AN: My most sincere apologies to everyone for the time it's taken me to get this update out, but life (much like shit) happens...since december, my life has been one big roller coaster of suck and it was hard for me to get the ambition to update...but since then, my fiancee and i have gotten back together, due in part to an extended stay of his own in the hospital...since jan. 26, he's had his gall bladder taken out, beaten pancreatitis and just came home today:) So, to celebrate, here's an update for you...:) Now, i'm not gonna say that i'm going to get back on my three day update rotation right away, but i promise that it won't be weeks on end before you hear from me again...:) So, without further ado, here's the next chapter!

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Chapter 17

(Angela)

Our mystery passenger didn't utter a word the entire flight home and I seemed to be the only person she trusted enough to let anywhere near her. She sat huddled in the seat next to mine, her eyes flitting from me to Remy to Marie and back again. She was extremely fair with pale blond hair and eyes so light a blue they were almost colorless. She looked more like the distilled essence of a girl than an actual person and I wondered what had happened to her to bring her to such a state. I had my own memories of what had happened to me, but her reactions made it seem like much more than pre-bonding surgery had gone on there. Remembering what I'd overheard those soldiers saying to one another on the base, I had a pretty good guess. Either her mutation wasn't scary enough for them to keep their hands away or else Joanna had weathered their "attentions" much better. Then again, the threat of a poisoned sting would be enough to keep most people away. Made me wish I could go back and kill them all over again.

Kyro had recovered by the time we got back to the jet, although he wasn't comfortable with being the main pilot for the return trip, complaining that he was still a bit groggy. So Logan took the stick and let Kyro act as the co-pilot. It's not that Logan's a bad pilot, because he's not. I'm pretty sure he'd been a pilot at some other point in his long life, even though we didn't really talk about the time before. He'd spent so much time looking for his past that when it finally came back to him, he was plenty happy about it but it was tempered by the bitterness of remembering all the people he'd left behind him. So we tended to not talk about it unless something came up that his past experiences would help us with. Like piloting the jet, for example. As I said, he's not a bad pilot. But he flew the jet like he rode his motorcycle, with a touch of reckless abandon. Not enough to put us in danger, but it was definitely an exciting trip home. I made a mental note to kick the crap out of him later for it.

We did radio ahead to the mansion that we had a recovered subject with us and to have the infirmary ready for anything – including calling in Dr. Endicott for the first time in ages. It was going to be hard enough to convince her that our lower levels were not the same as the lab we'd just taken her from, but to add Hank to that equation, well…I didn't want to give her too many shocks at once. I know that Big Blue is really just a big teddy bear, but this girl didn't and to the unsuspecting, he could be intimidating. So I thought it would be best if we had Dr. Endicott there, just in case. Charles agreed and assured me she'd be there by the time we landed.

An hour later, Logan brought us in to the hangar and lowered the ramp. I let everyone exit before me and I turned to the girl. She was still huddled there in her seat, only now her eyes were fixed on some faraway spot right in front of her. I placed a gentle hand on her forearm. "Hey, we're home now, ok? You're safe, nothing's gonna happen to you here, I promise." She continued to stare at nothing and I wasn't sure she could even hear me. "Come on, we have to take you to the infirmary, all right? We have a doctor here…"

"NO!" She screamed suddenly and her skin changed to scales, her eyes turned almost neon green with slit pupils, her hands and fingers elongated, turning into cruelly-hooked talons tipped with three-inch claws. She swiped at me and I barely managed to throw myself out of the way. She stood up and stalked towards me and I crabbed backwards until my back hit the main console at the front of the jet. I reached behind me and put the ramp up before she could get out into the mansion proper and sent a frantic mental message that I hoped the Professor caught.

"Listen to me; I am not with the people who did whatever they did to you." I said. "I am on your side, I'm here to help you!"

"Liar!" She shouted and her voice had a vague hissing quality to it.

"It's true, I swear!" I stood up and realized for the first time that she towered over me, almost as tall as Logan. "My name is Angela Rex. I used to be a captive of those people, a long time ago but I got away along with my lover. We saved you, ok? I don't know how long you've been there or how far they got with you, but you're safe now. We won't do anything to hurt you."

