Hello, here's chapter 41, hope you enjoy!

Laurien sat cross-legged on the front concrete stairs of the mansion, protected from the biting morning chill by a large grey woolen cardigan around her shoulders and a mug of tea warming her hands. The sky had long since begun to lighten as the sun crept up from the East, casting its light across the lawn of the property and causing the strands of dew-laden grass to glint like sequins on a sweeping piece of green fabric.

She hadn't been able to sleep after her conversation with Charles, so she decided to instead make some tea and wait for the sunrise. She took tentative sips from her mug, careful not to burn her tongue as the sweet aroma of mint overwhelmed her senses. Detaching a hand from around the mug, she held her palm up to her cheek, relishing in its intense contrast to her chilled face.

"Hey, kid." Logan's gruff voice suddenly cut through the morning quiet, though thankfully, soft enough as to not startle Laurien into spilling her tea.

"Good morning." She greeted, glancing up at him as he strolled down the steps to her level before stopping, his hands planted in his jean pockets as he glanced out at the beauty before them.

"You're up early." He commented plainly.

Laurien found her eyebrow raising slightly as she turned her gaze from him to continue blindly observing the morning. "Says you."

"Have you eaten?"

"No."

"You planning on it?"

Laurien faltered, before taking a deep breath, reminding herself that the question was innocent enough. "Maybe. I'm just finding it difficult to even really think about it since– um…"

"Sera." Logan nodded in understanding before looking out at the view, the refreshing morning breeze faintly ruffling his styled hair. "It's good to be back here again."

"1973?" Laurien wondered, furrowing her brow. "Or the mansion?"

"The mansion." He clarified. "It looks the almost exactly same as it was. Though we had basketball courts, tennis, volleyball…" Logan trailed off, as if trying to remember what else there had been. "A heck of a lot of video games."

Laurien frowned. "Video games?"

Logan paused and then turned to look at her strangely. "Have you never seen a video game before?"

"Uh, not that I know of."

"Not even an arcade game?" He prodded.

Laurien scoffed. "I feel as if your disbelief towards me is a little unfair considering we're from different centuries."

"Alright, I'll lay off." He grinned, raising up his hands in submission.

"The most advanced game I've ever played is pinball." She admitted, feeling as if she must seem greatly uneducated from Logan's perspective. "Besides that, my experience is mostly limited to board games."

"Well, if that's the case, I'd advise you to buy stocks in Namco or Nintendo in the next couple of years."

Laurien chuckled at the ridiculousness of it all, having never heard the names before, and having no such interest in either video games or stocks. "Alright then, I'll keep that in mind." She said placatingly.

A flock of geese passed noisily overhead, seemingly returning after spending the winter season somewhere enviably warm. Logan and Laurien watched them shrink into small specks off in the distance, and when they disappeared, Laurien found herself yearning after them.

"Is it still standing in the future?" She asked to break the silence, holding the mug closer to her lips, so that she was practically talking into her tea. "The mansion?"

"Yes." Logan's eyes darkened and an unmistakable misery flowed from his body, prompting her to shift uncomfortably in her seat. "But we had to evacuate. As of now, back in the future, it's being overrun by sentinels."

From what Laurien had gathered over the past couple of days, and from what she had found on the picture reel she'd stolen from Erik when she finally gave in to her curiosity, she knew sentinels to be large robots. Robots with the capability of taking life on a massive scale, if need be.

She had a difficult time imagining such monstrous things in the mansion, patrolling the lawns and taking up residence in the library with their all their futuristic bits and bobbles, but the dread that Logan emitted at their very thought sent shivers down her spine. "I'm sorry." She sympathized, gripping her mug a little tighter.

A particularly strong gust of wind assaulted them from the West, causing Laurien's dark caramel hair to tickle her face and impede her vision momentarily before it returned to its acceptable place. Over the past couple of years, her hair had darkened gradually, which she supposed was just a familial trait of getting older, considering her mother's hair had been fair when she was younger, and almost chocolate brown by the time she was thirty. As for how Sera had flaming red hair, she hadn't the slightest clue, perhaps a mutation side-effect.

"Did you have horses?" She asked Logan suddenly.

The man frowned, his mood lightening as his focus shifted. "No."

"Hmm, you'll have to talk to Charles about fixing that error after we change things in the future."

Logan paused, contemplating as he pulled out a cigar from his pocket. "You think we're going to make it?"

"Mmm, I don't know." Laurien stated truthfully after another sip of tea. "It's a nice thought, at least."

"Good tea?"

"Mmmhmm." She hummed contently. "Are you more of a tea or coffee kind of fellow?"

"Whiskey." He grunted out as he lowered himself down gingerly to sit beside her on the concrete stairs.

