We Can Explain...

We Can Explain...Chapter Thirty (NC-17)
Disclaimers Apply

A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE (tm), Prophetic Muse, Hamster Witch and Uberbeta... break's over, lol! InterNutter (who kicks ass in her own right), TC, Maxwell Pink and Dracena are wondersquishy for archving/hosting! ProPhile: Still there? Morgan...email me and I'll be on IM in a second, sweetie. *hugs * Readers/Reviewers: You have no idea how much I appreciate you people. Really. If it weren't for y'all, my hobby would be something dreadful like...like...duck herding! The Killer Kitties (tm) think that's funny... ;)


Amara stretched and yawned, tired beyond reason. She counted the days mentally and determined no, she was not near her moon time so she scratched PMS off the list of reasons she was so tired and began compiling a list of everything that could possibly make her want to doze off in the middle of the Professor's lecture on trust and truth. _One, I have had less than a third of my usual amount of sleep in the last seven days, two, I think I am going slowly insane, three, this lecture is dull as dirt... _ She glanced up quickly to see if that thought had been noticed but if the Professor had been skimming her, he gave no sign. _Jean gets to stay in and nap...why can't I? _ Amara had heard Jubilee giggling that Jean must be pregnant, to be so tired this time of day, but no one joked about Kitty like that, she sulked inwardly. _Even when I was...with child...I did not fatigue so readily... _ The mere thought of the incident over a year ago was enough to send a spike of grief and alien longing through her heart and soul. She squeezed her eyes shut and found a respite in the darkness. As the Professor went on about how important it was to be honest just now, no matter how embarrassing the truth might be, Amara let her mind drift back.

"No fucking way!" Jubilee crowed. "This is just too fucked up!"
"Chere," Remy sighed, "watch the language, eh? Je t'aime, mais..."
"Shhh!" Lance hissed, cutting off further conversation. "I hear someone!"
"Yeah...me!" Jubilee muttered. She stood on one edge of a long, clear pool, edged in gleaming stone and fitted at intervals with gold and mother of pearl inlay. Amara stood on the side of the pool opposite her, an odd look on her face somewhere between absolute contentment and profound worry. Jubilee glanced over at Remy, who was absolutely still next to a vaguely jittering Lance, and she sighed. "I don't hear anything!"
"Tacitus1," Amara breathed. She swayed gently on her toes, appearing as if she were seriously contemplating a plunge into the pool, but she rocked back on her heels and frowned more deeply. "Voices...from here..." She lowered herself to her knees and pressed her fingers against one of the inlaid designs, an acanthus2 leaf borrowed from Greece. "It's almost like it's a vent."
Remy was at her side in two strides, his sudden movement startling Amara into standing up, sharply en garde. Jubilee started forward to catch her, momentarily forgetting she was on the edge of the pool, and pitched over, going headlong into the shallow pool. "Merde," Remy bit out, shucking his coat and going on after her. Amara teetered on the edge, Lance coming to stand beside her, somewhat torn between jumping in himself or waiting. Remy came up, sputtering, his sun glasses floating away in the small wake he produced and his hair hanging limply in his eyes. "Jubilation, what de hell wrong wid you?"
She sprayed a mouthful of surprisingly sweet water at him, standing on her toes in the chin deep (to her) pool. "I lost my balance. It happens to the best of us." She splashed and lurched towards him, trying to keep her head above water. "Still hearing voices?" she called to Amara, her voice ringing in the high vaulted room.
Remy glowered at her. "Jubilation..."
She kissed him quickly as she passed, missing his lips by a long sho"Tha"Thank you for trying to save me, Remy. I promise I'll thank you better later, kay?"
Amara snorted at the exchange. "No, I do not hear them any more..." She stood aside as Lance reached down to pull Jubilee up, an aide she accepted even though she was capable of doing it herself, followed by Remy, who splashed noisily in seeming annoyance. "You really should be more careful. The baths are not deep..."
"Dese," the soggy Cajun snarled, "are not yo' damned Roman baths, Amara. Dese...ain't right..."
Amara closed her mouth against a string of harshly worded protests, realizing he was right. The door they had entered was no longer visible and, for all intents and purposes, they seemed to be inside a stylized Roman bath. "At least," she sighed, "it is not the vomitorium."3
There was a long silence, then Jubilee snickered, then laughed outright. She threw her head back, flinging her damp, pink bangs out of her eyes and leaned against Remy, laughing harder. "Oh, my god! That would have been a fucked up pool to fall into!"
Remy smiled faintly, still too annoyed to be fully humorous, but Lance frowned. "Jubilee, that thing on your neck..."
"Huh?" her head snapped down and she clawed blindly at the spot. "What? Is it worse?"
"No," Amara said sharply. "It's gone!"
"Whoa..." Jubilee patted and rubbed and felt her neck before the erstwhile audience and sighed. "I can't feel it..." Her eyes went automatically to the pool. "Whoa...shades of _Coccoon! _"4
Lance cocked his head dubiously to one side. "Maybe it just...you know...went deeper or something."
Jubilee looked very sick at that prospect. "No. No. I would've felt it if it went deeper...wouldn't I?"
Remy nodded. "Oui, mos' likely..."
Lance quirked a brow at that but wisely remained silent under Remy's imposing, red-eyed glare. Amara knelt again, pressing her ear against the inlay, obviously content that the Jubilee drama was, if not over, at least on hold. "The voices are very faint," she murmured, closing her eyes. "English..."
"English people or English language?" Jubilee asked shakily, trying to sound calm even while she imagined a foreign body worming it's way through her soft tissues.
After a long pause, Amara replied, "Both." She rose a bit and began trying to prise up the corner of the inlay with her nails. "Doesn't one of you hoodlums have a knife?"
Remy snorted and tucked his hands in his pockets, obviously not offering his help, but Lance sighed and pulled out a pocket knife. "You break it, you buy it," he said, though he did not mean it.
Amara smiled fleetingly and began using the edge of the largest blade to work up the corners of the soft gold and mother of pearl. "Help me, damn it!"
Remy sighed and pulled out his own pocket knife, joining her in destroying art. He pulled up one corner of the leave, setting the material aside with a frown of knowledge, well aware the item was expensive in any world. "Hey...j'entend..."
"Me, too," Lance said suddenly, surprise obvious in his voice. Jubilee merely felt her eyes widen as she and Lance joined them in kneeling around the now-large hole on the side of the pool. "Does that sound like..."
"Kitty," Jubilee finished, looking owlishly at Amara.
"And Kurt," the Nova Roman added as a second voice piped up.
Remy blew out a frustrated breath. "Now what?"
"Now," a smooth female alto rang from the far side of the room, "you come and join the other guests."

1 Silence
2 Acanthus leaves were long used to ward off evil and were a popular design in AnteBellum U.S. for warding. The name means something like "heaven" and acanthus leaves were thought to invite benevolent favor from the gods/ spirits in ancient Greece
3 Long ago and far away, Romans of a certain stripe would gorge themselves silly at feasts, then go gag themselves with a feather to bring it all up so they could go back to the feast. The gagging room was the vomitorium.
4 Old-ish Ron Howard movie about these old people who get rejuvenated by alien cocoons in the retirement home swimming pool.