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Sam
"You can do this."
Lila closed her eyes and pursed her lips, the only sound in the wide-open space of the Danger Room her heavy breathing and my racing heart. Standing with me face to face, she grasped my hands almost painfully. The time had come for a teleportation test run, just one quick jump. Nothing too taxing on the distance, we had come up with somewhere nice and familiar to her. After too much heated debate among the X-Men, I had volunteered to ride shotgun, stubbornly refusing to let anyone else take my place. Lila was my girl and needed me, and this whole mess, no matter how anyone wanted to whitewash over the facts, was my fault. 'Sides, no need anyone else going along if something went horribly wrong.
I trusted Lila with everything I had, but right now she just didn't trust herself. She had refused to use her powers up to this point, out of fear or guilt, I wasn't sure which weighed heavier on her soul, but I had managed to slowly help her come around, me and Rachel. The confidence was only gonna come back by taking the plunge and using her gift. I let her have a minute and ran my fingers soothingly over her knuckles. Over her head I caught sight of our small audience in the control booth. Hank, Rachel, and Remy eyed us apprehensively. Rachel and the Doc were seated, Rachel's face the picture of serene concentration, probably doing her best to calm Lila with her telepathic powers.
The thought occurred to me that with barely a flex of her mutant muscles Rachel could have ended this mess at any time, taken control of Lila's mind and used her teleportation powers like a puppet master pulling the strings. I shivered. Thank god for people like Rachel, people who used their power for the greater good and not solely for their own selfish purposes. Her mamma and daddy and Charles Xavier would have been real proud of the work she had been doin'.
Gambit was standing next to Hank, leaning over the control panel, one arm resting on the safety glass. He and Rachel had come to a grudging truce, the terms of which I'm sure expired the moment we had Anna and Logan safely back on Earth. In that room, I had a feeling I was looking at what would become the eventual rescue squad. More X-Men would probably want to come after our friends once Lila was up to full speed, that I was sure of, but looking at it like a leader, I knew we couldn't afford to risk more personnel, just didn't make good sense. Lila was the key and she would want me, and that was non-negotiable. Rachel was a huge help to Lila, and her tracking skills and powers, if we needed them, would be invaluable to finding Anna and Logan. Hank was our trauma team, though I hoped that wouldn't be necessary. The rest of us were fairly skilled at field medicine, but if we encountered worse, if our friends had…well it wouldn't hurt to have the Beast's skilled hands and big brains along for the ride. Gambit had his thievin' skills, stealth, and a useful offensive power, and, as much as I was still sore at him for the way things had gone down with him and Ororo, I couldn't deny that he had as much invested in this rescue mission as I did. I had eliminated other teammates in my mind for various reasons, most notably Ororo, who I knew would want to be part of the rescue mission, but, truthfully, I saw her as more of a liability. Yeah, she was headmistress of the school and needed to stay in Westchester for the students, but for me, the big reason I didn't want her was we didn't know where we were going. All we did know was it wasn't Earth, and the unknown way her elemental powers would react on an alien world was a complication I was not prepared to deal with.
But, I was putting the cart before the horse. Again. We still didn't know where our friends were, and no rescue mission could even begin the planning stages without Lila and her powers. I leaned down and kissed the top of her hands, breathing deeply the smell of her perfume.
"Sam…" her voice choked out in a thick panicky whisper. "I can't…" I pulled her hands up to rest on my chest and let her feel the thud of my heart.
"Yes, you can." Her eyes met mine for a brief second, and then snapped away. This wasn't the first time we had been through this, not the first time she had tried for a successful teleportation. I had defended her, vehemently, every time she had backed down on her previous tries, saying she just needed more time, that she wasn't ready, that we were pushing her too hard, too fast. She was beyond ready; she was just scared and that fear was holding her back. Nobody could help her but herself, and if she couldn't do this, didn't do this, she would be crippled the rest of her life, the refusal to use her powers becoming a loss the same way losing a limb or your sight would be. I couldn't have that. I turned her face towards mine with one hand under her chin, the other still clasping hers to my chest, and shifted tactics.
"When did you learn to swim, Lila?" She furrowed her brows in confusion and blinked a few times.
"What?"
