Blueshift

Blueshift Chapter Forty Three (NC-17)
Disclaimers Apply

A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE ™, Prophetic Muse, Hamster Witch and Uberbeta… *sends tea and Tims * InterNutter, TC, and Maxwell Pink (anyone know where Dracena went?) are loverly and wondermous for archiving/hosting. ProPhile: Good luck… Morgan: *GLOMP * Readers/Reviewers: I seem to be missing Dracena and ReiMars… anyone seen them under lillypads or anything?


Storm swept her hair off her neck and twisted it into a loose knot on top of her head, slipping an ornamented stick through it to secure it. “You reek,” she announced, raising a brow at Logan.
“My friends Jack and Jose1 do that to a guy,” he grunted, pulling off his boots. “God, what time is it?”
“Goddess, and it’s two a.m.” She pulled her thick robe more tightly around her and shivered slightly. The cold air seeped in along the edges of the French doors leading to the balcony of her room.
“Only two?” he groaned, falling back onto her bed. “Damn… just now last call.” He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Sean do bed check?”
She nodded, making an affirmative humming noise before sitting more gingerly on the edge of her bed. “You’re getting your smoky, sweaty, alcohol soaked self all over my Egyptian cotton sheets.” She poked his side with one elegant finger. “Stop it. They’re new.”
Logan chuckled and opened one eye. “I’ll go shower in a minute. I just had to come see you, Ro.” He sat up then, becoming serious. “I know you don’t understand why I stayed gone even when I didn’t have to…”
“Stop,” she said sharply, holding up her hand to emphasize the word. “I do not need to know your reasons. They are just that, your own.” She flicked her gaze past him to the small altar she had set under the window, no specific deity indicated but a proliferation of flowers and stones obscuring the surface of the low wooden table. “We all have our secrets, Logan, our reasons for doing things that we cannot share even with the most beloved and trusted person in our lives.”
He shifted and followed her gaze to the altar but all he saw was a flower arrangement raging out of control. “Storm, you deserve to know.”
“Why? Will it change the fact you were gone? Will it change what you did not find?” She stood and smoothed her hands over her robe. “The Professor has found indications that Forge is nearby… we suspected he might be in Boston but Emma assures us that she has not seen a trace of him in any form.”
Logan blinked, aware that his attempts at revelation were being dismissed but unsure why. “Okay,” he sighed. “I think we got more problems than him going walkies,” he added, standing.
“I…do not know what to make of all this,” she admitted, the words coming out in a rush, tired of holding them back for so long. “I cannot believe these…women…are aliens from outerspace!”
“When you put it like that, it does sound stupid,” he agreed, folding his arms across his chest. “Coming from a goddess,” he added thoughtfully, quirking his lips in a smirk.
“That is not the same thing! Aliens, Logan! These women are saying they…” she frowned. “Did you hear that?”
He nodded. “Sounds like,” he paused and winced as the sound of something metal hitting the floor reverberated in his ears. “Yep, he’s hammered.”

