Mirror, Mirror

A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE ™, Prophetic Muse, Hamster Witch and Uberbeta…I hereby declare Autumn to be “Nap Weather.” InterNutter, TC, Maxwell Pink, Dracena and Greywolf are loverly and wondermous for archiving/hosting. J ProPhile: Grrrr. Forgot to send. Sorry. Morgan: *gloke * Readers/Reviewers: Okay, no update tomorrow but everything back to normal-ish on Monday. Thanks for reading/reviewing as you can! J

Mark pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. “I’m not immortal…please don’t drive like that,” he sighed tiredly.

Logan slide a sideways glare in his companion’s direction. “Tell you what… I’ll let you drive home. When we’re in LESS of a hurry.” He swerved around a slow moving garbage struck and leaned on the horn at the same time, muttering dire imprecations under his breath as he regained his chosen lane. “Deal?”

“Logan,” Mark breathed, forcing himself to look, “I thought the whole point of this was stealth. It is very difficult to be stealthy when you’re trailing a line of cops and destruction.” He released a slow breath as Logan decelerated, not to the point of law abiding but certainly slow enough to make their bodies identifiable in a wreck. “Well then. Right.” He blinked a few times and nodded mostly to himself as his nerves regained a sense of calm. “I’ve taken the liberty of preparing a dossier on our intended targets…”

The older man snorted as Mark rummaged in the hard plastic pocket of the door for the slim packet of information. “You made a dossier? On Essex? What do we need to know? He’s a sonofabitch who needs gutting. There. There’s my dossier on ‘im.” He merged towards the exit, not bothering to turn on the signal and barely missing a small Ford Festiva, who’s driver went apoplectic as they sped past. “I still ain’t sure what you used to be, Mark, but I know what you are now. You gotta be careful…you get bleed through, people get nosy.”

“Are you suggesting I’m causing a spectacle at the Institute in some way?” Mark asked lightly, fingering the edges of the papers in his lap. He looked straight ahead, out of the windshield, and shook himself free of the threatening shadows creeping along the edges of his awareness. _My past is done, _ he scolded himself. _I saw to that myself last year. _

Logan shook his head and slowed the car on the exit ramp. “I ain’t sayin’ nothing of the sort, Mark. Just saying… you can be as cute and clever as you want to be,” he sighed, finally giving Mark a significant look rather than a bare glance, “but you can’t keep your past dead. It’s gonna creep up on you and when it does, there’s gonna be a lot of folks surprised and some of ‘em are gonna be hurt.”

Mark frowned. “Why do you say that?” he asked, flipping open the dossier and scanning the first page in the halflight of the streetlamps they were whizzing past. “I’ve been a librarian for years.”

“Is librarian some sort of British intel code word for covert ops?” Logan snorted, drawing up to a red light. “Cause if you’ve been a librarian for years, I’m Miss America.” He paused, shifting slightly uncomfortably in the driver’s seat. “Not that there’s anything wrong with transvestism… I know you English people think men in dresses are funny an’ all… I’ve seen those t.v.shows.”

“Logan, if I didn’t know better,” Mark mused, biting back a chortle, “I’d say you were drunk. I have been a librarian of sorts for many years. Since I was a very, VERY young man.” He paused, smiling widely. “How do you think I know so much about so many things?” He nodded, mostly to himself, and read aloud from the information: “Nathaniel Essex has been seen over the past century in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Belgium, the United States, Switzerland and Germany.” He looked up at Logan, his smile gone, face tinged grimly. “It’s not on here but I know he’s been in Canada as well. I just couldn’t find the verified evidence to add it to this,” he shook the sheaf of papers lightly.

“What are you telling me this for? Lots of weirdos go to Canada,” Logan replied sharply. The road was dark now, streetlights long gone as they rocketed down a narrow, two lane back road through a nameless part of the state. Slices of moonlight cast glowing shadows through the car, making the men look like ghosts. “I think you need to get out of the books once in a while,” he added, adopting a gruffer tone.

Aware of the slim length of metal near his leg, Mark sighed. “I do,” he said pointedly. “Often.”

“I mean, more often than just to eat, go to bed or go out with her.”

Mark held his tongue. A fight about his relationship with Mystique was not something he wanted to deal with right then and there. Turning his gaze to the side, he watched the woods slide by as dark shapes with fingers of golden silver light interspersing the shadows. After several minutes of silence, he felt compelled to speak again. “We’re being followed.”

“What?” Logan jerked the wheel slightly in surprise. “How?”

“How do you think?” Mark asked, nodding at the window. “Fast, on foot, it looks like. How fast are you going?”

“Not very… had to slow down for all these curves.” Logan chanced a look out Mark’s window as they came out of a particularly sharp hairpin turn. “Damn it.” The dark shape moving between the trees was obvious to his keen eyes, as was the fact it was moving on two legs, not four. “Too big for Pietro,” he muttered mostly to himself. “Want to deal with it now or later?” he asked aloud.

“Later,” Mark sighed. “I’d like to keep my shirt clean as long as possible.”

“Right,” Logan said firmly. “We’ll have him for dessert .”