Summary: Domino cleans up, the X-Men and Friends ask and answer questions, and everyone goes home.

Min's Note: Dee and I decided to combine our two, since they occur more or less contemporaneously. The Domino parts are hers, the X-Men parts are mine. Editing by Naomi.

Other people got bored in Sense Dep. Other people panicked. She'd never worked the same as other people. Normal people. Even before they'd ripped her open and sewed her up with all sorts of goodies inside. Her brain had never worked the same as the 'normal'. It made the psych guys perennially a little concerned about her. It made her an excellent field agent. And it made telepaths hate her. The single RECOIL telepath always stayed as far away from her as possible. Said looking into her head was the equivalent of riding the world's worst roller coaster while hung over.

Domino had only ever met that one telepath. Madelyne Pryor would have been her second. If she'd woken up. If it had even been Madelyne in the first place.

Abruptly, nothingness disappeared.

It wasn't a short trip, from Sense Dep to McLure's office. They cleaned her up, and then left her to get dressed in a small, cold room rendered smaller by the presence of both her bodyguards, arguing about the weekend's baseball results.

"What does McLure want now?" she asked, pulling the uniform white t-shirt over her head.

"The Essex business," Granger offered shortly. "We got duped."

"No shit." Domino finished tying her shoes, and reached for the shallow tray that held her personal items -- just a watch and her mobile phone. "I could have told him that in the first place."

Day grunted, stared out the small window in the door to the room. Domino fastened her watch and turned on the phone. One missed call. She didn't recognize the number.

"You done?" Granger asked, poised by the door.

She slipped the phone into her pocket. "Let's go."

McLure was in one of the operation control rooms, leaning over the shoulder of a technician working at a computer. They filed in, and he didn't even look up. Day leaned against the wall beside the door, and Granger fell into a desk chair, swiveling idly.

"That fucking bastard Essex fed us shit," McLure stated, after half a minute of silence.

"Yes sir," Domino replied vaguely, hands folded behind her.

McLure stood and walked over to stand in front of her, his face hard. "And you let him get away."

Domino didn't even blink. "I was acting according to orders, sir. I thought he was working with us. What was I supposed to do? Bag and tag our ally?"

McLure sniffed, turned away to face the main screen of the control room. It showed a map of the North American continent, major cities marked, and a pulsing red dot in the middle of nowhere. "Well, at least you tagged his ridiculous airship."

"Twice," Granger noted from his chair. "Smarmy bastard," he muttered.

Another tech stepped forward, pointing up at the map. "There's all sorts of reports of very strange activity around this area. Explosions and even some talk of weather disturbances. A lot of noise."

"There's going to be even more in a minute," McLure declared ominously. He half turned to look at Domino. "There's two NRO-D strike teams ready and waiting, and choppers standing by. They can have you on the ground in an hour. Too late for anything really interesting to turn up. Just deal with the situation." He smiled grimly. "You know what you're doing, Domino."

Her chin rose a little. "Thank you, sir. Any special orders regarding Doctor Essex, sir?"

"Bring him in," McLure replied. "I don't care if it's in a plastic bag, just bring the fucker in."

Domino smiled then. "My pleasure, sir."
 
 
 
 

"It's a fucking war zone down there!" Day called over the noise of the helicopter.

Domino ignored him, leaning forward to scan the destruction. She reached to touch the shoulder of the pilot, and point past him. "Put us down in the field over there."

"There's not enough room."

"There's plenty."

"Not with that airship wreck. Air currents are going to be disrupted. If we get an unlucky updraft --"

"We won't." Domino sat back in her seat and unclipped her radio from her belt. "Alpha Unit set up a perimeter. I don't want to be dodging any annoying amateurs. Keep the Feds out. Beta Unit, deploy and sweep inwards. Rendezvous at ground zero. If anyone's still alive, I want them ASAP."

She was out of the chopper before it was even fully grounded, Day half a step behind her. Granger paused and then clapped the slightly wild-eyed pilot on the shoulder. "You've never worked with Lady Luck before, have you?" He grinned at the pilot's blank gaze, then jogged after the other two.

Domino was standing near the airship wreck, at what anyone else might have considered an unsafe distance. It had been a conflagration, but even burnt as low as it was now, the heat still seared the skin. Granger squinted up at it, and pointed. "Is that a hole through there?"

Day spat, holding his shotgun with the sort of nonchalance Granger was sure he practiced in front of a mirror. "Too fucking crisped to tell."

