Blueshift

Blueshift Chapter Ten (NC-17)
Disclaimers Apply


A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE ™, Prophetic Muse, Hamster Witch and Uberbeta… Gad, I feel so much better since I finished that PotC fic, lol. InterNutter, TC, Maxwell Pink and Dracena are loverly and wondermous for archiving/hosting! :) ProPhile: Patience, grasshopper. Kurtty soon… Morgan: *glomp * Readers/Reviewers: When Nutter gets NFN running again since the idiot hacker’s spaz, I’ll be putting pretty much all my fics up on her site. AFFN has been having so many problems lately that I’d feel better having the stories posted somewhere I trust so… yeah. I’ll still post to AFFN but I really think NFN is going to do a better job in terms of being helpful to authors, etc. So… yeah. *GLOMP * Thanks for reading/reviewing!


Jean rubbed her forehead wearily. She ached all over, as if she had fallen down stairs and had the flu all at once. “Jono, please quit staring at me,” she muttered, aware of his gaze on her, unblinking and intent. “It’s kind of creeping me out.”
_*I’m not staring, *_ he denied. _*I just don’t blink a lot. Something about my tear ducts or somesuch… *_
“Well, whatever it is, stop it… Do I smell tea?” she asked suddenly, her eyes slightly wide. “God, am I having a stroke1?”
“No,” Mark appeared in her line of vision, holding a coffee mug with a tea bag floating in it, the string and tag hanging over the side. “God bless electric kettles,” he added, raising the cup slightly. “Like some?”
Jean groaned and closed her eyes, letting her breath out in a slow hiss. “Actually,” she said after a moment. “Yes. What do you have?”
Mark hurried to get the tin box of tea bags he kept at the desk and Professor Xavier hoved into view. “Jean, do you feel you can make it to my office? Jono has brought to my attention some things I believe we need to discuss, especially given your episode this morning…”
Jean winced and sat up slowly. She was on one of the old vinyl sofas that had found a home in the school’s library since some time in the late sixties and it creaked and squeaked with her movements. “I think so. I just need a minute…” She glanced at Jono and raised a brow. “Unless,” she added, “you want to just take a look…”
Professor Xavier shook his head slightly. “Later. Right now I want to hear *your* impressions, directly from you.” He shifted and became somewhat distant in demeanor as Mark returned with the tea. “Actually, at the moment, I would like to speak to Mister Thorne in my office first. I believe there are some things about the Institute I need to make clear…”
Jean accepted the tea—with honey, she noted, even though she did not ask—and nodded. Mark shrugged and followed Professor Xavier out of the library, leaving Jono, Kitty and Rogue standing around Jean in a loose semi-circle. “You know,” she said after the first sip of tea, “I’m not a lab rat. We’ve all fainted before. It’s not a novelty around here…”
_*Which isn’t something to be proud of, I don’t think… *_ He leaned in close, almost conspiratorially, and asked, “_* Did you see it? Did you see them? *_
Jean stared. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she lied. “I just fainted is all. I haven’t been getting a lot of sleep lately and all this stress over school and the marriage counseling…”
Jono would have snorted if he could. _*Fine, Jean. It’ll come out in time. You can’t hide this. It’s beyond us. *_ He winced visibly, remembering something. _*Jean, look, it’s very important that…*_ he glanced at Kitty and Rogue, seemed to consider his next words, then just let them out in as much of a rush as he could manage. _*It’s very important that you know what you’re seeing is real. It’s not some hallucination brought on by lack of sleep. *_
“Do you ever feel left out when they do this?” Rogue sighed, stretching onto her toes and then falling back on her heels with audible pops in her knees and hips.
Kitty nodded and patted Jean’s arm, then Jono’s. “You two just chatter on. Love you both but I need to get this work done before I leave tomorrow night. You *will* tell us what’s going on when you’re done with the Professor, right Jean?”
Jean nodded. “Of course.” She glance at Jono. “So long as I can make some semblance of sense from it…”
Jono rolled his eyes. _*No chance of that then… *_
Rogue snorted and trailed Kitty back to the table where they had left their books. “What’re you working on anyway?” She eyed her text book sadly and shoved it aside, dropping into the seat and leaning back comfortably. “More of that physics stuff? I really have no idea how you can get all that. It’s all I can do to work on this damned calculus without wanting to stab people with a pencil…” She picked up her pencil, very chewed but still sharp. “Still might do it, actually.”
Kitty snickered. “It’s not so bad. Oddly, it’s the easier sciences and maths I have trouble with… But this,” she held up one of the books in front of her, “is for Kurt. He was really dithery about college so I figured I’d dig out some of these books and mark the important pages so he could do some research on his own and decide for sure rather than just being skittish about it…” The book had so many yellow stick notes protruding from the pages it rustled.
Rogue blinked. “Um, Kit… just be careful not to insult him, okay? College isn’t a big deal to him. It’s not a huge thing in his family, either. If he goes, great, but he doesn’t need it to be happy. I mean, I don’t think his parents even set foot on school grounds until he started going here… I think they’ve all been homseschooled for generations.”
Kitty frowned. The idea of never going to college was so foreign to her that it actually confused her for a moment. “But… he needs to go so he can get a job and…and…”
“And wear his holo to an office every day and live in fear he’ll be found out?” Rogue shook her head. “Give him the book but don’t push it, Kit.” She stood and gathered her homework in a sweeping gesture. “I’m gonna go find Todd. I sniped at him last night and I wanna apologize for it before he stews too long…” She winked broadly at Kitty and laughed at the other girl’s momentary look of discomfort. “Oh, like you’re one to get touchy, Miss Hall Closet.”
“That was a one time thing. Wait, no, three times… anyway, Todd’s not here. He left this morning saying he needed to run some errands. Saw him when I was on my way to the meeting.” She shrugged and bent back to the book before her. “He had his backpack with him so I guess he was going to the University library to do some research.”
Rogue felt disappointed at first, then a niggling of suspicion mixed with fear. “Did he take the car?” she asked slowly, beginning to formulate an idea she did not want.
“I think so,” Kitty shrugged. “It’s too cold for him to walk to town anyway, especially with all that complaining he was doing last night.” She looked up and raised a brow. “You okay? You look more pale than usual…”
“I’m just fine,” Rogue muttered. “I just need to go kill my boyfriend as soon as I find him…”

A/N Next chapter, Lance/Amara and Mags will be in there, too… :)
1 Sometimes, certain neurological events like a stroke can cause sensory hallucinations such as smelling things that aren’t there, etc. Wheee, fun stuff to know.