Bellwether

A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE ™, Prophetic Muse, Hamster Witch and Uberbeta… Almost done with work *happy pagan dance * InterNutter, TC, Maxwell Pink, Dracena and Greywolf are loverly and wondermous for archiving/hosting. J ProPhile: So…yeah. *Random gold star * Morgan: *stalks not so randomly * Readers/Reviewers: Thank you so much for reading and reviewing as you can! J

“What do you mean, you lost your passport?” Kitty dropped her heavy bag and fisted her hands on her hips, not out of a gesture of annoyance but rather to keep herself from throttling Jubilee. “How can you lose your passport?”

“It’s not like I go flying off to Europe every weekend!” Jubilee shot back, shaking her now-empty duffle bag over the concourse floor. “I thought I’d find it by the time we got here!” A pile of clothes and toiletries sat at her feet, the cord to her CD player sticking out of the mess like a mouse tail. “I guess it’s in my stuff at home somewhere… maybe in the closet or something.” She frowned and toed the pile under the watchful, harassed eye of airport security.

Kitty inhaled deeply, closing her eyes and counting to fifty in Hebrew first, then Russian, then Greek. By the time she lapped back around to English, Jubilee was stuffing her belonging back into her duffle bag. “We come all the way down here, we BOUGHT TICKETS AT THE LAST MINUTE…” She took another deep breath and forced her voice to a more even tone. “Jean, would you please see if there’s any way to cancel the tickets while I strangle Jubilee?”

“There’s going to be a huge fee,” Jean pointed out. “Enormous.” She glanced at Kitty’s pink-tinged face and Jubilee’s carefully averted one before sighing and making a negligent gesture. “Be back in a few minutes. Or so.” She shouldered her bag and strode purposefully towards tired-looking woman behind the counter for the airline. She had expected to feel haggard by now, sick or worse, but she felt more alive than she had in a very long time. Even knowing how much work was waiting for her at home, how many mundane and fantastic tasks she was expected to complete, Jean felt, she thought, fantastic. No headache, no dragging against her limbs, no washes of heat. She smiled cheerily at the airline employee and dropped her bag, leaning slightly on the counter to make sure she had the woman’s full attention before speaking. “My friends and I have tickets for the three thirty flight to…”

“No cancellations,” the woman cut her off, her voice flat and brooking no argument. “It’s too late for that. You can transfer the tickets to another flight within the airline’s approved time span but you cannot cancel the tickets.” She assayed Jean with a jaundiced eye. “Terrorism, you know.”

Biting back the worst of the snarky remarks that sprang to mind, Jean nodded understandingly, bending to gather her bag again. “Who do I speak with about that?”

“No cancellations,” the woman said again, shrugging.

“Customer service lives,” she sighed, turning back towards Jubilee and Kitty. Jubilee was still on her knees, rearranging the contents of her bag. Kitty stood stock-still, her neck bent in an attitude of extreme irritation. Carefully, Jean opened her mental channels, thankful that the airport was mostly empty at this time of night. Or morning, she corrected herself, feeling the first trickle of anger, the feeling of impotent annoyance, seeping into her awareness. Kitty’s roiling emotional state was too complex to be just about the aborted attempt to follow the others. Moving closer, trying to maintain and attitude of nonchalance, she opened herself a little further. A kernel of worry, the mental and emotional equivalent to a crying child, shone like a beacon now, worming it’s way to the surface, some part of Kitty’s psyche recognizing that it had been recognized. Jubilee looked up at her approach and drew Kitty’s attention towards Jean, frowning. The mental doors that had been open slammed shut on reflex, but Jean did not let on that she noticed. “We can transfer the tickets but not cancel them and there’s probably a huge fee. There usually is,” she added, raising auburn brows as Jubilee finally rose to her feet. “There’s nothing else we can do here; we should just go back home and figure out what to do with the tickets from there.”

“No,” Kitty said sharply. “Jubilee can worry about it. I’m going.” She turned sharply away from her friends and strode like a woman on a mission towards the gate.

Jean and Jubilee exchanged glances. The younger teenager sighed and rolled her eyes. “I didn’t lose it. I just don’t want to go. My passport is in my boot,” she added, tapping her heel on the carpeted floor. “I get a bad feeling about this, Jean.” Her eyes were wide with unaccustomed nervousness as she finally met Jean’s gaze. “I think something bad is going to happen.”

Jubilee was not prone to nervous fits and irrational fears, Jean mused, unless you counted her fear of clowns[1] but really, who didn’t find those a little creepy? “Like a plane crash?” she asked gently, taking her by the elbow as friendly as she could manage and starting to follow Kitty. Jubilee did not protest.

“No, that’s just stupid. These things are safe.” She licked her lips and seemed to be marshalling her thoughts before saying, in a blurt of words, “I’m worried about Remy and I don’t want to leave. I know we’re fighting and all but he’s going to do something stupid! I just know it!” She stopped, making Jean stop perforce. “If he goes back to New Orleans…”

“He won’t put himself in a danger he can’t get out of,” Jean sighed soothingly. “He’s not stupid, Jubilee. He knows how to get around the guild if only because he was part of it for so long.” She smiled as kindly as she could manage but she knew it did not reach her eyes. “He’ll be fine.”

Jubilee glanced aside to where Kitty was sitting in the waiting area, staring straight ahead, jaw set. “Damned if I go, damned if I stay.”

“Come to the dark side,” Jean grinned, taking her hand, “we have foil packets of peanuts.”

[1] http://ask.yahoo.com/20050310.html