"Yes," Domino stated, and turned on her heel, striding across the field towards the remains of the orchard that hid the house. Granger exchanged a look and a shrug with Day before following; it was always impossible to tell whether Domino was even having the same conversation as them.

From the air, the stand of trees had looked messy. On the ground, it was devastated. Nothing had escaped unscathed. Barely half the foliage remained on most trees, and the ground was strewn with torn branches. Here and there, a tree leaned crazily, half wrenched from the ground, roots waving forlornly in the eerily still air.

And as they moved closer to the house, the battered trees were joined by battered bodies. They were just as twisted, just as mangled, as the flora.

"Jesus Christ," Day muttered, nudging the grotesquely bent leg of one body they passed. It was face down in the drying mud, a fact Granger was very grateful for. He moved on, following Domino, who barely glanced left or right.

The house, set in a small clearing, was in even worse shape than the surrounding countryside. Granger was amazed it had enough structural integrity to stand. He could see clean through it, in places. The place was dead silent. They caught up with Domino halfway to the house, where she'd stopped, kicking at something in the short grass. Granger glanced down. Empty gas canister.

"We're too fucking late," Day said curtly. "Everyone's gone. Or dead."

Domino nodded towards the house. "Inside."

Granger went in first, handgun ready. Domino followed him, holding her gun with the sort of casualness Day was never going to perfect. Day remained by the back door. There was a door opening to a basement just off the kitchen; at her signal, Granger left that for Domino, then he systematically went through the rest of the house. The place was a wasteland of broken glass and splintered wood.

It was also completely empty. Granger could hear the scrape of his shoes against the floor, the wet smack of Day chewing his gum outside, the protesting squeal of the back door swinging idly off its one remaining hinge. He just about jumped out of his skin when a mobile phone rang, loud and shrill; the sound was abruptly cut off by Domino's voice. "Yes."

Granger grit his teeth and took a deep breath, let it out in a faint laugh. Tuning out the sparse lines of Domino's phone conversation, he edged forward a little, so he could see through a gaping window frame out the front of the house. Beta Unit were completing their sweep and starting to emerge from the tattered remnants of the trees. There was a small group forming around another figure, which was lying in the dirt in front of the house.

It was only a few strides back to the kitchen, where Domino stood at the top of the stairs to the basement, mobile phone to her ear. "Leave it with me," she said as he came in, and ended the call, turning to look at him. "What?"

Before he could say anything, the radio at her belt crackled to life. "We've got a live one, boss. It's him."

"They're out the front," Granger added, as Domino pocketed her phone, and pulled the radio from her belt.

"Be right there."

Day peeled off as they marched out the back door, circling the house. There were more NRO-D men emerging from the trees. By the time they reached the front of the house, three quarters of the unit were there. They cleared space for Domino, an aisle for her to march down to reach the prone figure. There were strange burnt patches in the grass, Granger noted. There were a lot of strange things here. Even for someone used to working with RECOIL.

Essex was half bent, sprawled on the ground like he was a rag doll that had been tossed aside. His head lolled against his shoulder, eyes staring up over the horizon. His clothes were torn, stained with dried blood and dirt, which also caked his skin. But he was breathing, his chest rising and falling underneath his shredded shirt.

Beside Granger, Day looked down at Essex with hard eyes. "Bastard's toast," he muttered. Granger grunted agreement.

Domino crouched beside him, watching him with blue eyes easily as blank as his own black ones. She took his chin in one white-fingered hand, tilting his head to look at her. His dark, glassy eyes didn't even change focus. Neither did hers.

Then she smiled, thin and sharp. "You aren't getting away that easily," she declared, squeezing Essex's chin in her strong grip. The smile turned into a grin. "RECOIL still has a use for you."

There was quiet laughter at that, but Granger was still watching Domino, so he saw when she leaned in close to Essex, brought her lips close to his ear, and he saw those lips move. He thought he saw her say: "I still have a use for you."

But maybe he was mistaken about that.

The next instant, she was looking up, squinting into the sun. "No one else?"

The squad leader grimaced expressively. "Helluva lot of dead bodies. They sure didn't slice'n'dice themselves. But the winners? They're long gone."
 
 
 
 

"What the hell are you doing up here anyway? You never answered me the first time."

It was Scott's first question to his brother, Alex, now that they were some distance from the site of their impromptu battle with Essex. Their little three-car getaway caravan had pulled off into the parking lot of an all-night A&P supermarket where enough cars dotted the asphalt to keep from drawing too much attention to theirs. But at this hour, only night-shift workers moved in the isolated light of street lamps. They weren't likely to be overheard.

"I was looking for you," Alex replied. "When you stopped writing me, I got worried."