"When did you learn to swim? Were you a kid? Older?"
"No, not older. A kid, I guess. I don't remember exactly how old, but it was before things went bad. What does this..?" I smiled and she stopped mid-sentence, giving me the 'Guthrie, you're crazy' look she sometimes gave me.
"Y'ever dive off the high board at the pool?" She smiled faintly.
"Oh, yeah. Loved it. The lifeguards wouldn't let you go in the deep end, or off the high board, until you could swim two lengths of the pool. As soon as they let me, you couldn't keep me from jumping." I smiled softly back at her.
"So, first time you climbed that ladder up onto that high board, bam, into the water, love at first jump?" She laughed.
"No way. Totally chickened out. Got all the way up there, peeped over the edge, and just froze. I remember this older kid was behind me…god, I think his name was Matt…Matt Nielsen…he was calling me names and I had to get on my hands and knees and crawl backwards off the board and do the walk of shame by him to get down the ladder. It was humiliating."
"But you eventually did it. What, did somebody throw you off it or something?"
"No, nobody made me. One day I just got back up there, took a deep breath and jumped." Her face screwed up, and she gave me a patronizing look. "Jesus, Guthrie, really? That was your big motivational speech?" I squeezed both her hands again, and put just a little space between us.
"What can I say? Simple is sometimes best." A tremor shook through her. "Come on girl, you can do this. I know you can do this. Show that Matt Nielsen who's boss." She closed her eyes again.
"What if something goes wrong? What if I hurt you?"
"And what if you could have our friends back home tonight?" She met my gaze and her eyes swam with the guilt that I had done my best to shield her from. It had been eight months since the attack, and every spare minute they were there, in my heart, in my head, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one tortured by their continued absence. The X-Men were missing a huge piece of their soul, and the road to their possible return had been slow and painful for everyone involved. "You can do this," I whispered and she nodded. "Just take a deep breath and jump."
For a split second I thought she had talked herself out of it again, but my heart near popped out my throat when I saw the glow of her powers surround us, felt that tug as we melted from the light into the darkness. There was a flash, and Lila sprawled onto the ground before I was aware enough to catch her. I held her dark hair from her face while she vomited onto the sand now beneath our feet.
"It's all right, we're all right," I rubbed small circles on her back and looked at where we had landed. Like we had discussed, we appeared to be on some distant beach. It was night, the water near us illuminated by two identical crescent moons hanging low in the sky. We were alone, but in the distance I could see the glittering lights of a city, the shapes forming alien buildings that reached for the night sky. "We made it, Lila." Away from any potential collateral damage, just like we had planned. Lila wretched again.
"Peachy…" She mumbled and spat into the sand. I put my arms around her.
"Can you stand?"
"Don't know…maybe…"I helped her to her feet and she slumped heavily against me.
"Maybe not?" I gingerly sat her back down, her small frame thick against me.
"Jus' need a few…minutes…" Her labored breathing steadied while I held her. The more I looked around, the more familiar the place looked. The memories smacked me upside the head.
"You brought me here before! I've been here, haven't I?" Long time ago. Bit younger, lot stupider, one hell of a weekend with the great thief and rock star Lila Cheney. "Lila?" I shook her gently, but she was fast asleep against me,snoring softly. "Shit." I settled back with her on the sand, figured she had earned herself a snooze. I'd wake her soon,didn't let myself think of what would happen if I couldn't. In the meantime, I watched the suns come up, trying my best to send good thoughts to our surely worried friends halfway across the galaxy, waiting for our return to the Danger Room.
Rogue
Logan angrily cleared more leaves, cursing loudly with each new found step. A path began to reveal itself, and he crouched low over the tracks, inhaling deeply. The footprints were barely bigger than your average human male, maybe the equivalent of a size 16, the heel narrow, the toe bed wider and slightly triangulated.
"C'mere, darlin'," he gestured, pulling me close to him and down towards the ground. I could hear his heart thudding, each hammering beat a match for mine. His eyes were icy blue intensity as he spoke, his breath hot and urgent in my ear. "What do you smell?"
Damn me for being a lousy student. Using his senses every day hadn't gained me any skill or finesse, I still felt like a toddler taking shaky steps, but I bent low and sniffed, tasted the flavor of the air and the ground.
