole thing, but deep down I think he was impressed that someone had gotten one over on him.

As predicted, Evie was completely unthrilled at having a class in the afternoons with the Professor. We'd never had a chance to ask her about her dreams on the way home from Chuck E. Cheese's, since she'd fallen asleep as soon as we got her in the car, but I'd managed to bring it up to her the next afternoon, but she said she didn't remember if she'd had the dream about the "bad men" before the camping trip. That didn't surprise me too much; she'd barely been four when it happened the first time. Still, it worried me and Logan to no end because Charles confirmed that she did indeed have precognition, manifesting early.

"So what do we do now?" I asked, running my fingers through my hair.

"The first thing we have to do is try and get it under some kind of control." Charles said. "I admit that I do not have much experience with this particular gift, but in time we should be able to teach her to use her gift at will. However, I can't guarantee she won't still have flashes from time to time that are beyond her control."

"I'm just worried that she'll see things she's not ready for. She's only six, Charles. I don't want her to see some of the things we have to do."

He leaned forward in his chair. "There is something I could do, but I'm not sure either of you will like it."

"What?"

"I can put in a telepathic barrier that will block her power temporarily until she's old enough to understand how to use it."

"Hell no, Chuck." Logan finally spoke up from the other side of the room. "No way. I ain't havin' no one fuck with her head the way those Weapon X bastards did to us."

"Logan, this will not be the same thing." Charles said mildly. "For one, it won't be permanent. I can set it up to erode over time, giving her the opportunity to become accustomed to the way her power works."

"Look, I know you got the best of intentions in mind here an' I trust you like family, but you know how I feel about telepaths gettin' into people's heads an' fuckin' around."

"I am well aware of that, Logan. But this isn't going to be the same as what happened to you and Angela. I won't be altering her memory or blocking anything except the area where her gift is centered. I assure you, I won't do more than what's necessary here."

I shifted my gaze between the two men and sighed. "Charles, can we talk about it for a day or so?"

"Of course, my dear. Take as much time as you need. But I shouldn't need to tell you that if she's starting to have precognitive flashes in her waking hours, the longer we wait the less likely it will be that any barriers I put in will hold for long."

"We understand. We'll let you know soon." He nodded, then Logan and I left the office. We had a strategy class to teach, but instead of heading to the classroom, Logan clamped a cigar between his teeth and headed to the patio doors. Sighing, I followed him, digging a pack of Camels out of my pocket. He stalked to the very back of the garden, where the markers were for Jean and Alex. I knew they were there and had visited a few times since we lost Havok on that ill-fated mission in the Outback, but Logan had never brought me with him. Granted, I was actually following him, but he had to know that I would. He paused to light his cigar, then turned with the match to light mine. We stood there in silence for a moment before he dropped to a bench that was off to one side. I remained standing, my eyes fixed on the ground beneath me.

"For a while, I didn't think I could live without her." He said without preamble. "Couldn't imagine bein' here in this house without her around."

I bit back the irrational surge of jealousy I felt every time Jean's ghost came up. I mean, the woman was dead for the love of the gods, so I had no reason for it. But she'd been in my man's heart and it was only sheer chance that brought him to back to me after so many years. I swallowed hard before speaking. "I know, Logan. You've told me."

He leaned back and closed his eyes. "But now, for the first time in what? Seven years? Eight? I wish she was here."

My inner beast clawed in my mind and I took a deep breath to calm it down. "Why?"

He looked at me, his brow furrowed. "Don't get me wrong, I got a lot o' respect for Chuck. But sometimes he just don't get it, ya know?"

"Logan, he only has what's best for Evie in mind here." I said, settling next to him. "Maybe it's not such a bad idea."

He snorted and took another pull on his cigar. "I know that, darlin'. But that ain't what I'm talkin' about."

"So what are you talking about?" I asked, the beast prowling around in my head.

"It's kinda hard to explain." He said as he chewed on his cigar thoughtfully. After about half a minute, he turned to face me. "Chuck pushes. I know he's probably the smartest person I know, but that don't mean he knows what's best for everyone. But it don't matter to him. He gets an idea, then pushes til everyone agrees with him." He took another long drag and sighed, looking over at Jean's marker. "When Jean was here, she had this way o' gettin' him to back off, 'specially when it came to me. An' she was so good with the kids, they just loved her so much. If I had a choice, I'd rather Jean was the one teachin' Evie 'bout her powers, not Chuck."

