Notes:  The first idea was Min's – then Mara Greengrass, David Ellis, Diana, Dyce, Lady Sascha, Nadja Lee and I all got in on the act too.  She's nice enough to let us all play in her sandbox.  But the toys still belong to Marvel. We ain't makin' any money with this.

Warnings:  Not much

Min's notes:  She brought in Dani, she brought in Dani!  (Min does a happy dance.)

Alex Summers hadn't actually seen his brother in almost five years.  Instead, Scott sent postcards every week.  Using code phrases they'd developed to let Alex know when there were messages waiting in the free e-mail account he accessed only at a library, or to let him know when Scott was simply checking in.

Two years ago, there'd been a sharp drop in contact.  The cards had stopped coming.  He'd been afraid something had happened to Scott.  Something awful.  Had almost been ready to run, as they'd planned.  But after a few months, contact had started up again.  Scott hadn't talked much about that time or what had happened to him.  And Alex was afraid to push, afraid to drive away the last of his real family.  Those black months of lonely silence still ate at him.

Then, last month, another silence started.

Every day he hurried home from school.  Eager to check the mailbox.
Hoping for one of the non-descript postcards with the familiar blocky printing that would send him to the library to check the shared account.  Scott had been adamant that he not check the account unless he received a card first.

"Hey, John, what's your hurry lately?"

Alex looked over his shoulder at the lean, dusky-skinned girl who stood at the far end of the bike rack.  The name everyone here knew him by was John Cameron, adopted son of Dr. and Mrs. Marcus Cameron, as it had been for the last eight years. The doctor and his mouse of a wife had felt it would help him adjust better to his new family, his new life if he had a new name as well.  He hadn't fought them back then.  He'd been too scared, too eager to please.  And later, when Scott found him again, his brother had thought it a good idea.  Good cover.  Inside he still thought of himself as Alex Summers, but it was a secret he hoarded.

He dropped his attention back to the stubborn combination lock, brushing an unruly fall of golden-blond hair out of his eyes.  "Nothin', Dani," he muttered.

The girl, dressed in khaki trail shorts, hiking boots and a red tank top with a denim shirt hanging open over it, watched him from narrowed eyes.  Not fooled at all.

"You've been jumpy for weeks now, buddy. What gives?"

Danielle Reynolds had been his friend for eight years.  Two eight-year-old kids trying to adjust to new lives in the same town at the same time.  Both adopted out, despite their advanced ages, when their parents died.  Naturally they'd bonded.  Nobody else wanted anything to do with them; the painfully silent blond boy and the skinny, confrontational Indian girl.

He looked up at her, frowning.  There were bruised-looking circles under her eyes.  She'd been sleeping badly for weeks now.  Just bad dreams, she said, refusing to say more.  He was getting really worried, enough so that he hesitated to burden her with his own troubles.

She was tall, as tall as he was, but sinewy and graceful where he was still awkward from his last growth spurt.  She'd been letting her hair grow for years, wearing it defiantly in braids and using brightly beaded leather thongs to tie them off, in silent rebellion against what she saw as the loss of her heritage.  Unlike Alex, she had no memory of her prior family, her parents, and didn't even know what tribe she was from.  The family who had adopted her were white and perplexed as to what to do about her anger.  They meant well, he supposed, by trying to encourage her to fit in with mainstream white society, but Alex understood what it was to lose your family, your past.  And even, in his case, your real name.

She was his best friend.  His only real friend, still.  And it was gnawing at him, his worry about Scott.  Things had been going so well.  Scott had even tentatively suggested Alex might want to consider a New England college after graduation, and had hinted he knew of a good one.  It was the only real clue he'd had about Scott's location in years.  He was eager to meet his brother again.  But Scott wouldn't hear of it until he was eighteen, and legally adult.  Two more years.

"No cards for seven weeks now," he said, pitching his voice low.  She stiffened slightly, but no one else would have caught it but him.  He glanced around, as did she, both wary.  They were alone at the bike rack.  Growing up outcast and adopted had taught both of them to be careful.  The closest kids were more than a dozen yards away.

"Hell, `Lex," she hissed softly, moving closer, and using his real name as she did when they were alone and talking about important things. "What are you going to do?"