“Oh, it was lovely,” Mark opined, frowning as he tried to open the bottle of water from the fridge. “Damn it… I think it’s glued shut.”
Storm sighed and took the bottle, twisting the cap off easily. “I highly suggest drinking this, taking a pain killer and getting to bed immediately. You’re going to feel like death warmed over in the morning.”
Mark nodded seriously and sat heavily in one of the kitchen chairs. “I met a woman tonight… you saw her, Logan… amazing legs…very fascinating conversationalist, lots of troubles with work, it sounded like…” He took a long drink of the cold water and winced as it chilled his alcohol-warmed throat. “Most amazing shade of azure.” He giggled incongruously with his staid image and added, “I think that’s the Bombay Sapphire2 talking.” He did not notice that Logan and Storm had become very, very still. Mark closed his eyes and sighed, stifling a yawn. “She’s sort of a caretaker for some children…almost like you lot are here…but these kids, they’re troubled, she said. Two of them right now are in…what’s the word?”
“Insane?” Logan muttered. He sat down across from Mark and leaned intently across the table, forcing the drunk librarian to maintain eye contact and hopefully attention. “Blue, you said? What’s her name?”
“Mmm…Raven,” he said after a moment, his brain cells trying to function. His face split with a goofy grin and he leaned back, folding his hands across his stomach and sighing. “She gave me her number, before she left… she said one of the girls she’s taking care of is a flight risk and couldn’t stay to chat with me but she wants to see me again tomorrow night… or is it tonight?”
Storm vented a long, pained sigh. “Why didn’t we think of this before? Start a mutant Lonely Hearts club, infiltrate the Brotherhood with British charm and find out all we need to know?”
“If I didn’t know better,” Logan murmured, “I’d say you were being sarcastic.” Snapping his fingers to get Mark’s attention again, he questioned him further. “Flight risk?”
“Mmm… We talked a lot about our jobs… I told her I’m a librarian for a boarding school so no worries on letting the mutant thing slip there… She told me she’s sort of the housemother for a halfway house for troubled youth and works as an assistant to the director of the facility… She seems to think her boss is a bit of a twat.” He giggled again. “Funny word, isn’t it? Twat?”
“Yes,” Storm ground out between clenched teeth. “Moving on…”
Mark nodded seriously, finishing the bottle of water, some of it dribbling down his chin. “Right,” he continued. “Anyway, seems one of these girls is actually *trying* to get preggers! Trying! A teenager!” He clucked his tongue and shook his head. “It wasn’t that long ago I was a teenager but I don’t remember any girls actually *trying*… I always thought the entire goal was to *not* get preggers at that age…”
Logan’s brows had shot up at the mention of the girl. _Only one girl I know if running with that crew and it’s Tarot… unless Mags got himself some little brood mare… or worse. _ “What else?”
Mark shrugged. “Dunno… it’s getting late and I’m having a hard time feeling my toes…” He pushed his chair back and stared down at his feet. “Oh, there they are.”
“Mark, we’d like to hear more about this… Raven,” Storm said gently, offering another bottle of water with a sweet smile. Mark grinned back and accepted the water, managing the cap himself that time.
“Well, maybe a bit more… I don’t usually kiss and tell but since I didn’t kiss her, I guess I can tell… She’s very interesting! Smart as Hell, beautiful, doesn’t suffer fools gladly... Except for the beautiful thing, reminded me a bit of a professor I had at uni…” He set the water down carefully, as if he were afraid the table was going to skitter out from under it, before continuing. “She’s got a very difficult job… it sounded like she was part prison guard, part mother, part chemistry professor. She kept talking about the new lab in Essex…” He frowned again. “Or was it they got a new lab and named it Essex?” He looked askance at Storm. “Is there an Essex, New York?”
“I’m sure there is somewhere,” Logan sighed. “Okay, bed time for Bonzo.”3
“Kay,” Mark yawned, then promptly put his head down on the table.
Storm rolled her eyes and motioned for Logan to follow her into the rec room. As soon as he was across the threshold, she whispered, “Do you know what this means?”
“He’s a talky drunk and Mystique can’t hold her booze?” He glanced back towards the kitchen where Mark was now snoring. Loudly. “We’d better move him before any of the kids find him.”
“Logan, pay attention…” She pulled him closer so she could pitch her voice lower. “Mystique is unhappy with the Brotherhood. You know she is loyal to Magneto. For her to be drinking, to be telling these things to a stranger…”
“You think she’d be open to jumping ship?” He snorted. “I don’t care if she shows up here with Magneto’s head on a platter. Ain’t no way I’m letting her in this house much less in our good graces!” He paused. “Though the head on a platter thing might sway me…”
“Bright Lady, are all men this obtuse?” she hissed, throwing her hands up in frustration and whirling away, striding to the stairs She paused once to shoot him a baleful glare and continued on her way.
Logan sighed and shook his head. “Damn it… what’d I do now?”
“Maybe,” a soft female voice intoned from the dark, “you would like me to explain?”
His eyes focused on the stranger, one of the women from the study. She was a few inches taller than him, willow and pale, seeming to shimmer in the dark as the very faint hall light picked out the iridescence of her skin and, he noticed, feathers. “Eavesdroppin’ ain’t polite.”
“I was not eavesdropping. I was sleeping,” she pointed to the sofa, “and the two of you awakened me with your loud voices.” She stepped closer and smiled slightly. “M’kon was right about you. You are a warrior for these sort… not one of the primitives at all.”
“Huh?” he asked inelegantly.
“Come,” she said softly, taking his hand without asking. “I have something you should see…”

A/N Okay, Jubilee’s note NEXT chapter with Tabby and Wanda involvement in there somewhere and just why the Hell are the gods back…


1 Jack Daniels and Jose Cuervo…
2 A type of gin
3 Old movie starring Ronald Regan about a chimpanzee. Seriously.