"Ah." Laurien nodded, stifling a laugh. She flicked a small stone from one of the steps with her free hand, before a thought came to mind. "Look, I really appreciate what you did down there yesterday. I think it's going to make a real difference for Charles."

"It's nothing, he has done– uh– will do the same and much more for me in a few decades." A far off look glazed over Logan's eyes momentarily before he seemed to snap back to reality and tended to preparing his cigar. "He saved my life many times over."

"He's good at that, saving people." Laurien stated, absentmindedly stretching her legs out before her that had become stiff from sitting cross-legged. "Just seems like people who are, can't do the same for themselves."

"Usually, it's the people who save others, who hurt the most. They save to try and make themselves whole again." The man shared, his own words seemingly hitting a chord with himself as his hands paused their work. "Is that why you became a nurse?"

Laurien startled at the sudden shift. "How did you–"

Logan simply waved her inquiry away, beckoning for her to carry on and explain, as he placed the cigar in his mouth and lit it.

"Um, it just called out to me, I guess." She tried weakly, hoping that he couldn't tell that she was bullshitting him.

"Come on, kid, it's more than that." He garbled out from around the smoking cigar.

Laurien glanced into his hazel eyes, searching for any malice in his direction of conversation, yet she found none, only gentle persuasion. She took a deep breath. "After my parents' deaths, I kind of gravitated toward it. It was healing in a way, took my mind to a place where it would focus on the plights of other people, and not my own. It was good." She paused, the words feeling odd in her mouth after all this time. "It– It felt good."

She paused momentarily before grimacing, resisting the urge to bury her head in her hands. "Jesus, that sounds terrible."

"No, no, it's fine." Logan told her, his calming atmosphere soothing her doubts. "Go on."

"When I started staying with Charles and Hank here, I finished my degree and found an opening at Northern Westchester Hospital." In her mind's eye, she envisioned the pristine white tiled hallways which always seemed to be more hectic during a long weekend. Multiple times a day, she'd have to wash the blood of a patient from her hands, as she worked in Emergency. Sometimes, it was almost impossible to get the blood out from under her nails. "There was chaos and it was messy, there were daily disappointments, sorrow, and more than my fair share of frustrating moments, but it just seemed to tune out all of the excessive noise going on inside my head."

She shifted where she sat on the step, considering her life at the mansion. "It was a good couple of years, strangely enough. The school was flourishing, the hospital kept my mind busy and Charles…" She paused, brief memories of his smiling face flashing in the forefront of her mind. "Well, he was Charles."

Her mouth slowly moulded into a frown. "But then the draft came, took the students and teachers away from us, including Alex, and a darkness seemed to descend on Charles. He became a little distant as time went by, more insistent on staying in bed until noon, but still so loving and kind. I would never have even guessed that he'd do something so rash or…"

"Unthinkable?" Logan suggested.

She nodded, running a hand through her hair. "I knew he was having a difficult time, I could feel it. After a while, I couldn't sense it anymore, so I thought he was coping, and I was so preoccupied with the hospital that I didn't think twice about it. Maybe if I had paid more attention to it all, to him, and his growing dependence on the serum, the whole thing could have been avoided."

"In my experience, it's best not to start down that road. You'll end up stuck in your own head, analyzing every single little thing you did or didn't do." Logan advised, giving his head a slight shake. "You couldn't have done anything. It was all Charles."

"I know, but sometimes I can't help but believe otherwise." She admitted guiltily. Even though she felt that her conversation with Charles early that morning had helped closure-wise, everything that happened still felt so fresh in her mind.

"What did you do after you found out?"

She shrugged, looking down at her hands. "There wasn't much I could do, at least not immediately. The extent of my injuries meant I couldn't leave the mansion for another two weeks." Laurien grimaced inwardly, recalling how tortuous those weeks had been, stuck in bed with the knowledge that the man she'd loved had hurt her. Throughout that time, she'd barred him from speaking to her, believing that nothing he could possibly say could change her decision to leave. "When I did finally leave, I still couldn't walk properly and I didn't have the full use of my arm, so Hank helped me move out of state and stayed with me until I could manage on my own."

Laurien had only taken two suitcases with her, leaving most of her stuff behind at the mansion. Hank told her that she could come back once she had healed to get what remained, but she never did end up coming back for the rest. A small part of her wondered if they were still packed away somewhere in the house.

"As for my career, and my own coping mechanism, well…" She paused, her eyelids lowering to hide the lingering disappointment her irises displayed so traitorously. "No one wants a nurse with shaky hands."

The sun had risen above the distant horizon by then, revealing the makings of a beautiful day for their travels and for the President's address.

"Look, I don't know if I should be telling you this, especially after you've told me all that." Logan began, rubbing his hands together as smoke billowed out of his mouth. "But… we've never met."

"Sorry?"