"Don't know," he said through gritted teeth, tugging with exasperation at the reluctant lock. With a roll of her eyes she crouched down beside him and lifted the lock out of his hands, spinning the dial expertly.  She knew the combination, of course.  They shared practically everything.  He glanced over at her. "Scott's tough, been on the streets for years, but it's something bad this time.  I can feel it."

To his surprise, she made a small sobbing noise, biting her lip as she finished opening the lock for him.  She un-looped the cable from the bike frame and handed it to him, only then lifting her pained gaze to his.

"I know it is," she said, voice trembling. "I've been having dreams about it."

"What kind of dreams?" he asked, catching her arm.  She took a shaky breath, still reluctant to speak of the terrifying dream that had been tormenting her for weeks, even to her best friend.

"It's about a tribe lead by this stern man with fire in his eyes and the dark shadow that has trapped them in a deep cave."

"Tribe?  Scott and his new friends, maybe?" Taking her seriously right away.  Dani would never mess with him, he knew.  Not about his brother.

"I don't know," she said hesitantly, glancing at Alex, partially reassured by his intent look.  No laughing.  No brushing her off.  But this was Alex.  She should have known better.  But she'd been so afraid she was just going insane.  It was liberating to finally tell someone about her dreams – especially Alex.  It was almost as if it might be some kind of message for him.  "These stand with him; the wind, a bird of flame, a shaman of silken cords, a shield of steel, the cold of winter, and two savage beasts.  There are others around as well, some dark, some light.  And a woman of blood."

Alex was just staring, frowning slightly, lost in thought.  There was more.  She grabbed his shoulder, eager now to tell him all of it, "The shadow, it has many arms.  And faces.  It wants them, wants to twist and destroy them.  'Lex.  The Shadow Eyes."  She shuddered, remembering the full horror of the shadow in her dream, the evil inside it.  The dark eyes that pierced through her soul.  That knew her.  That wanted her as well . . . and Alex.

"Where are they?  Can you see that in your dream?" he asked, anxious.

"I don't know," she said, suddenly ashamed.  "I've been afraid to sleep the last few nights.  They were far away, I think. In a cold place."

Alex's blue gaze met hers, serious and calm.  Searching her tired face.  "It's Friday," he said. "Let's go camp in the desert tonight."

"Why?" she said, startled.

"We need to talk."

She met him at their old hideout just as the moon was rising.  The weathered pile of sandstone looked like a famous hamburger chain's sign.  It had naturally attracted them as little kids.  French fries were comfort food.  As they'd gotten older, they'd realized the value of a secret place of their own that others were unaware of.

Alex was sitting on the shorter of the two arches, watching for her, dressed in his usual desert attire; jeans, boots and a tee shirt.  Okay, it was what he always wore.  She was in the same clothes she'd worn to school that day.

"What happened?" he called softly.  Sound carried well in the desert air.  She gave a snort of disgust.

"Marty came back on leave.  So Lena wanted a sit-down dinner," Dani explained as she scrambled up on the still-warm sandstone beside him.  She settled down with her back against his, grateful for the warmth of him against her.  Alex was always warm, even seemed to radiate heat like the rocks under them.  It made sharing a tattered old tent in the desert night almost comfortable.

Marty was legally Dani's brother, as he'd been adopted by the Reynolds too, but they didn't get along very well.  He was three years older, of Hispanic descent rather than Native American, and had enlisted in the army right after high school.  Dani had been relieved until she realized Lena, her adoptive mother, would then have more time to 'work' on her rebellious daughter's unfeminine attitudes.

And there had been something odd in the way Marty had looked at her across the table during dinner tonight, she thought, frowning.  Something calculating.  So Dani had slipped out as soon as she could, packing more than she usually needed for an overnight stay into her backpack.  Including her precious books.

Alex sighed deeply.  He'd had to slip out too.  It had been easier because Dr. Cameron had been working late at the military research base again.  Helena, Mrs. Cameron, had wanted him to stay home.  The older they got, it seemed, the less she approved of Dani as his friend.

"It's strange," he said, staring up at the brilliant night sky.  The New Mexico desert still relatively clear of light pollution out here at the edge of Las Cruces.  Millions of stars gleamed above them, twinkling sharply in the navy-blue sky.  "It's like they don't trust me any more.  Helena's always watching me when she thinks I'm not looking.  She almost looks . . . scared."

