The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea Chapter Forty Two (NC-17)
Disclaimers Apply

A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE ™, Prophetic Muse, Hamster Witch and Uberbeta… MINERVA!!!!! InterNutter, TC, Maxwell Pink and Dracena get oodles of muse kibble for archiving/hosting. :) ProPhile: More naked muses to keep you happy. Morgan: *twirls* Readers/Reviewers: RL ™ sucks, don’t it? Le sigh. Anyhoo, thank you thank you thank you for reading/reviewing!!!


Rahne decided to take it as a sign. Though, she could not decide as a sign of what. She sniffled miserably as n ben bent over Kitty, prodding the wound in her side gently. “Is she going to be okay?” the Scottish girl asked quietly. The entire room was thick with tension and fear. She could hardly breathe for it.
“I think so, yeah,” he replied, sounding as shaky as anyone had ever heard him, even more so than after the time Storm had cut her hand deeply in the kitchen using the mandolin and had to get sixty stitches.1 “Damn, Half Pint, you gotta quit scarin’ me like that…” Kitty’s onespoesponse was an incoherent mutter.
Rahne scooted forward a little, peering at her friend intently while talking to Logan. “It was so strange… no one could really tell what happened until after Kitty fell. She just phased through the door and then…” She shuddered, the memory of the sight of Kitty, half impaled on the long piece of metal, sharpened to a makeshift spear, causing a wave of nausea to pass through her body. “How did that happen?”
Logan shook his head, anger warring with worry. “It was a booby trap. Someone set it up because they were expecting her. Or any of us, I guess. Set it just a few feet inside the door, lull ya into a false sense of security… “
“What good would it do whoever it is,” Rogue began, only to have Jubilee cut her off.
“I think we can safely say it’s Magneto at this point.”
Logan shook his head. “He’s mostly likely, but not our only big bad.”2 He closed his eyes for a moment, the coppery tang otty’tty’s blood and the strong waft of all of the emotions coming from the room full of mutants made his head spin at the most inconvenient times. “Whoever, for the sake of argument, set the traps, whoever got us here and whoever has Emma hidden away is trying to thin the herd. Weed us out.”
“Like _Predator _” Jamie muttered, raking his fingers through his hair.
Logan quirked a brow. “Something like that.” He rose, giving Kitty one last, worried look. She was breathing normally as could be, the bleeding had stopped and, from what he could tell, the metal had missed any major internal organs. She smelled like blood and bile he he wondered if her liver or gall bladder had been punctured, or maybe, he thought with a hint of nausea himself, she was going to be sick. “Anyone seen Firestar yet? If we’re stuck here, she is.”
“Maybe,” St John said slowly, rising to his feet, “she’s in on this. Whatever it is. And Emma, too!”
“No,” Sean spat. “Emma is innocent of any wrongdoing here. I know it like I know my own name!” Before he could further protest her innocence, a sharp cry arose from the front hall, two rooms away, and Bobby came running into the room.
“Storm’s here! She’s got Kurt and some weird chick with…” he gestured vaguely with his hands.
“Big tits?” Lance guessed.
“Flippers?” Todd hazarded.
“Webbed fingers,” Bobby sighed. “Weird chick with webbed fingers!” Even as he spoke, Kurt burst into the room, Storm and the new woman trailing behind him, looking shaken.
“Wo ist Kitty?”3 Kurt demanded, looking almost more demon than human. “Where did she…” He inhaled sharply, his eyes going wide and round as saucers before crossing to the fallen girl in a few strides, dropping to his knees beside her.
“She’s going to be fine,” Rogue said quietly. “Logan checked her out and he said the bleeding’s all done and she’s breathing alright.” She stepped back, though, giving them both space. It was plain to see that Kurt was not paying attention to anything else for the momentide ide from Kitty curled on her side on the floor.
Storm’s eyes settled on Sean. “Outside, those…those…”
“Things,” he supplied, nodding. “I know. I saw. The outside lines are gone and we can’t find Emma to raise Jean, Betsy or the Professor. We’re fucked.” He blushed slightly. “Screwed,” he amended.
“Not exactly,” the gray woman said in a slightly sibilant voice.
“This,” Storm sighed, “is Camille. We found her on the side of the road… long story short, we brought her here to help her…”
“Things are not always as they seem,” Camille stated pacifically.
“Yeah,” Lance snorted. “They’re worse.”
“Your friend, the psychic, is in the heart of the house. You’ll find her there. Sadly, you must cut out the heart so that she might live. And you can find the burning one beneath. She is below.” Camille swayed as she spoke, as if receiving a message from the Great Beyond, her eyes rolled in in her head.
Amara raised a brow. “I’m the burning one,” she muttered. “Firestar just… fries things.”
Sean stared at the newcomer for a moment before speaking again. “Heart of the house?”
Kurt’s head jerked up. “Cerebro. Or that version of it here… is is in Cerebro!”
Sean nodded. “Lance, St John, Bobby, come with me. I don’t know what she meant by cutting out the heart but I don’t think screaming at it iing ing to help!”
Storm moved back to let the cadre pass. “Below?” she asked Camille, raising a brow. “How are you sure?”
“I know things,” she muttered, looking down at her feet. “She is below, beneath the place the pipes come out. It is fireproof.”
Storm nodded as Sean had. “Rogue, Jubilee, Jamie, go.”
“Go where?” Jubilee demanded, rubbing her stomach in an unconscious effort to ease the knot of worry working there.
“Can you see this place?” Storm demanded of Camille. “Can you tell where it is?” She had learned long ago to accept most outlandish claims such as Camille’s on faith, as with some mutants, chances were very good that they spoke the truth.
“Yes. I can take them there.” She turned and started for the door. “But I might not return.”
Storm paused. “Exert yourself,” she suggested coolly. “Bring my children back alive.” As the females left, most with trepidatious backwards glances, Storm felt herself wilt, sitting on the floor before she fell down. She glanced up to find Rahne staring back at her from across the room, huddled into a knot of tension. “We will be fine,” she soothed, lying to herself.
Rahne shook her head. “No, we won’t be.”


1 Very sharp cutting device used to slice things extremely thin.
2 Phrase came from BtvS and I like it so I use it. So ner.
3 Where is Kitty?