"I mean in the future. I never knew you." He clarified, the constant movements of his hands distracting her thought process. "I only recognized you from a photo Charles had of the both of you, maybe on a beach or something. Looked cold, wherever it was. He always had it on his desk whenever I went to speak with him in his study."

Laurien nodded slowly, taking it in, though knowing that he had something else to share. "I know the one."

"I asked him about it one day; who you were, why I had never seen you before?" Logan explained before hesitating, leaving Laurien to latch on like a cliff hanger, waiting in foreboding of his upcoming words. "He told me that you'd died over forty years ago."

"Oh." The news hit Laurien like a bullet to the chest, the impact pushing all the air in her lungs out in one sickening swoop. She turned her head back to gaze out at the rising sun over the many trees, though for some reason, all she could think about was which one she would be buried under. "When exactly?"

"A few months from now." He told her. "July, I believe."

She gripped her tea mug tighter, her grey eyes lowering to watch the dregs swirl around the bottom of the pottery. "How?"

"Painkiller overdose."

Laurien let out an involuntary breath of bitter amusement. "Seems about right."

"It doesn't have to be that way, you know?" Logan urged, extending a hand to gently grip her shoulder. "The whole reason I came back here was to change things."

Laurien swallowed with difficulty, what little was left of her confidence seemingly draining away as she could sense another headache coming about. "But what if Hank's right, and time is immutable?"

"Well, considering the future I came from." Logan said, staring out toward the horizon. "You'll be one of the lucky ones."

An overwhelming sense of claustrophobia was building in Laurien's chest as she tried to make her way through the crowd without getting elbowed in the ribs a fifth time. The lawns in front of the White House were teeming with people all trying to make their way through to the seating area, and it would have been an easy feat had it not been for the multiple security checkpoints which had everyone moving like sand in an hourglass.

Laurien found her gaze flitting nervously to each secret serviceman she spotted along the way, feeling completely vulnerable without the protection of her trusty aviators on her face. Only an hour ago, she'd been advised against wearing them by Logan while they were on the plane.

"I wouldn't wear those if I were you." He'd commented offhandedly near the end of their flight when she'd pulled the glasses out of her bag.

She had frowned. "What? Why not?"

Logan wordlessly tossed the newspaper he'd been reading throughout the flight into her lap. On the front cover was an enlarged photo of Raven standing in the Embassy square underneath a bolded headline reading 'Nixon to Address Paris Incident'. Laurien paused, about to inquire as to what it had to do with her aviators until her gaze then shifted to another article below. It was there that she found her own photo, displayed adjacent to the words 'Who is the Levitating Woman?'.

She took a deep breath, cursing the photographer who hadn't been distracted by the chaos below and had caught her descent from the window. Thankfully, the image was from a bit of a distance, though still close enough to recognize the same pair of aviators shielding her eyes from further identification. She quickly skimmed over the article, finding the sentences written too choppily for her taste.

'The Levitating Woman, as some are calling her, was one of the four beings who disrupted the Paris Peace Accords early Saturday morning. The woman arrived on the scene from the top floor window of the Embassy. She seemingly 'levitated' down to the square and immediately joined the fray.'

The rest of the article was an array of wild theories that amused her immensely until she reached one that struck a chord. 'While her identity is unknown at this time, sources are describing her as an associate of Erik Lensherr, criminal mastermind behind the assassination of JFK.' Criminal mastermind? Laurien wondered to herself, raising an eyebrow. She was quite sure that Erik would like to think of himself as such.

Having quite enough, she folded the paper and placed it on the table. "Well, shit." Laurien sighed as she removed her aviators and tossed them on top of the paper. "I was beginning to become quite fond of those."

Logan gave her a slight smirk before taking the newspaper back.

As they inched closer to the security checkpoint, Laurien tilted back her head and attempted to bask in the sunshine as it shone gloriously from above them, seeing if perhaps it could better her mood. It did, filling her from head to toe with warmth, reminiscent of a long sip of tea.

It was uncharacteristically warm for this time of year. Laurien carried her jacket over her forearm, one much lighter than the one she'd worn in Paris, though it was still a tad too much for this kind of weather. Comfortable in her cream-coloured peasant blouse, brown skirt and knee high boots, Laurien felt as if spring were dawning early just for them, spurring them on as they attempted to correct the fate of the future.

Next to her, Hank was pushing Charles' manual wheelchair through the crowd alongside a grim looking Logan. Laurien couldn't be sure if it were Charles' doing which inspired the people surrounding them to give their party a wide berth, allowing them to continue on an unimpeded path to an immediate lineup for security.

Charles was looking as haggard as he had earlier that day, though with the added characteristic of a nervous twitch in his hands. The withdrawal from the serum had not been kind to him, and consequentially, Laurien suspected that he also hadn't slept at all after they'd spoken. Despite his appearance, she did notice a more stable aura surrounding him, which she hoped came as a result of their discussion.