Dani shrugged, knowing he'd feel the motion even if he couldn't see her.

"Don't know," she sighed.  "You know me an' Lena haven't always seen eye to eye.  I'm not girlie enough for her."

"Oh, are you a girl?" Alex asked, his tone lightly teasing.   She thumped her elbow back against his ribs, but it was only a tap, really.  A warning.  She could still whip his butt, if she tried, and he knew it.  He laughed, but it quickly faded.

"What should I do?   I'm afraid I'll never hear from him again."  He sounded at the edge of a sob.  Terrified.  She knew how much his brother meant to him.

She frowned into the darkness, dropping her chin onto her drawn-up knees.  She'd had an idea earlier.  It had snuck up on her once the relief of talking about her dream to him had faded some.

"Maybe... maybe I could dream about him for you," she said, fists clenching in the dark.  Frightened by some of the things in her dream.  And the intensity of them.  They almost seemed real.  But if Alex's brother was in her dream too, maybe he would help.  Alex twisted around and knelt beside her, draping his arm over her shoulders.  The warmth was welcome against both the chill of the night and the shiver her rash offer had sent through her.

"Would you?" he said.  She looked up at him, the moonlight showing him clearly to her.  Bright blond hair, strong jaw, clear eyes that in the sun she knew were a stunningly pure blue.  And a mixture of fear and hope and concern clear on his pale face.  "Will you be okay with it? If you couldn't sleep last night because of it…"

Stubbornly she shook her head at him.

"Whatever tribe I came from probably wouldn't want me to be all wussy about this, 'Lex," she said, lifting her chin. "I'm sure."

"Okay," he said, smiling tentatively at her.  "So, what do we do?"  She blinked back at him, baffled.

"Um, well. Guess I try to go to sleep," she said, shrugging.  He scrambled to his feet, holding his hand out to her.  Anxious.  She took his hand, letting him haul her up.  She fell against his chest, stumbling on the rough surface of the arch.  His arms closed hastily around her to keep them both from tumbling off.  She shivered.

"You sure you're okay with this, Dani?" he asked staring into her eyes.  She nodded, strangely breathless.  It was just Alex, she told herself sternly.  Plus the fact that she really didn't want to face the Shadow Eyes again in her dreams.

He let her go and scrambled down the rock.  She leaped down nimbly.  No more stumbling.  He'd already set up their much-patched tent.  It wasn't good for anything except keeping bugs and snakes out.  He climbed inside, holding the screen open for her as she followed, having paused to snag her backpack from the foot of the arch.  She tossed her rolled-up sleeping bag in ahead of her, earning an indignant 'oof' from Alex.

"Clod," she tsked.  He snorted, untied her sleeping bag and spread it out as she zipped up the bug screen and began the slow process of  unlacing her calf-high boots.  He yanked his own lower boots off once her bag was spread, then flopped down on top of her bag with a contented groan.  She scowled at him, the statement lost in the dimness of the tent.  So she poked him in the ribs instead.  Six or seven times.  She was debating trying to tickle him when he rolled over onto his own bag with an aggrieved sigh.

"Why does your bag always feel so much more comfortable than mine?" he moaned.  An old lament.  She laughed as she stretched herself out on top of the nylon, now pleasantly warm instead of clammy-cool, just from Alex's brief occupation.

"Grass-is-greener, buddy," she laughed, folding her hands over her stomach and trying to still the nervous fluttering that had started inside.  He shifted over, sliding until his arm was pressed against hers, a welcome warmth.  She closed her eyes.

They were silent in a nervous kind of way for a while.  Neither sure what should happen next.  Other than having her magically fall asleep, of course. Which was hardly likely.

"Want me to sing?" Alex whispered. Dani laughed.

"No, I don't want the coyotes to start up too!"

"Fine," he said sulkily.  Silence stretched again.  The sounds of the desert night began, louder now that they were still.  Scuttlings and scratchings and the padding of stealthy feet.

"You'll stay up, won't you, 'Lex?" she said, her voice a thin whisper in the dark. "Watch over me?"

His arm slid up hers, his warm hand settling over her cold one.  He gave her hand a gentle squeeze.

"Always, Dani," he said.

