"True courage is when one sees the danger in front of him, and runs to it anyways."
[xxxxx]
Chapter 12: Acknowledged and Unafraid
Samantha awoke with a jolt, followed by heavy breaths. She sat up in bed and wiped the cold seat from her forehead, then tried to steady her breathing.
It was another one of those blasted dreams again. She shut her eyes and tried to remember the details, but nothing came to mind. Samantha had been having a lot of bad dreams lately. She didn't know if they were clairvoyant or not, but it didn't quite matter since she had been remembering them.
She leaned across the bed and switched on the light before standing up and stretching. The clock read midnight. She had been asleep for less than an hour.
Taking a robe from her closet and grabbing the device that Hank had given her, Samantha shut off her light and quietly slipped out of the room.
In the hallway, it was dark. It took her a few wrong turns before she found the staircase, but nevertheless, she did.
She guessed that the X-Men hadn't come home yet; otherwise Hank would've woken her up. Absentmindedly, she gripped the device tighter in her hand.
After reaching the main floor, Samantha made her way toward the living room, where she intended to catch up on the nightly news. Probably just some more depressing stories. She thought, and took a sigh.
"Oh!" Samantha suddenly exclaimed, falling to the floor. She landed on her stomach, but luckily protected her face with her arms. She sat up, rubbing the spot on her elbow that had hit the hard wood floor.
Standing up, Samantha inspected the floor to see what she had tripped over. Lying in the middle of the hallway was a a large black mass. She couldn't see what it was in the darkness, so she knelt down and laid her hands over it gently.
"Oh my..." She breathed.
From the soft rise and fall of breathing and the familiar warmth of flesh, she found that this large black mass was actually a child- a student.
Gently, she turned the child over and made sure that breathing and heart rate were normal. They were. Next, she lightly shook the girl. Even after turning a light on, she couldn't put a name to her face.
"Wake up, darling..." She whispered softly, still shaking the girl. "Please wake up..."
After a few more pleads, the girl's eyes fluttered open and her lips began to quiver.
"It's okay now," Samantha reassured her. "Everything's alright. Can you speak?"
The girl's lip twitched. "Yes..." She said in a barely audible voice.
"Good. That's very good. Can you tell me what happened?"
"I d-don't know..." She stuttered. "My head h-hurts..." The little girl groaned, lifting a hand to her forehead.
Samantha lifted the girl into her lap and carefully inspected all around her scalp. On the back of her head, part of her dark hair was matted and sticky. Lightly, she touched the spot, and the girl winced.
On the tips of her own fingers, Samantha found blood.
"Listen to me," She said to the girl almost immediately. "You may have a concussion. Don't move... Do you understand?"
"Yes." She said. But Samantha wasn't assured.
Laying the girl back down on the floor, she stood. She would've moved her into the living room or down to the medical bay, but Samantha was sure she wasn't strong enough to carry her.
[xxxxx]
"We're getting a message from one of the comms." Storm announced to the rest of the X-Men and gestured to a blinking red light on the control panel.
"It must be Samantha." Hank said, acknowledging a disapproving glare from Logan. "I gave her mine in case anything went wrong." He pressed the switch that would answer the call.
"Hello?" He spoke.
"Hank, where are you? Are you far?" Samantha's voice said frantically.
"What is it, Sam?"
"There's a girl... A student... she's hurt. Attacked, I think. I didn't know if their still here. I..." She took a deep breath. "I think you need to come home. Now."
Hank looked at Storm, who sat in the pilot's seat next to him. She nodded once.
"Don't worry, Sam. We're on our way."
[xxxxx]
"It was a goddamn trap! The oldest trick in the whole fucking book, and we fell for it like a bunch of fucking farm boys."
"Logan, language."
"Yeah, asshole."
"Warren."
Everyone stood in what used to be Control's holding cell. The dented and destroyed door was evidence of Magneto's visit, but aside from that, the rest of the building had been left pristine.
Hank and Samantha were busy with the injured children- there weren't many, thankfully. Kurt was taking roll call with the students while Storm, Logan and Warren stood there, the anger swelling up inside all of them.
"I should've seen this coming." Logan muttered.
"None of us could have foreseen this, Logan."