With Charles' intervention, they had finally reached the front of the line for security. Logan and Laurien waited back as Hank pushed Charles through the metal detector, with the chair ultimately setting the alarm off.

The guard stepped forward with his hand outstretched. "Can I see your invitations, please?"

"Yes, you may." Charles told him nonchalantly as he raised his hand to his temple. "These three are with me."

The guard immediately nodded. "Go ahead." He ordered before waving Laurien and Logan through.

"Thank you."

Laurien followed after the others until she realized that Logan was no longer beside her. She glanced back and saw that he was still staring in confusion at the metal detector. "Logan." She called, grabbing his attention and drawing him over. "What's wrong?"

"I, uh, usually set those things off." Logan explained, frowning.

Laurien raised an eyebrow. "What, you got a metal plate in your head or something?"

"Yeah, something like that."

They soon found a spot to station Charles' wheelchair along with some veterans of the various wars the United States had been involved in. They were situated amongst the first set of people standing behind the seating in front of the stage, which had most likely been hastily erected on the lawn the night before. The stage was decked out in all sorts of American adornments; red, white and blue banners and ribbons were draped wherever possible, as the Stars and Stripes billowed proudly above them.

Laurien eyed the large mass that was hidden beneath a massive tarp behind the stage, wondering if she could trust her gut that it wasn't anything good. She tore her eyes away from the tarp and looked around at the crowd, wondering if any of the unfamiliar faces were actually Raven in disguise. Charles too raised his hand up to his temple in order to search the minds of the crowd, though they weren't allotted much time to look around before a man, dressed in a sharp navy suit, dashed up the steps to the stage and spoke into the microphone on the podium.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States." He announced, before disappearing off the stage to the raucous eruption of applause.

A man stepped onto the stage and Laurien instantly recognized him from the countless front page articles, news interviews and television addresses. Richard Nixon, smartly dressed in a suit and tie, raised his hands and greeted the audience with a double peace salute. A beaming smile on his face, he settled himself behind the podium, and as much as Laurien disliked him, she couldn't deny the charisma that he exuded.

"My fellow Americans," He started after the applause had finally died down. "Today, we face the greatest threat in our history: mutants."

At his words, Laurien couldn't help but scoff, causing the woman seated in front of her to look back in confusion. Laurien muttered out an apology before turning back to the speech.

"We have prepared for this threat. In the immortal words of J. Robert Oppenheimer," He declared, extending his arm to the hidden mass behind him. "'Behold. The world will never be the same again.'"

The sheet was pulled off to reveal a row of massive robots, detailed in purple paint and glowing yellow eyes. A roar of awe met Laurien's ears as she stared up at them, though a sudden force pushed all the air out of her lungs in one fell swoop as a terrible sinking sensation gripped her. She turned and saw Logan's usually steady face transform into one of terror.

"Is that them?" Laurien whispered to him, her eyes wide from second-hand fear.

"A crude prototype, in comparison." He replied breathlessly. "But yeah, that's them."

Charles' urgent voice jolted their attention from the sentinels. "I have her."

"Where is she?" Hank asked, mingled excitement and anxiety lacing his words.

Charles pointed toward a middle aged man who seemed frozen in mid stride. "There, see? Secret Service man, left of the stage."

"Got it." Logan grunted, before he and Hank started to move.

"Wait." Laurien objected suddenly, prompting Logan and Hank to stop in their tracks. "Look, with all due respect, she may not react the best of ways when seeing the both of you. Let me go to her alone, as a friend."

Logan and Hank seemed uncertain, yet Charles nodded at her with conviction. "Go."

Laurien started on her way, weaving through the crowd of people in the direction of where she'd seen the frozen man. An audible collective of gasps caused Laurien to glance toward the stage, only to see the sentinels lifting off from the ground in a uniform formation. An all too familiar sense of foreboding and worry prompted her to move a little more urgently before she found herself nearing a guard who blocked her path to Raven.

Seeing a young man reclining on the back legs of his chair, Laurien took the opportunity to tug it a little further with her powers, while leaving gravity to do the rest. As a result, the man flailed as he was sent crashing to the ground. A small commotion arose as the others around him either laughed or ushered to help him up, prompting the guard to turn and look at them, and consequentially, allowing Laurien to slip by him unnoticed.

She was just about to reach for Raven's arm when a barrage of gunfire caused her to duck down in reflex as screams erupted around her.

Voila, a cliffhanger to annoy you all! Hope you're all well and are looking forward to summer. Has anyone seen Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2? It was better than the first, in my opinion. Ah, Chris Pratt. Going to see Alien: Covenant later today with some buds, can't resist the double Fassy feature.

Thank you all very much for reading, I hope you enjoyed it, and please review or ask any questions below!