The darkness was hollow.  At its heart the darkness was pale blue like ice and dark-stained with a wash of old blood and agony and tears.  The eyes were scattered, the faces distracted.  Turned outward.  She saw nothing there.

The man with fire in his eyes was gone.  As were his tribe.  And the woman of blood.  But there was something . . . she reached . . . soft, small, helpless . . . a child . . . she pushed . . . .

And suddenly she stood in a room of cold, pale tile, staring at a strange shimmer of light.  There was a bunk in a similar room across the corridor with a huddled form on it, slender, girlish.  A hulking man-shape on the bunk adjacent.  They had not called her.

It was something else.  She turned.  Behind her was a crib.  She took a step toward it.  Drawn, somehow.  Looking down.

At a child.  A little girl.  Sleeping curled on her side.  Tubes and wires and devices attached all over the too-thin body.  Wispy red-blonde hair shorn close.  Pale, pale skin.  Withered limbs.

"Interesting," she heard a cold voice say.  She whirled.  Panic and fear and despair rising inside her.

The Shadow Eyes waited for her.

A thin black brow rose.  The Shadow Eyes stood.  Evil.  Cold.  Merciless.  Vile.  He took a slow step toward her.  She staggered back, hands clutching at her throat as she tried to scream and yet nothing emerged.

"You are manifesting earlier than I expected.  I shall have to attend to this matter promptly," Shadow Eyes said.  Her own eyes widened in terror.  She backed away, hands held out in front of her . . . then . . . shaking . . . falling . . .

. . . into a forest.  Tall and deep green and cool.  Dark.  Like nothing she'd ever experienced.  Her terror eased.  It was peaceful.  Safe.  Above loomed stars different from the ones she knew in New Mexico.  But bright.  Not near a city, then.  After a moment she realized there was light on the craggy trunks of the trees before her.  Golden.  She turned again, wary this time.  It came from a small camp fire, tucked neatly in a circle of rocks.  Beside it sat two men.

The first was dark, harsh, savage.  The images of beasts flared over
her image of him; bear, cougar, wolf.  All of them and none and yet still a man.  He lifted his head, staring at her intently.  She shivered under his regard, but not like when Shadow Eyes confronted  her.  This was wary respect for a wild thing, a creature of power but not evil.  Primal.

"What the hell is that?"  He spoke not to her.  The other man looked up, stood, hand rising to the side of his head.  Tall with brown hair and a strange golden mask over his eyes.  His build, older, bulkier but familiar.  The way he moved . . . the lift of his chin . . . she reeled.  He felt . . . he was . . . the woman of blood . . . red fire . . . she swayed . . . .

"She ain't there!  I can't smell nothin'!"

The tall man . . . Scott . . . it could be no one else . . . lowered his hand from his head and took a step forward.  Wary, cautious, yet curiosity and wonder were also to be found on his controlled face.

"Who are you?" he called to her.  Still mute, unable to be heard, she stretched out her hands to him, smiling broadly.  She mouthed a word, a name . . . he blanched.

"How do you know him?"

She smiled wide.  Hugged herself.  Smiled at him again.  Scott's tension eased slightly.

"Then if you're his friend, tell him to run, to get out of there – hide!  There's a doctor, a geneticist."  Scott's face was grim, concerned. She frowned, shivering. "Essex.  He's dangerous.  And he knows where he lives..."

At the name her head tipped back and her eyes closed as she gave a silent scream of agony, feeling the taint of the Shadow Eyes rip through her . . . she fought it . . . hands lifted in claws . . . gasping . . . blood . . . and fire.  Pushing it away.  Fighting it back.  When she looked again, Scott was close.  Frustrated, obviously, because his hands had passed through her like mist.  She shook her head sadly, ghostly fingers tracing the jaw that was so like Alex's.  But hard.  The face gaunt with worry and pain.  Yet strong.

The man with fire in his eyes.

"Who are you?"  That frown, again so hauntingly familiar even if obscured by the golden mask.

She smiled again, sadly, shaking her head . . . Scott . . . Alex . . . then . . .

. . . falling . . .

. . . to wake with a sharp jerk in the tent, on her sleeping bag, gasping for breath.  Alex's hand tight around one of hers, calling her name urgently, shaking her shoulder.

"Dani! Come on, wake up!"