"How do I know this isn't another trick? Another fake thing to make me think I'm safe?"

"Well, I guess you don't. You have to decide to trust me on your own. But this isn't the base, all those people are dead, we killed them. Now you're at a safe place, for mutants."

At the last part, she lowered her hands and cocked her head. "Mutants? You're a mutant?"

I nodded, "Yes, I am. See?" I slid out my claws and her eyes widened a bit. "And that's not all. I bet you heal fast, right? So do I." I reached up and removed the makeshift dressing still covering the almost-healed bullet wound I'd take earlier. "I got this tonight. It's almost gone now, see?"

Her fingers began to shrink and her skin reverted back to normal as she reached out to touch my arm. "Y-you mean I'm not the only one?"

I looked at her in confusion. "The only one? You didn't know there were five other people in there with you?" She shook her head, her mouth clenched in a tight line. "Yeah, there were others. They helped us get out, gave their lives for us." I looked down and took a deep breath. "I didn't want them to, wouldn't have asked them to, but they did it because they had nothing left to lose."

"You came for me?" She whispered so softly I had to strain to hear her.

"Not specifically, no. We were there for another reason, but there was no way we'd leave you there once we found you." I took a tentative step towards her. "Did they tell you that you were the only one of your kind?"

"The only one like me, yeah. Said no one else can do what I do. Said my mom and dad let them take me because they were afraid of me, that I was all alone and no one was coming for me, not ever."

"They lied, ok? That's what they do, they lie." I took another step and put my hand gently on her arm again. "Do you remember your name?"

"Isabel. My name's Isabel, but my friends all called me Izzy. I, uh, I don't remember my last name. They took it away from me."

"Yeah, they took my lover's name away too, once, but he got it back. We'll get yours back too." I chanced slipping my arm around her. "Come on, we have a doctor here, a woman, and we need to know what all they did to you."

"It-it's really over?"

"It's really over."

She sobbed loudly, the strength going out of her legs and she collapsed, taking me to the floor with her. I held her and stroked her hair, still sticky with the chemical bath we'd found her in and I let her cry for a few minutes before reaching back and opening the ramp again. Dr. Endicott came rushing up, followed by Rogue. "Come on, Izzy. Go with Rogue and the doctor here and get you checked out ok? We'll find you a room, you can rest for a few days then decide what you want to do."

She nodded and let the other two women escort her off the jet. As soon as they were clear, Logan came bounding up the ramp. "Are you all right? I heard screamin'."

"Yeah, I'm fine. She picked a hell of a time to come out of it, but she didn't hurt me." I sat heavily in one of the seats and ran my fingers through my hair. "I think she's like Kyro, only she has a half-lizard form. Don't know if she has a full animal form or not."

"I don't care 'bout any o' that. She didn't hurt you?"

"No, I think she's more scared than anything right now. Thought we were just another bunch of people out to use her."

"You find out anythin' else?"

"Just her name, Isabel – Izzy. She can't remember her last name, not that I'm overly surprised about that. They either have another strong telepath working for them or they came up with another way to strip memories."

He swore softly. "Think she'll be all right?"

"Yeah, eventually. I'm pretty sure some of the soldiers on base were abusing her. They were talking about getting a piece of me when they had me back." He started growling and I gave him a hard shake. "Hey, it's over now, they're dead."

"Like to kill 'em again."

"Me too, but I think they'll agree that once was enough." He took my hand and helped me up from my seat. "But there's more where they came from, we have time."

"True enough." He wrapped his arm around my shoulders and steered me off the jet. "C'mon, I'm tired. Let's go to bed."

"Those are two concepts that don't work together, lover. If we go to bed, there won't be much sleeping."

"Sure there will," he replied with a grin, "eventually."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

We took a five week break from our personal vendetta to help the kids prepare for finals, which were a little over a month and a half away. We had plenty of kids ready to advance providing they passed their exams and still wanted to be X-Men, while those who weren't on a team were as prepared for the world as we could make them. All of them knew they'd always have a home with us at the mansion, but more than a few of them had said they'd rather try and make it out there, even with FOH and other groups still causing problems all over the place. There were even a couple toying with the idea of starting careers in politics, with the thinking that if a mutant or two could hold some kind of office, it would help to facilitate the changes we all knew the world needed to go through before we'd all be shiny happy people doing who the fuck knows what. I've been around too long to believe it'll ever happen, but Hank's continuing research into the increase in mutant births still showed that more were born every year. He even speculated that at their current rate of growth, mutant births would outnumber normal human births within twenty years. That might sound like a long time, but considering that only a century ago one could count the number of active mutants on both hands, it was astonishing. There had to be a reason for it, but we were damned if we knew what it could be.