My heart tightened in my chest as another surge of jealousy ran through me and I took another deep breath. "Logan, do you…do you still love her?"

His head snapped around and he looked at me with wide eyes. "What? No!" He took my hand in his, stroking it with his thumb. "Darlin', after everythin' 'bout you came back to me, I understood what had been goin' on with her. You have no idea how much like you she was. She was strong, beautiful an' she never was afraid o' me. I was half an inch from killin' her when I first woke up here, but she never held it against me. Did I want her? Yes, very much. But if there was a miracle an' she came back to life right this second, I still wouldn't trade what I have with you for anythin' in the world." He pulled me into his chest and wrapped his arm around me. "I loved the idea of Jean, that someone would make me want to be a better man. But you darlin'…you love me even with all the flaws an' in the end, you make me a better man because of it. Jean may have had my heart for a little while, but you have my soul. Rip out my heart an' hell, I'll probably just grow another one. Don't think I'll get over losin' my soul any time soon."

"Who knew that you were such a poet?" I asked, sniffling.

"I ain't no poet, just like I still ain't no kinda hero. Shit, there still days I don't know what the hell I'm doin' here, teachin' kids to be soldiers. Then I look at you an' Evie readin' 'Cinderella' an' it reminds me."

"Well, you're wrong on both counts. You're all the poet and hero a girl could ever want." I managed to fight back the tears that stung my eyes and looked up at him with a smile. "But I never said you were a very good poet."

He laughed and kissed me. "Now that I can accept!" He kissed me again, then wrapped both of his arms around me. "But now this thing with Evie, seein' the future. What's that gotta be like?"

"Well, having been the recipient of prenatal visions, I can tell you that it's not very good." I sat up and looked around. "I mean, when you dream about running naked through the halls looking for a birthday cake, that's just a bad dream. But when you see yourself dying in a fiery ball in a car crash, that's enough to make you sell the car and walk everywhere." I shivered at the memory and rubbed my arms. "I'm more concerned that she'll see things she's not ready for, see people she loves getting hurt or killed. She's already had that dream with the new invasion of the mansion at least twice, but I don't think she realizes that it could be true."

"But we can change it, right? I mean, she changed the flash she had with Wendy, so why not that?"

"I don't know, lover, I really don't. I suppose we could wait a couple years then take her away somewhere, but that doesn't mean they won't come looking for her anyway."

"No, what I mean is, if it's a true dream an' those are Weapon X soldiers that come here, then we just have to take 'em all out before that happens."

"Logan, we've been working on that for five years and barely made a dent in the active facilities. If we hit one base a week for the next year, we'd only get about a quarter of the ones in that file. And what's to say that they're all in that file? How do we know that they aren't just moving to new facilities after we hit one?"

He sighed heavily. "You're right, we don't know. An' knowin' them, that's just what they're doin'." He took a final drag on his cigar and stubbed it out. "I wish like hell we could find that Director an' take him out."

"Me too, lover. Me too." We sat there a little longer, thinking about the mission we'd undertaken. Weapon X needed to die and soon. If Evie's dream was going to be averted, we needed to finish them all off once and for all. By my reckoning, we only had about four more years to do that and for the first time in my long life, I felt like I didn't have enough time to do everything I needed to do.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

We made it to our strategy class about fifteen minutes late. However, since it was Beta team that day, Sarah and Peter had taken over and given them a scenario of their own design, which was actually pretty good. Logan and I looked it over and decided to go with it, both of us coming up with at least half a dozen ways to get through it at a glance. But we were trained to plan on the fly like that, which was the whole point of this class in the first place. Seeing how quickly they'd come up with the scenario in the first place, I made a mental note to ask the rest of Alpha if they'd mind advancing the two of them by the end of the semester. They'd been wonderfully patient, waiting all this time to make it to the top of the heap, especially considering they were adults and had to take this class with a bunch of kids. I knew it was because of their military background that they didn't complain; they knew you had to jump through all kinds of hoops before you get promoted and we were no different. At least Peter had finally stopped calling Logan "sir".

