Blueshift

Blueshift Chapter Thirteen (NC-17)
Disclaimers Apply

A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE ™, Prophetic Muse, Hamster Witch and Uberbeta… *bouncy* March it is! InterNutter, TC, Maxwell Pink and Dracena are loverly and wondermous for archiving/hosting. :) ProPhile: Tomorrow. MP. Happy now? Morgan: *glomp* Readers/Reviewers: Thanks for reading and reviewing as you get the chance. I’m going to take a day off this week from Blueshift and finish Hell Hath No Fury and the futureverse fic to get those off my back, lol. They keep being evasive… *shifty *


“Fanfuckingtastic,” Todd muttered, bouncing on his toes. “Look, I’m innocent!”
“And I’m the Queen of England,” the officer at the desk muttered, flipping the pages of the National Geographic.
Todd groaned and sat down heavily on the narrow concrete bench lining the wall of the single cell in the Apple Briar Sheriff’s Department. “Hey, what about my phone call?” he called out. “I get a phone call!”
“When the phone works again… should be ‘bout an hour or six…” The officer seemed unbothered by this notion, fixated on the image of a macaque preening for the photographer’s lens. “Snow an’ all…”
Todd gritted his teeth and leaned back against the cold concrete wall. He felt sick on several levels. He had missed their flight by a good three hours and then succeeded in getting lost on the way back to the Institute, which led to his current predicament. “Can I get a blanket or somethin’?” he asked plaintively. “It’s cold as a witch’s… er, it’s cold in here…” He sniffed against a runny nose and huddled over his legs, trying to keep warm when his body would shut down. He felt thick, sluggish. It was like his entire body was falling asleep from the inside out. His slower reaction time was the reason behind the traffic stop, he thought to himself grumpily, shivering slightly. It was also the reason why the cop thought he was on drugs. Todd sighed and tipped over sideways into a fetal position, trying to breathe slowly and deeply. He tried to focus on the warm breath coming into his lungs and do the visualizations the Professor had tried to show him when winter first came, but, he thought ruefully, there was no fighting biology. _He can’t know what it’s like anyway… he ain’t froggy… _
“Hey, kid, wake up. No sleeping in the holding tank,” the officer barked, dropping his reading material down on the desk. He walked over to the cell and rattled the old bars, a throwback to when it was first built in the fifties. “Kid!”
“Todd,” Todd muttered, sitting up slowly. He could barely keep his eyes open. “It’s so cold in here,” he said thickly.
“Heater’s broke,” the officer shrugged, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his thick, non-uniform coat. “It’ll be back on…”
“In an hour or six,” Todd finished. “This is cruel and unusual ya know,” he added, managing to get to his feet. His entire body felt as if he were moving through molasses. It wasn’t numb, just slow. “I could sue your ass… report you to the ACLU for this…”
“Gotta call ‘em for that,” the officer retorted smugly, shuffling back to his desk with the small heater plugged in under it, warming his feet and legs. “The phone ain’t workin’…”
Todd growled and flung himself painfully back onto the bench. _Okay, maybe this’ll work… _ He closed his eyes and tried to focus on the Institute. He pictured Jean in his mind as clearly as he could before he tried to get her attention. _Jean? Jean! Yo, Jean! _ He waited a long moment, stretching to nearly a minute, then sighed. _Fuck. _ He rolled onto his back and winced as the cold of the concrete seeped through his clothing, settling into his bones and muscles. The lethargy was impossible to fight and his eyes drifted closed. He felt his heart slow and oddly, was not concerned. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world for him. He was not afraid as he drifted into a deep blackness, even when he heard the officer shouting at him, yelling at him to get up. _Don’t wanna, _ he thought to himself, finally relaxing entirely _Wake me when the phone works… _

Jono slid down the wall and sat on the floor of his basement room, largely ignoring Paige. He tried to pay at least a modicum of attention to her but it was too difficult. He could not stop the voices and this worried him, to put it mildly. Before, when he was in dark times, he could stop them simply by realizing and accepting it was a manifestation of his inner turmoil, that it was all coming from within himself. Now, though, it was different. The voices were speaking a language he did not know, showing him things he had no idea how to describe. It made him ache all through his body in a way he had not been able to in years. He could not breathe but his chest cavity ached, the light burning there seeming to grow and fill him. Paige was going on about school, about how she and Jubilee were trying to convince the teachers to let them have a dance for Valentine’s, a real dance and not just movie night in the rec room with some music playing. _*Uh huh, *_ he responded randomly, closing his eyes. He wished he could sleep. He needed it badly. Jean was upstairs, he knew, talking to Professor Xavier. How much would she be told, he wondered, how much had the Professor believed? Jono winced as Paige demanded to know what he was thinking about. _*Nothing, Sunshine. Just listening to you… *_ He knew immediately that was the wrong thing to say. She paused suspiciously. _*Yes? *_
“You never just listen to me,” she said slowly. “You usually respond, even if it’s to tell me to be quiet. What’s going on, Jono?” She slid off the ratty old sofa he kept down there against Storm’s wishes and sat in a half lotus position in front of him. “You’re more gloomy than usual.” She tilted her head to one side and studied him, wrapped in the black fabric which kept him whole, staring back at her. “More snappish, too.”
Jono returned her gaze measure for measure. His eyes drifted from the blonde curls haloing her freckled face, down the arms and torso strong from working for so many years on the farm to her legs folded beneath her, her feet bare and toenail polished chipped. She covered her feet self consciously when she noticed the direction of his gaze, and for some reason this amused him and touched him in an odd way he had not expected. Paige meant almost everything to him; she was a constant in his existence that he had never imagined when he first came awake in the morgue. He owed it to her, he thought. He could not lie to her. _*Paige… do you believe in alien life forms? *_