Isabel had been abused on the base and because of that, she was given a room near the teachers. That way, if she had a nightmare or any other problems, there were at least eight adult females within shouting distance that could come to her aid. We scoured missing persons reports for anyone matching her description and came up empty, so either her parents had never reported it or they were dead. I personally thought it was the latter, since the Weapon X people never had much of a moral compass as far as I could tell and keeping their secret was their number one priority. If I wasn't hell bent on killing them all, I would have leaked the info I had to the press ages ago, but that would mean admitting things about myself that I was just not willing to do at the time. I was still a bit uncomfortable being over a century old, it would only be worse if the whole world knew. No, our way was better, no need to prove anything to anyone, no need to explain.

Isabel took an instant liking to Jubilee, who took the frightened girl under her wing so to speak. She rarely went anywhere in the mansion without the firecracker somewhere nearby. It also seemed that any boy over the age of about twelve scared the daylights out of her, so it wasn't really possible to get her into any classes right away. Storm gave her one of the Xavier School entrance exams and she tested right out of just about everything, but Izzy had this look in her eye at times that reminded me of the look I saw in the mirror every day, that she would eventually want to get a little of her own back from the people who hurt her. If that was the case, she'd have to take strategy and defense training at the very least, which meant dealing with Logan, Piotr and gods only know how many other men on a daily basis. Well, she'd have the whole summer to get used to everyone, so hopefully she'd start trusting more people in that time.

When exam week finally hit, the tension in the mansion was almost palpable. It wasn't uncommon to find groups of kids holed up in the library or sprawled all over the lounge, doing last-minute cram sessions. A few of the kids were worried about failing their defense exam and got caught out on the back lawn sparring in the middle of the night. Logan was furious and told them if they were so hot to fight, they could take the exam right then, an idea that had no appeal to the students in question. They sheepishly made their way back to their beds, but Logan didn't forget about the incident and rumor had it that their exam was brutal. I saw the boys in question later that day, Sunfire and Thunderbird, and they didn't appear to have any permanent damage, although they were both limping and Sunfire had a gorgeous black eye. However, both boys were also grinning, so I guessed that meant they passed.

The beginning of summer heralded more than just students going home to their families and the quieting of the mansion. I felt it as the beginning of the countdown. Evie would be nine in August and if her dream was still accurate, that meant we had a little over a year before it came true. I hadn't caught much of the details, like the weather outside, so I'm not sure what time of year it took place in, but best case scenario gave us about two years before it happened. Unless I was completely off and they were planning on coming any time now. Either way, time was running out and I could feel it.

It was with this in mind that I took Logan aside to discuss our options. We went into the woods across the stream, where students weren't allowed to go, and I climbed into the sheltering branches of an oak. Logan followed me without a word, knowing that I always did my best thinking up in trees. Once we were settled, smokes lit, I found that it was harder to begin this conversation than I thought it would be. After a few minutes, he poked me in the leg. "It's a great view, darlin', really. But I'm sure that ain't why ya brought me up here."

"No, it's not." I replied. "I've been thinking about Evie's dream, about the bad men coming to get her. If it's still accurate, that could happen any time between now and two years from now."

"Yeah, I know." He took a drag on his cigar and closed his eyes. "She hasn't said anythin' about it changin' to me, unless she stopped havin' it."

"Well, we have to assume that it's still accurate and that means we need to have a plan in place to get her the hell out of here."

"I agree." I whipped my head around, shocked at that. Last time we'd talked about it at all, he was completely against it. "What, I can't change my mind?"

"Who are you and what have you done with the real Logan?" I asked, smirking.

"Smartass." He flicked the ash off his cigar and his face became serious again. "It was after that last base, where we found Izzy. She's so young, not that much older'n Evie'll be when the 'bad men' come. I looked at her an' saw my own little girl in that tube. I don't want that, I don't wanna think about it. So, I don't want her here or anywhere near here when – IF – they come."