I decided to use the unexpected down time to program Evie's dream into the computer. It wouldn't hurt to run the scenario, after all, even though I wasn't a hundred percent certain of everything in the dream. Were the active operatives there? If so, was it all four of them or just one or two? How many troops were outside and how had they bypassed our security? So many variables, but I still felt I could come up with something that would be similar enough to get by. And it wouldn't hurt to program several variations of it. Hell, I could even throw in a couple Sentinels just for fun, not that the class would see it that way. When the end of class rolled around, I was about halfway through the program. Another couple of days to finish it up and work out the bugs and it would make a fine lesson for the next week.

Logan leaned over to see what I was doing and gave a little snort. I looked over to him and he had his patented "what the hell is this" look on his face, complete with the sexy eyebrow trick. Right on cue, he asked, "What the hell is this?"

"Next week's lesson." I replied as I finished a line of code.

"Are you tryin' to give them an impossible lesson or just hopin' to take Cyke's title of 'least favorite teacher' away from him?"

I giggle. "Neither. This is that dream of Evie's, with a few other things thrown in for spice."

"Spice? Darlin', that's a triple shot o' 'Widowmaker' hot sauce!"

"Well, I didn't exactly see everything that was going on and it's not like one of those dreams where you just know everything that's in it."

"Still, you got all them soldiers with all that artillery, a giant Sentinel, four small Sentinels AND Asp, Tigress, Demon an' Vulture! This makes our old worst case scenario look like a day at the park!"

"That's the point, lover." I said as I saved the program. "I only saw a tiny portion of what was going on in that dream. Something tells me Evie saw a lot more, but she's so young she doesn't know how to explain it. But you and I were hiding behind a wall that had been knocked down by a freaking rocket for fuck's sake! So, I decided to pull out all of the stops on this one, see if they're up to the challenge." I turned to him, my mouth set in a grim line. "Because if we can't stop it before it happens, we might as well clear the school out now and scatter to the four corners of the earth."

"Angela, don't you think you're jumpin' the gun a bit here?"

"No, I don't. In fact, if we haven't killed that Director before Evie turns ten, I'm giving serious thought about sending her away before they can get here."

He scowled at me and a low growl issued from his chest. "You ain't sendin' her anywhere that we don't go!"

"Logan, think about it. If this thing can't be stopped, there is no way we can't be here to defend the mansion. But I'm also pretty sure that the attack is as much about getting Evie as it is destroying the X-Men. We might not stop them coming here, but we can stop them from getting her by taking her out of the equation. Marie and Sam are her gods-parents and you know that means Remy and Storm will go with them. I can set them up with Ricky, get them the money they need to disappear for a very long time if necessary." I gripped his hand in mine. "I don't want to be apart from her either. But I'll be damned if Weapon X ever gets a hold of her! So if that's my choice, then I'll send her away."

Logan's scowl softened and he grabbed me a rough embrace. "So let's get back to work then, double our efforts." He held me for a long moment before pulling away to look me right in the eyes, his own expression hard. "Let's kill 'em all."

AN: I would like to thank Dee (MidLifeCrisis) for letting me know that the Director does have a real name after all, which is Malcolm...however, since i don't know if it's his first or last name, i'll have to squeeze it in somewhere else later...possibly even go back and edit a couple earlier chapters to get it in there where it'll make more sense...but that's for later...:) Special thanks to my beta readers Zac and Turiel Tincdaniel, the bestest beta readers ever...Extra Special thanks to DBK(tm) for being my biggest fan and keeping me writing even when i get stuck...Super Special thanks to all my (silent) readers for sticking with me...and Super Swanky Special thanks to those who reviewed, who were MidLifeCrisis (ok, on ch. 7, but hey...better late than never, right?), levanna, theNightEnchantress, Ineluctability and sela103...Dee: Hope it was funny enough for ya...:) levanna: Don't worry, Scott WILL get his eventually...:) tNE: thanks for the review! Ineluctability: You know i'm gonna ask anyway, right? Where the heck were ya girlie?? Sela: Unfortunately, i am a visual thinker and when Zac mentioned how funny that would be, i got this vision of Wolvie in full X-Men gear bustin' a move on DDR in front of a whole crowd of people...and i couldn't stop laughing for ten minutes!! So, since i love to share the funny things i see with people i like, you all got to "see" it too...:)

Now this is for all of you non-reviewing readers...i'm always going to be eternally grateful that you're still around no matter what...but i'd still love to know who you are! So go ahead and click the "go" button next to where it says "submit review"...don't worry about where it says to leave something constructive, just click the button, type the word "hello" and submit that...i promise, you don't have say anything more than that and i'll post a brand new chapter right away!