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Sam

I let her sleep as long as she needed, but I could feel the impatience like a physical force pushing through the air vents of the spacecraft. Truth was, I was pretty damned impatient myself. It was torture sitting there and watching her sleep, willing her awake with every breath. I had been on enough of her test runs to know that she would wake up when she could, she would be knocked out anywhere between three and ten hours depending on the distance of the teleportation. Was gonna make the next jump real problematic, but there wasn't much to be done about it now. We were committed.

We were teleporting into the exact spot Anna and Logan had landed all those months ago, but we had no idea what to expect of the planet beyond it being habitable. We were still way too far away for the ship's sensors to tell us any specifics. One of the pluses of Rachel, Hank, and Lila studying her powers and past destinations for all this time was the discovery that Lila's teleportation powers unconsciously honed in on worlds that could handle and sustain humans: breathable air, gravity just about right, tolerable temperatures. Not paradises, mind you, but sustainable. That revelation sent a collective sigh of relief through the school, but sustainable didn't mean free of danger. Lila was going to port us in and drop pretty much unconscious while the rest of us began the search for our missing friends. None of us knew for sure what this place was going to look like, or what we would face where the portal materialized on this mystery world, or if Anna and Logan would be anywhere near it. There were any number of really valid reasons why they would have moved on from their original teleportation destination. Who knew what they had tackled in nine months' time, or what was waiting for us. I threw back the sheet and pulled on my sweats and a t-shirt. I couldn't just sit there. I needed to do something, anything, to keep my mind off of them.

I kissed Lila's forehead, and headed for the storage bay. We were staging our next jump from there, figured I would go over the supplies we had brought with one more time. Nobody else was roaming the halls, Captain Korvus's crew was pretty small and had been keeping to themselves so far. It made me a little twitchy working with people I barely knew for something this important, especially considering their backgrounds, but Rachel fiercely vouched for Korvus and I trusted her.

I passed Hank in the ship's sickbay. He waved as I walked by, looking about as ready to chitchat as I did. His face was determined but nervous, and he looked to be packing up a portable first aid kid to take with us. Was sure we each had one in our backpacks already, but the aliens probably had a few technological upgrades we hadn't gotten yet.

The storage bay's doors swished open to reveal Gambit sitting cross-legged on the cold metal floor, the contents of his pack laid out and carefully arranged in front of him. He lifted his dark eyes and nodded my direction, the doors sliding shut behind me in a muffled hiss.

"She's still sleeping," I offered him, knowing it would be his first question. "You couldn't?" He raised an eyebrow at me. "Sleep, I mean. You couldn't sleep?"

"Non." Guessed he wasn't in the mood to chat either. I found my pack and flopped onto the floor near him, proceeding to empty my bag for what seemed like the tenth time since I had packed it. First aid kit, rations, potable water kit, insulated blanket, hunting knife, flashlight, matches, hand sanitizer, spare bodysuit. We had come prepared, but packed light. I didn't know if we would have to camp or hike, or for how long. If we started to run short on food and supplies, if we had to search for them for too long, Lila would have to risk another jump back to the ship to restock us. Korvus said they would wait as long as we needed them to, but no one had yet asked what would happen if we couldn't find our friends, or how long we would look for them. My stomach swam and nervous tingles traveled up my arms and legs. Had they given up hope on us? It had been so long…

"Hey, you okay, Samuel?" Gambit touched my shoulder and I blinked, shuddering out of my bad thoughts.

"Yeah, I think so." I sighed, not really wanting to open up to him, but suddenly drowning in hopelessness. "Just…scared, y'know? Of what we'll find?" He grunted in agreement. "I've tried to not let myself think of them being hurt…or dead…but getting ready for this rescue, going over all the what ifs, knowing that we only scratched the surface on the possibilities of what they have been facing, knowing that we're risking all of our lives…it makes me sick to my stomach. It took us too long to come for them, and it makes me feel mighty ashamed, like we abandoned them." I pinched the bridge of my nose to stop the tears that were burning my eyes. The last person I wanted to cry in front of was Gambit.

"Those two know we didn't give up on them." I held my hands up, exasperated.

"But you did. You did." I hadn't talked to him about Ororo since the day Rachel and I had walked in on them. The face he pulled looked like he had swallowed something nasty.