"Well, I have an idea, but you won't like it."

"What's that?"

I took a deep breath and crushed my smoke out on the trunk of the oak. "I figure she'll be safe enough with Rogue and Sam. They're her gods-parents, after all. You know Storm and Remy'll want to go with them. If we have even a suspicion that the 'bad men' are on the way, they'll take her in Blackbird Three, stop by Ricky's in Detroit for some cash and go somewhere far away. They can send the jet back on autopilot and set it to erase the flight logs from the computer just before it lands."

"Why would they wanna do that? How are we supposed to know…oh." He gazed off into the distance, then stubbed his cigar out and stuffed it into a pocket. "We're not supposed to know. No one is, so no one can find 'em."

I nodded and pulled my knees up to my chest, hugging them tight. "They probably have telepaths, so we can't chance anyone knowing where they'll be."

"Wish there was some way to figure out why they want her in the first place. There ain't no way they know she's a precog."

"No, probably not. They're probably hoping she'll be the perfect combination of me and you. You know, your senses, my nine lives, your healing factor, my agility."

"We don't know if she'll get any o' that."

"Not yet. We won't know unless she hasn't developed anything by the time she's about sixteen. She's already pretty graceful, though, so I'm thinking the agility's already there."

He nodded. "But we'll worry 'bout that later. So, you wanna have this in place soon? Be ready for anythin' at any time?"

"Yeah, I do. I know it'll suck for the school to lose the four of them, but better that than the alternative." He nodded and I took another deep breath. Now for the part I hadn't told him before, an idea I'd been turning around in my head for a couple days. "So, we'll talk to the four of them later, tell Evie about it so she can be ready too. But there's more."

"Why do I get the feelin' I ain't gonna like this?"

"You're not." I looked him square in the eyes. "Logan, if they come and we get her away, we'll have to stop them."

"I know. Nothin' wrong with that."

"Yeah well, that's not all. Once they're gone, we have them out of here…Logan, we have to go back."

"Back where?" He growled, his fists clenched.

"To Weapon X. We'll give ourselves up to them on the condition that they leave Evie alone."

"No fuckin' way!" He shouted and I could see the tips of his claws straining between his knuckles. "I ain't goin' back to them, never!"

"Logan, hear me out!" I cried. "We'll give ourselves up to them, no questions asked, no conditioning or retraining needed. We'll regain their trust and once we do, we'll take it down from within." He was still glaring at me, but I didn't back down. "We can have the Professor give us a kind of telepathic trigger, something that will bring us right back to ourselves with the right code phrase. He's good enough to bury it so deep that no one can find it."

"Angela, how can you even consider doin' this? After everythin' they did to us, did to Emma?"

"I know!" I took a deep breath to calm myself. "Logan, I know. Face it, trying to find the Director from the outside is getting us nowhere. But if we give ourselves up, they'll think they've finally beaten us, broken us. They'll think we've given up and come to terms with the fact that we're nothing but the weapons they want us to be."

"An' what if the first thing they want us to do is come back here an' take out the mansion, huh? What then?"

"Every person in this house knows how to beat us, we train them to beat us. We'll tell the Professor to put in new escape routes after we leave, so we can't cover all the bases there. I'll make sure he takes out all of our access codes, voice prints, whatever so that we can't get into the Danger Room if they use it as a shelter. And we'll have Buzz and Sage do a complete redesign of the security array so we won't know where everything is anymore. There are plenty of things they can do that we won't be able to anticipate. They'll be as safe as we can make them, all things considered." I put my hands over his, caressed his knuckles in an attempt to get his claws to relax back into his arms. "Logan, I know it's risky and gods only know what they'll do to us when we go back. But we're the best they ever had, they know it and they know that we know they know that. The Director might be an evil bastard, but he's no fool and he'd never throw away assets like us."

"You know if we go back, they'll make us kill for 'em again, anyone they want dead, they'll send us an' we'll have to do it."

"I know. But I don't see where we have a lot of choice here! We've taken out how many facilities, how many people? And they're still there, still grabbing whoever they want and turning them into weapons! It has to stop and we're running out of options." I gripped his hands tight. "This is our best hope of getting them once and for all."