"I smell…you…" leather, musk, that comforting deep woodsy smell that made heat flush through me "…leaves, the trees…" dry, crunchy, decaying and dirty, but sharp "…the cold…" frost where it was still shadows, water where I could taste the sunlight "…birds…" feathers, the motion of the breeze "…fur…" the creature's body, but something else, something warm, alive. I was frustrated, if there was something he wanted to ask me, why didn't he just goddamned…I froze when my nose caught ahold of something that shouldn't have been there. Eyes wide but confused, I looked up at Logan. "Salt?" I inhaled deeply and swirled the smell through my throat and onto my tongue. Salt wasn't quite it, wasn't enough of a description. "Logan, it smells like the ocean." He nodded solemnly.
"It's layered all over these tracks, along with something else that I can't quite…" he sniffed the ground again furiously. "Whatever that something else is, that unknown smell? That's what this thing stinks like. Remember it, soak it in." He grabbed ahold of my wrist and squeezed hard. "Look at those tracks, Anna. The gait, the spacing? This thing walks like a man, its humanoid." He was excited, that action junkie lust thick on him, but there was also the faint smell of worry, of panic coloring the edges of him. I stood slowly and hugged myself in the chill air. I had wanted, had needed to go home, desperately, since the moment my eyes had snapped open on this damn planet. The longer we had stayed, the more impossible some last reel rescue seemed. Being here, getting closer to Logan, everything we had shared had complicated my chest-crushing homesickness in infinitely intricate ways. Sure, we had been fighting daily for our survival, both of us nearly dying, but through all the pain and hardship and the struggle we had found something, at least I thought we had, something special and passionate and real. I wasn't sure I was ready to give it up. Like he read my mind, Logan stood and put his arms around me from behind, placed his scruffy warm cheek against mine.
"We can ignore it, darlin', if you want. We can pretend we never found these tracks, and we can turn around and walk back into those woods. Keep on going until we hit that waterfall. We could make a life there, just you and me, Anna. Us against this world. It'd be hard, but we could hunt and fish and make new clothes and soap…we could have a home on this planet, no more running." I could see it, see us, see that life he described crystal clear in my mind, and god help me, part of me wanted it, wanted it so bad I could taste it. The rest of me saw it as giving up.
"What about our friends?" He sighed and pulled me tighter, his heat and smell making me tremble. "Do we just forget about them, forget about what we left behind?"
"I know darling. Tough choices seem to be all we have left. We could hide away in our little rugged paradise, or we could go after this thing, follow its path and see if it leads us to some sort of civilization, some chance at getting back to Earth. I know it seems like a slim chance, but it's a chance. Knowing us, there's probably a better chance that following this thing will land us in a whole heap of trouble." We stood like that, him holding me, his chin on my shoulder while he rocked us back and forth, neither one of us wanting to break the spell. I turned my face towards his, touching our foreheads together.
"You want to go after this thing? This briny smelling fella?" He grunted and it rumbled my shoulder pleasantly.
"You use your powers to read my mind, Anna?"
"You know I didn't, sugar." He was quiet for a moment.
"Darlin', as nice as it sounds…playin' house with you, it seems like hiding to me."
"Then why did you suggest it?" My voice was thickening with lousy unshed tears. He turned me around in his arms and caressed my cheek with his rough palm.
"Thought maybe that was what you wanted." I was too tangled up inside to know what I wanted, but I was touched he had been willing to give that much to me. Deep down to my soul, I wanted it all: a rescue, to go home safe and sound, Logan, but I didn't know any possible way for those things to come together. Going home meant losing Logan, and that horrible realization sent torrents of hot tears trailing down my cheeks. He wiped them away and kissed me softly, a kiss of sweet longing and tenderness that nearly knocked my knees out from under me. He pulled away, his eyes suddenly sad with the promise of what might have been.
"Ready, darlin'?"
"As I'll ever be, sugar." I sniffed the tracks again while he was gathering up our fallen meager belongings. That smell, I burned that salty ocean breeze into my memory. We could be following that deep briny scent into hell, but I would do it for him, for Logan. He stood beside me, and there was so much I wanted to say to him in that moment, but I choked on the words before they even formed.