"You gonna go all Bobby Drake on me now? This close to finishing this?" With his face still looking like it was tasting that bad taste, he started stuffing things irately back into his pack. "I fucked up. I get it. I broke up with her, sent her to that villain's bed hoping she'd get him out of her system after that BS with Haller and Moira had her head all twisted 'round. Figured I'd let her go, let her come back to me in her own time, but we never got there." His voice rose sharply, his packing rougher. "I shouldn't have to explain this to you or to anybody. I've done my penance, but I am sick of the way you all look at me, Drake especially, like I cheated on her. We weren't together, and she had made that perfectly clear. She was the one who went to somebody else, a genocidal terrorist who on occasion tried to kill each and every one of us, and y'all are willing to forgive her that, but me? I'm the scumbag. I'm the dirty cheat. I love her. I love her. Every night I dream of her, and its ripping me apart inside. I can't live like this anymore, don't want to feel like this. I will always love her, but lately all she let me be is her friend, and through all this I found out that her friendship can make a man real lonely." He fumed for a minute and I let him before I spoke again.

"Do you know what you're going to say to Anna? When we rescue her?" He ran a hand shakily through his chin length hair and grimaced.

"When we rescue her? Non, Samuel. I have no fucking idea." Rachel's telepathic voice intruded into our minds.

"Lila's awake, boys. Time to get this show on the road."

Remy zipped his backpack and stood. "Better get suited up, Sammy. Now or never." He stepped towards the doors, but I jumped up after him.

"Bobby's wrong, Remy. Even with everything that's happened, you've always been Anna's hero, her knight in shining armor." He grunted.

"Guess that's what makes it so sad, eh?"

Rogue

I woke up on my side, all twisted arms and legs, breathing air from lungs. I ran my hands tentatively along my neck, and swallowed in relief to find the gills gone, the skin smooth beneath my fingertips. Fresh panic stabbed through me. Logan. Where was he? I couldn't smell him, the only trace of him was his residual scent on my clothes.

'Let it go' he had said, but I hadn't, not all of it. We needed the information I had stolen from that slimy sniper, and I shuffled feverishly through it in my brain, looking around slowly at my surroundings. I was in some sort of cylindrical glass tank, like a live well on a fishing boat, only mine was filled with air, a breathable space for the captured land animals on the water logged ship. I could see out onto the bridge, but only with effort. It was dark and murky, like opening your eyes in the bottom of a lake. I saw our two attackers, seated at lighted consoles, alien numbers and symbols I was quickly forgetting flashing on screens and displays in front of them. I didn't see another air tank. I swallowed a panicked scream. Oh Jesus H. Christ. Had they killed Logan? The last thing I remembered was getting slammed in the head by the briny-bastard on the left, then nothing. Must have been a hell of a hit to totally knock me out with my borrowed healing factor working to wake me up.

Think, dammit! Remember, before you lose what you took from him. Him. They were both males of their species. Water breathers, descended from fish, scuba diving in our air just like we did in the oceans. Hunting. Soldiers, I caught flashes of floating squadrons. They were a patrol, crawling up the rivers, defending their territory…and they found us, how strange we looked to them…when the one I absorbed…his name was on the tip of my tongue, but I didn't have the vocal structures to pronounce it, or to speak their language, not in the air anyway…when he didn't return from their final sweep before returning to their boat and heading towards base, protocol had dictated his partner call for help before going to look for him. From the blips on their screen, and the pair's frantic movements swimming through the water of the bridge, they were meeting up with the rest of their squad. I had to get out of here. If they rendezvoused, took me to a base or a city, there would be too many for me to fight, and they would dissect me, cut me into little pieces. I needed to make a break for it while there was just the two of them, and while we were still in the river. If we pushed into the ocean…I wouldn't find Logan. I choked the panic down.

They weren't watching me, probably figured I would be knocked out for a while. My eyes moved around the edges of my tank. Their ship didn't look to be the most technologically advanced vessel I had ever been on, but the tank appeared to be air tight, its thick glass walls one smooth curve. No junctures or seams to wiggle my claws into, but my air had to be coming in from somewhere. I rolled onto my back, the tank wasn't wide enough at the bottom for me to stretch out my legs and my knees knocked against the heavy glass. There was a vent and fan at the top of the tank, a good ten feet above me. I couldn't jump to it, but if I could shimmy up the sides of the tank... It was narrow enough I could touch both sides with my arms stretched out, I reckoned. Then what? They would see me before my claws could damage the air vent, and I didn't know if I could cut a hole big enough for me to climb out before they hurt me or before the tank filled with water. I sighed and rolled my eyes. Were my powers really my only other option? If I could get ahold of one of them again, breathe underwater and get the other one, too, then maybe... Despair swallowed me, and the air vent blurred with hot, angry tears. He had to be all right, I refused to believe he could be dead, not after everything we had been through. I would not let it end like this. Logan! My body shook with silent sobs, the pain pouring out of me by the bucketful. A warm feeling, soft like the wings of a bird, wrapped itself around me.

"Don't cry…" A familiar voice whispered faintly in my mind. I jumped sky high.

"Rachel!?"