"Well, Samantha could..." Warren muttered, but Storm hushed him with an angry look.
"We can only look toward the future." She continued. "We cannot change the past."
"Or we could just find a time traveller."
"Warren, leave. See how Hank's moving along. Now." Storm commanded sternly.
"But-"
"Now." She repeated.
Warren rolled his eyes and strolled out of the room, decided that it wasn't worth fighting Storm over this one.
As he strolled down the corridors, he flapped his wings and hummed. He liked it down in the sub-levels. It was quiet and cool; best of all the hallways were wide enough to fit his wings. He didn't have to wear that stupid leather harness.
"Hey Hank." Warren said as he entered the infirmary. "How we doing?"
Hank sat at the bedside of a student, tying up stitches. "If you don't mind, Warren, I'm a bit preoccupied." He said, attention fixed on the boy's wound.
"Sorry." He muttered.
Warren watched as he finished stitching up the boy and cleansing the wound.
"Try not to move too much or scratch it, okay?" Hank said, standing up and stripping off his latex gloves.
The boy nodded and stared at the spot on his arm.
"Storm wants a status report." Warren said as he and Hank wandered away from the medical beds, out of earshot from the students.
Hank sighed. "There's not much news, I'm afraid. We have three concussions, two deep wounds and a broken finger."
"A broken finger?"
"She slammed her finger in a door. Completely unrelated to the attack."
"Oh." Warren paused. "Have you heard anything from Kurt?"
Hank looked over at the students to make sure they weren't listening in, and turned away slightly. "There are four students missing." He whispered carefully.
"What?" He asked, surprised. "Who are they?"
"Jake Barrington, Evan Daniels, Tabitha Smith and Amy Burrows."
"The Snake Gang..." Warren muttered.
Hank nodded. "I don't expect they were kidnapped either. Knowing Jacob, I'd say he took the fight into his own hands."
There was a bit of silence and Warren sighed. "Does Samantha know?" He asked.
Hank shrugged. "Yes and no. I told her, but I led her to believe that Jake was captured by Magneto. I didn't want her thinking that her son had just jumped into his own grave."
"And she believed you?"
"Why wouldn't she?" He said with a smirk.
[xxxxx]
Quietly, Logan slipped inside Lenore's room, trying not to make a whole lot of noise. Nevertheless, as soon as he shut the door, he could hear her stirring under the sheets.
"Logan?" Her voice cutting into the dark silence. "Is that you?"
"Yeah." He answered softly. Even in the dark, he navigated his way over to the window and sat down in the chair that was always reserved for him. He stayed silent, listening to Lenore's soft breathing.
"Logan?" She said again.
"Yeah?"
"Adrian's gone, isn't she?" Her voice wasn't happy, nor was it scared or angry. It was apathetic, a statement of fact.
For some reason, he wasn't surprised, but he wondered how she knew. "Yeah, she is." He paused. "How'd you know?"
He heard the sheets shift and she turned over in bed. "I don't know. I think Adrian told me... through her thoughts. She let me know. Somehow."
Logan kept quiet, rolling it over in his mind. It seemed like something that Control would do - she'd rub that in her sister's face, perhaps try to make her feel afraid. And she could make her as afraid as she wanted to, but she wasn't going to touch Lenore as long as he was around. If she managed to get back into the mansion, that's where she would rot, with three stab wounds right in the gut. Maybe in the chest.
"She doesn't scare me anymore." Lenore continued. "I know she wants to scare me, but she doesn't. Not as long as you're here."
He didn't reply. He had nothing to say. It didn't matter if Lenore wasn't scared or not. Either way, Control would do whatever she wanted to Lenore if she got the chance. But she wouldn't, because he was watching her.
"Go back to sleep, Lenny." Logan said stalely, and he listened to Lenore as she turned over in bed and drifted off to sleep.
Not the best, mostly because it was quickly put-together. A sort of filler chapter.
I don't know why I love giving things cheesy names, but I do. "Jake the Snake"; "The Snake Gang"? I question myself about that sometimes.
Edited by my wonder of a beta, martshi3!
I saw that quote somewhere on a motivational poster or something like that... so I just sort of wrote it to sound nice. If anyone knows where the quote is from, it would be wonderful of you to tell me!