She lunged up, wrapping her arms around him, holding him close.  Her heart thundering with panic.  Feeling the heat of him, the solid reality of him.  Hearing her own gasping breaths, the near sobs.

"Oh, I make noise again!" she cried, foolishly pleased by that one thing.  But drifting like a ghost through lands of unreality – or perhaps reality by a different perception – had unnerved her.

"I saw him!" she gasped, pulling back. "I saw your brother!"

"Is he …?" Alex began, but she was nodding frantically.

"He's okay!"  Words tumbled out of her mouth, her hands cupping his face in the moon-washed darkness.  Feeling his skin, his heat.  So precious.  "He gave me a warning.  There's someone after him.  Or he's after someone.  It was hard to tell.  But he wants you to run, Alex. Hide.  And he's right.  The Shadow Eyes saw me, somehow.  I think that was it, who he meant.  We have to go.  It wants us both.  Alex!"

"Okay," Alex said, statement firming into a grim look eerily, if unconsciously, like his brother's. He let her go, turning to find his boots.  Tossing hers to her.  She caught them and started working on getting them on with frantic fingers in the darkness.  "What did you pack?"

"I've got my money.  My books.  Extra clothes," she said as she swiftly laced up her boots.

He grunted in dismay.  "Not me.  Just the usual overnight stuff.  My wallet.  Breakfast crap.  I've got some extra water bottles, 'tho."

"Where can we go?  Las Cruces is the backside of nowhere."

They both froze then as the distant sound of a helicopter shattered the night.  They stared at each other, astonished, alarmed.

"It couldn't be.  Not that fast!" she wailed.  He shook his head then went to work.  Quickly rolling up first his sleeping bag, then hers as she stuffed loose items back into his pack.   The things she knew he always took out.  Flashlight, first aid kit, toilet paper.   He tossed her rolled bag to her and she quickly tied it in the strings at the bottom of her backpack.  He grimaced around at the tent.

"Do we have time?" he said, strapping his own sleeping bag to the bottom of his pack.  They were both moving with a swift, focused economy.  As if they'd somehow planned this flight long before. Knowing someday that they would need to flee this place they'd lived in so uncomfortably for so long.  She shivered.

"Do we leave it for them to find?  Then they'll know we were here.  I think we should take it."

He nodded and scrambled out of the tent, hauling his pack out with him.  She threw her pack out, then dived after.  With the ease of many repetitions they quickly broke the ragged tent down, rolled it up and stuffed it in the top of Alex's pack.  He strapped it on.  She paused for an instant, thinking quickly, then pulled a sweatshirt out of her pack.  Hefting her own pack over her shoulder, she bent over and swept the sandy ground around the base of the sandstone rock with the shirt, lightly, obscuring the tracks of their boots and the place where the tent had been pitched.

"That won't fool them," he hissed.  The helicopter sound was growing ominously closer.

"Not in the day, but it might confuse them now," she said, waving him up onto nearby rocks.  She wiped their tracks away up to the rock, then leaped up herself.  Tying the sweatshirt around her waist as she glanced around in the moonlight.  Relatively smooth.  No obvious tracks leading away.  Alex stood above, grinning in appreciation.

"Better than I thought," he said. Then flinched as the approaching noise grew louder.  "Let's go."

They turned then, two teens alone in the New Mexico desert night, and climbed off into the rocks. Hand in hand, helping each other climb to safety.  As they always had.

Seeking shelter from the coming storm.

Scott Summers stood at the edge of the clearing.  Staring pensively into the still Canadian back-woods night.  At the place where the shimmering apparition had stood.

A teen-aged girl.  A Native American girl.  Northern Plains, by Wolverine's estimation.  And why the Wolverine would know that was beyond him.

But the name she'd mouthed to him.  And the stunned sense of recognition when she'd seen him.

Alex.

He hoped against hope that he'd judged her right.  That the pain, the anguish, the hope in her face had been real, and not a trick of those Weapon X bastards.  Of Essex.

That somehow, his warning would reach Alex.   And his brother would run.  As they'd planned for, prepared for.  Just in case.

He hoped.  And maybe, in the still of the primal forest night, he prayed a little too.   To the living spirits around, or just to those benevolent forces that watched over lost children in the night.

Go on to Dyce's "Mother Goose, Father Gander"
 

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