Bellwether

>
>
> Bellwether Chapter Thirty
>
> Disclaimers Apply
>
>
>
> A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE ™, Prophetic Muse, Hamster Witch and Uberbeta… Feeling better? InterNutter, TC, Maxwell Pink, Dracena and Greywolf are loverly and wondermous for archiving/hosting. J ProPhile: Now to find the USB cable again… Morgan: *crickets chirp * Readers/Reviewers: Thank you so much for reading and reviewing as you can and happy Litha to everyone! Aaaaaaaaaand happy Pride Month, lol. J
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> “Sometimes,” Jubilee said after a very long silence, “I hate you a little bit.”
>
> “Shut. Up.” Kitty’s cheeks flamed bright red, more from embarrassment than anger, and she curled her fingers into fists on the flat metal table top. She could feel the eyes of the security personnel on them, the tendrils of Jean’s outward calm skimming over her and leaving cool fingers of annoyance in their wake. Jubilee opened her mouth as if she was about to say something else, then closed it as she thought better of it. “Sorry,” Kitty muttered after a hesitation. “I’m just…really stressed out!”
>
> “It’s not every day we get detained by airport security,” Jubilee commented dryly, leaning back in her metal chair. She hated being detained; it reminded her of juvenile hall, getting busted for lifting or worse. It made her want to revert to some habits she thought she had buried long ago. Already she could feel her posture shifting back to her old slouch, her eyes narrowing on their guard, a tall and stocky woman who looked as if she could bench press Blob. The guard was looking back, impassive.
>
> Jean spread her fingers on the table top and cleared her mind of the panic that threatened to take over. She refused, she told herself firmly, to be held hostage by her emotions. Fear would only make her sick again, make her useless. Her spine seemed to burn with some unnamed feeling, tracing the line of her back and spreading through her ribs before blossoming into a full-blown balefire in her breast. “Excuse me,” she said suddenly, startling the other three females in the room, “could I have a cup of water please?” She knew that her eyes were bright and her cheeks were flushed; maybe they would think she was sick.
>
> Kitty waited until the guard pursed her lips and nodded once, stepping just outside of the room and leaving them locked inside. “I’m sorry,” she groaned miserably, dropping her head to hit the tabletop. “I had no idea my passport was falsified!”
>
> “Kitty,” Jean said sternly, “we can discuss this later. We’re not under arrested arrest , we’re just being detained. When they get the head guy in here, you explain to them about your name of record and we pay a fine and go home.” She glanced sideways at Jubilee, adding, “And Kitty is the ONLY one who talks.”
>
> “What if,” Kitty began, then paused, sniffing back incipient tears, “What if they ask me something I can’t answer?”
>
> Jubilee kicked her ankle under the table, frowning deeply. “Shhhhh,” she hissed, her glance flicking towards the ceiling. “You’re not stupid.”
>
> Kitty straightened, tugging her ponytail roughly. “Thank you for that assessment of my intelligence,” she replied tartly. “Jean, do you think they’ll let us make another call home?”
> “I don’t see why not,” Jean replied as the guard returned with three paper cups of water. “We’re not under arrest.”
>
> “That’s correct,” the guard, who’s badge read Reyes remarked, setting the cups down. “The problem is with your passport, Miss… Pryde, is it? And with your,” she paused, indicating Jubilee, “identity.”
>
> “My identity?” Jubilee repeated ponderously, looking up at the overhead light as if it held answers to all of life’s great mystery. “Last I checked, I’m still Jubilation Huan[1] Lee[2], born in Los Angeles General in nineteen…”
>
> “Miss Lee,” the guard said gruffly, cutting off Jubilee before she could finish the word, “the issue lies in the fact that,for six years, there is no record of your existence. At all.”
>
> “Surely that’s some sort of mistake,” Jean put in smoothly. “In 2001, she went into the foster care system in California.”
>
> Jubilee stiffened but did not say a word as Kitty shot her a worried, sad glance. Taking a long sip of the cold water the guard had brought, she forced herself to remain calm. She didn’t exist, she thought bitterly. She didn’t exist at all. All of the years of worrying, of panic and deception, and she did not exist.
>
> “It’s four a.m.,” Kitty said suddenly. “We’re really, really tired… how much longer do we have to sit here?” Her voice had taken on a distinctively whining tone and she did not care who heard it. “You can’t, just, like, hold us, you know! False arrest!” She punctuated the words with a firm, loud slap of her hand on the table, glaring her best ‘go ahead, make my day!’ glare at the guard.
>
> “We can hold you until we straighten the matter up,” Reyes informed her not unkindly. “Until then, you’d best just get relaxed. Do you all want something to eat? I can get something from the commissary…”
>
> Jubilee groaned. “Sandwich. No pig.”
>
> “Vegetarian,” Kitty sighed in resignation. Jean simply shrugged. The guard nodded and stepped out of the room again, ostensibly to give their order to a waiting guard. “Jean,” Kitty said softly, staring down at her own interlaced fingers, “what about the Shi’ar? We’re gone…and I’m missing my second shift guarding him…”
>
> “For someone who’s so smart,” Jean said after a very long pause in which she seemed to be weighing her words, “you make some very rash, ill-advised choices.” She stood, stretching her limbs and back soundlessly, knowing full and well that her words had done nothing to help Kitty’s growing guilty feelings. It would do her some good, Jean thought bitterly, to learn something the hard way. Kitty had grown too used to being able to ‘cute’ her way out of things, she added to herself without envy.
>
> Kitty groaned, letting her head sink back down to the tabletop. “I know,” she sighed, feeling wrung out. It was beyond ridiculous. It was all her fault. She could not make it away at school, she could not execute a simple plan… With another gut-wrenching sigh, she forced herself to sit up. “Okay. We face this. I face this. I won’t phase us out of here, I won’t lie. I’ll tell the truth.”
>
> “What? We’re…French?” Jubilee asked, seizing on Mark’s preferred euphemism for mutantkind.
>
> “No,” Kitty snorted, her color less choleric than before. “That I screwed up.” She nodded, mostly to herself, and gave Jean a significant look. “I don’t have to be a mind reader to know what you’re thinking.”
>
> Jean smiled faintly, drumming her fingers on the table top. “Good. That’ll save me trouble on the ride home.”
>
>
>
> A/N Next up, UST, Mark, and what the hell is Lance doing?
>
> [1] Depending on the characters used in Chinese, this can mean “happiness” and it does here since I’m writing it, so ner. ;) http://www.behindthename.com/php/view.php?name=huan
>
> [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_name