He jerked his hands out of mine and pulled away from me. "I can't believe this. You're really thinkin' about this, aren't you?" He shook his head in disbelief. "No, I won't do it. I won't go back. I'll go into hidin' with Evie before I do that."

I looked down, tears brimming in my eyes. "It's your choice to make, Logan. But my mind is made up. If they come for her and she's not here, if we beat them back and drive them away, I'm going back. Alone if I have to."

His disbelief grew and he scowled at me. "No way. I'll kill you myself and take you outta here before I let you go back to that."

"I'm not giving you a vote, I'm telling you how it is. Believe me, if I had another way, I'd tell you. I'm tired, Logan. I'm tired of doing it one base at a time, one body at a time and it's never the body we want to see. I'm tired of waiting. We know they reactivated Project Prodigal, Bennington told us that much eight years ago. What are they waiting for? Why haven't they come for us? They have to know we live here, that we're part of the X-Men. We're sitting ducks, so why haven't they come?"

He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. "I dunno, maybe they're waitin' to train up a coupla operatives strong enough to take us out."

"No, that's not it and you know it." I leaned forward and chanced touching him again, and he didn't pull away. "They've been waiting for Evie to be old enough to force her mutations to manifest, brainwash her and send her back to kill us. The one guy in the dream said as much to me. Project Prodigal isn't just about getting us back, it's about getting back at us." He looked at our hands, but didn't say anything. "Think about it, what is the one thing, the worst thing they could do to break us?"

"But if we're sendin' her away, they won't get the chance!"

"And they won't stop looking for her either, you know that. How long did they look for us? How much of their money are we walking around with inside us every day? If we give ourselves up, they won't need her."

"Angela, you know what we were like back then. Cold, heartless killers, more animal than human an' you're sittin' there tellin' me you want to go back to that."

The threatening tears finally spilled over and left hot trails on my cheeks. "I don't want to, Logan! But if we really want to protect the people we love, we're gonna have to."

His eyes softened a little and he reached over to brush away my tears with a gentle thumb. "Darlin', I know what you're thinkin' and why you're thinkin' it, but you don't know what you're askin' me to do. We still got plenty o' time before Evie's dream might come true, plenty o' time to take 'em out."

"And what if we don't? What if we fail?"

"We'll worry 'bout that if it happens, all right? But I don't wanna hear anythin' else 'bout goin' back to them."

I nodded, but I didn't say anything because he would know I was lying. I didn't have proof, just paranoia and suspicion, but I had become desperate. We hadn't stopped them, just driven them to their hidey-holes all over the world, let them consolidate and ultimately prepare for our inevitable arrival. "Logan, I'm sorry. I just don't know what else to do."

"I know, darlin', but goin' back to that isn't the answer." He wrapped his arms around me and kissed the top of my head. "We'll find another way."

"Ok." I looked up and smiled weakly through my tears. "You're right, I know you are. I'm just…oh, I don't know what I am."

"You're a worried mom. Crazy decisions come with the territory."

I smacked him lightly. "Oh, you're just impossible!"

"Yeah, I am, but ya love me anyway."

"Gods only know why." I leaned forward and kissed him.

"I ask myself the same thing every day, ya know. Crazy ideas an' all, I love you more'n my own life, but I still don't know why ya love me back."

"It's purely chemical, really. Maybe a touch of adamantium poisoning made me delusional when I saw you all those years ago."

"Sounds 'bout right." He grinned and kissed me again. "C'mon, let's go talk to Sam an' Rogue. That part o' your idea still makes sense."

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I was correct when I thought that Storm and Remy would insist on going along with their respective partners if Evie's dream came true and they had to leave the mansion with my daughter. In fact, Storm wouldn't even hear one word from me about how the other kids at the school needed her more than just my girl. "Angela, back when you first arrived I would have agreed with anything you're about to say. But there are more than enough teachers here now who are more than capable of protecting the school and you are partially responsible for that. It's not like we'll be gone forever, just until we know everyone is safe."

"You do know that could be several days or even weeks, considering the people we're dealing with." I pointed out.

