The banging on the door was excruciating. Oh, my head. Sitting up, she winced at the pounding in her skull. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up on a wad of paper towels. Why did I drop these here? She bent to pick them up when the banging started up again.
"Ro, get up." It was Scott's voice. "We have an emergency. Meeting downstairs now."
"I'm up," she croaked. She was surprised by the painful irritation in her throat and nose. Groaning, she made a note to herself to get some cold medicine. Maybe I should have worn a coat last night, after all. Rummaging clumsily through her drawers, she quickly gave up the idea of changing her clothes and headed downstairs.
What she encountered in the Professor's office was a cacophony of sounds. Jean was trying to console a weeping Anna Marie while Logan shouted at Xavier and, just for good measure, Scott. Kurt's attempts to calm people down with moral platitudes served only to rile Logan even more.
Xavier glanced wearily at her as she approached. "Sabretooth and Mystique escaped," he said simply.
"What?" she asked incredulously. Then, looking at Anna Marie crying pitieously, a sickening feeling came over her. "Anna Marie, are you hurt?"
Jean shook her head. "Thank goodness no. She was knocked out with chloroform, but she's basically fine, except for a little headache."
"I'm so sorry," Anna Marie wailed. "I just thought Logan was hurt."
Ororo looked around for someone to explain things to her, and Scott spoke up. "Mystique took Logan's form. Then, this 'Logan' told Marie that Mystique had escaped and locked him in the cell. When Marie released 'him,' Mystique knocked her out with some choroform that was left in the basement for subduing Sabretooth."
"But why was Anna Marie standing watch? She's just a child."
"Exactly," Logan seethed, glaring at Scott. "See? It's obvious to everyone but you." The shouting erupted again, and it was several minutes before a semblance of order was recovered. It took even longer for Ororo to get the full story, but eventually she learned that Jean and Xavier had decided to spend the night in Montreal after their day-long medical conference. Scott had been on watch, but had to pick-up Logan from a bar in Syracuse where Logan had been stranded after a bar fight - a "scuffle" Logan called it - which had damaged his bike. Anna Marie had been so eager to take on responsibility, and since the watches had by and large been uneventful, and since both Sabretooth and Mystique had been asleep at the time, Scott had decided to let her get her feet wet by taking over his watch for a couple hours while he was gone. He had assumed it would be a very easy assignment.
"So where are they now?" Ororo asked Xavier.
The Professor shook his head. "They had approximately 2 and a half hours before Jean and I arrived home and noticed their absence. I've tried, but they are too far away for me to sense without the help of Cerebro, which means they are too far away for us to easily recover, if at all."
"Says you, Professor," Logan growled. "You send me, and I'll recover them."
"I appreciate your willingness to attempt a reapprehension, but it would not be a good use of your time. I had hoped to reach out to one or the both of them while they were in our custody. But even in the unlikely event that we were able to bring either of them back, their resolve against cooperating with us has only been reinforced by this escape. Perhaps one day, we will have another opportunity."
Logan grunted in disgust. "This whole place stinks of Sabretooth now, and for nothing." He stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Scott looked none to happy either, but retained his composure. One by one, the team filed out of the office until only Ororo and Xavier remained. Before she left, Ororo patted the Professor gently on the back. "If it's any consolation, I think you were right to try." Xavier smiled gratefully in reply.
When she returned to her room, she picked up the wad of paper towels she had left on her floor. Was I blowing my nose last night? As she moved to toss them in the wastebasket, she caught a wiff of something acrid. Bringing the towels closer to her face, she gasped.
Chloroform.
Inklings of her dream stirred in the back of her mind, and though she couldn't remember it, not really, she found herself quivering with displaced arousal. Oh, Goddess. She tried her hardest to remember what if anything had happened. She stripped in front of the mirror, but found no conclusive evidence of... All she found was a mild discoloring at the base of her throat, but it seemed too expansive to be from someone's mouth. Although Sabretooth does have a large bite.
There was one way to find out for sure; bring Logan to her room and have him sniff it out. Standing nude with her nightgown in her hands, however, she was paralyzed with indecision. Slowly, she brought the gown up to her nose and inhaled, thinking, half-hoping that her unsophisticated nose would sense nothing. But it didn't sense nothing. It sensed something. It was weak, a lingering faded scent of musk that she instantly recognized. Musk. His musk. And she was nearly knocked down with a deluge of memory. The sensations from the night before, the feeling of his hands on her breasts, on her abdomen, on her thighs were suddenly back in vivid detail, more clearly than they had been the night before. She was overwhelmed with longing for his touch, and for a moment she let herself wallow in it.
But then the moment was over. You are not well, Ororo. Shaking with dismay for herself, she threw the nightgown in the laundry chute. She stripped the bed and pillows and threw the linens in the chute after it. The freshmen were given the task of house laundry, and though the staff often complained that they used too much bleach, this time, it was exactly what she wanted. Finally, she turned on the shower as hot as she could stand it and climbed in and stayed until the water ran cold.