"We know, mon ami." Remy said. "An' if it look like we will be gone more den a few days, we will send Sam an' 'Ro home. Marie an' Remy will find a new place to hide out an' only come back if Charles say it safe to come back."

Marie nodded in agreement. "We'll set somethin' up with Buzz, a special address or a mail drop or somethin', so you can get word to us when it's ok to come back."

I was unexpectedly touched by their understanding, even though I should have expected it. They were some of the finest people I had ever met in my entire life, even Remy with his annoying charm. "Thank you all, so much. I know I don't have the right to ask you to do this for us…"

"Oh, stop that!" Ororo said as she pulled me into a hug. "I was there when that little angel came into the world, remember? I'll keep protecting her for as long as you need me to."

Logan stood up and shook Sam and Remy's hands. "Thanks guys, it means the world to us. We owe ya one."

"Ah, mon ami, it is no big ting." Remy replied with a grin. "You know Remy do anyting for Rogue's family."

"Besides, I'm looking at this as a way of repaying you for wearing a tux for me." Sam said with a wink. "So we'll call it even for us."

Logan grimaced and I laughed. I felt a bit of a weight lift from my shoulders, knowing that we'd done everything we could to keep our daughter safe. Now to do the same for the rest of the world. As we walked back to our suite, I looked up at my lover, my eyes serious. "Well, now that we've done that, I suppose it's time to get back to work."

"Yeah, I s'pose it is." He replied. "Where we gonna go next?"

"Doesn't matter. The result'll be the same. They'll be dead and we'll be a little closer to taking them out." We reached our door but I stopped him before he could open it. "Logan, I just wanted to say sorry for all that stuff I said earlier, about going back."

"It's ok, tiger," he said, "I already told ya, I understand why you were thinkin' that. You're worried, gettin' desperate an' it makes ya think crazy things." He looked down and wouldn't meet my eyes. "I'd be lyin' if I told ya it hadn't crossed my mind before too."

My eyes widened in surprise. "What? When?"

"Just after North Korea, actually. Kept dreamin' 'bout the cages they kept those kids in, 'cept when I got to 'em, it was always Evie in there with a bunch o' probes stickin' outta her. Started thinkin' that if they had me back, just me, maybe they'd leave the two of ya alone. But the thought o' leavin' you was worse'n the thought of what might happen if I didn't, so I didn't."

"How come you never told me?"

He shrugged and looked up at me. "I dunno, guess once I decided not to, it didn't seem important."

I breathed a sigh of relief. Just knowing he'd entertained the same crazy notions made me feel so much better about it. "Well, I suppose it's too late to be mad at you about that."

"More'n likely."

I wrapped my arms around him and stood up my tiptoes to kiss his neck. "I'll let you get away with it this time. But next time, talk to me about it, k?"

"It's a deal." He buried his hand in my hair and kissed me so hard it left me breathless. He broke away just before I was sure I would pass out. "So, ready for bed?"

I looked at the door, then back at him. "Nah, not so much." He quirked his eyebrow and I started backing away from him towards the stairs. "Meet you outside." I whispered, then turned and ran silently down the stairs, knowing he'd follow me in a few minutes. After everything I'd gone through that day, I didn't want to be behind walls. I left my shoes at the door and took off across the grounds, letting the night air wash over me. I had everything I needed for the moment out here; the moon, the wind, the woods and my lover. Everything else could wait.

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AN take two!: This chapter is dedicated to several people, who have done things i consider nothing short of miraculous...to the doctors and nurses and St. Vincent's hospital, for healing my fiancee from an illness that is quite frequently fatal...thanks are not enough. To my sister, my best friend, my best beta reader Turiel Tincdaniel, for holding my hand over AIM and on the cell phone through many tears and tough days...i love you sis! To Dee (MidLifeCrisis), for helping me understand the things that were happening over the past month and a half and for telling me to just update already, it'll make me feel better...chica, you were right! To my daughter, for letting me cry on HER shoulder when things looked so bad i didn't think they'd ever get better...you're my world and i love you more than my own life. And finally, to Zac...neither one of us is perfect and gods only know i'm not an easy woman to love, but i thank those same gods every day that you do...we made it through this together and we're stronger because of it...and now we can start working on the rest of our lives...i love you baby, my own private superhero...i'm yours forever.