Ororo was sure that, if she could have seen them, Scott would be rolling his eyes. "You were supposed to stay out of trouble down in New Mexico, man."

"They came after us," said the Indian girl. Dani.

That halted Scott's tirade before it could get off the ground and he studied her; she studied him back, disinclined to be put off by his temper. Alex was grinning, and so was Ororo. Ororo liked the younger girl, if for no other reason than because she didn't cower before Cyclops. "Who came after you?" he asked.

"The Shadow Eyes. He was looking for us. How else do you think I recognized him?"

"Dani has dreams," Alex explained. Either nerves or exhaustion made him ramble. "She sees things that, like, come true, and she kept having these nightmares that something was coming. Something big. So then, when we were out camping in the desert" -- Ororo noted how Scott's eyebrows hiked up at that -- "we heard these choppers, and Dani knew they were after us, so we bailed and went looking for you. I figured you'd know what to do."

Scott's smile was wry, but he didn't reply directly. Instead, he turned to regard Sabretooth and the pregnant Jean-clone, who were leaning against a car, their daughter in Madeline's arms. Jean stood beside her, and even if the two hadn't touched since they'd been forcefully separated after the battle, they didn't seem to get very far apart, either. Ororo wondered what it would be like to discover one had a twin? The little girl in the clone's grip seemed fascinated by her mother's "sister," and kept stroking the skin of Jean's arm, or sniffing her. Now, when Scott turned his attention to them, she buried her face in her mother's neck. "Are you okay?" he asked Madelyne. A simple question, but it conveyed many things. She nodded without quite looking at him. "I came looking for you," he added. "I wanted to see if you'd come back to Westchester with me."

At that, she did glance up, and Sabretooth growled, but Cyclops held his ground. "I don't want to live at your mansion," she told him, glancing sideways at Jean. "Nearby, maybe, but not there. I'd rather stay with Creed."

Jean appeared unsurprised, but Scott sighed in disappointment and seemed to deflate, as if all the events of the night had finally caught up to him as they'd caught up with Ororo already. Coming over to where she sat on the tailgate of the filched pickup truck, he plopped down and just looked at his hands. It was quiet enough for them to hear the hum of streetlights and the shifting of their own feet. From far, far in the distance came a whine of sirens, or maybe that was her paranoid imagination. Hadn't they driven too far by now to hear emergency vehicles arriving to clean up after the mess they'd left at the house? She didn't want to recall what they'd walked away from, and how many body parts had been separated at some distance from their proper bodies. In the heat of battle, she'd wanted to hurt them. She'd wanted to get them back. Now, the memory just made her slightly queasy.

Everyone was still looking at Scott, as if they expected him to make all the decisions -- even Sabretooth and Wolverine -- and for some reason, that annoyed Ororo. Couldn't they give him five minutes to collect himself?

And that thought surprised her. Since when had she become Mama Goose for Scott Summers?

But he rose to the occasion. He was, after all, Cyclops. Sighing, he looked around at their small circle. "We can't stand out here all night. Someone'll notice." He eyed Sabretooth, then Wolverine. "Who else is likely to be looking for us?"

The two men exchanged a look of wary, reluctant respect. "Probably no one," Sabretooth replied finally. "Wolfbreath here offed Wraith, and" -- he glanced at Jean and the clone -- "they took care of Essex. The rest of 'em'll be running around chasing their tails for a while. Dunno if Weapon-X' is ever gonna come back, but I'd rather not take no chances, eh?"

"With Wraith gone, I imagine Nick Fury'll move in," Wolverine added. "He's been looking for an excuse to close it all down for a while. There ain't no one to oppose him now."

Scott nodded. "So, in short, we're safe for the time being."

"As long as we ain't found and connected to what happened tonight, yeah, I think so," Wolverine agreed.

Sighing again, his shoulders still slumped -- he seemed in as much pain from his bruises as he was simply exhausted -- Scott said, "Then let's find a hotel where we can plan, and get out of this freakin' parking lot."

Ororo glanced at her watch. "Scott, it's almost four in the morning; it's a little late to get a room somewhere. Jean and I had one, but I don't think we'll all fit in -- "

"It'll do." He stood up, cutting her off. "We don't have too many options, people. We have to get out of the public view. Jean, Ro, you lead and we'll follow you back to the hotel. Logan and I came straight here, so we didn't get a place to stay." He glanced at Alex and Dani.

"We sure didn't have a room," Alex said, surprised.

"So. We cram ourselves into Ro and Jean's long enough to talk. And call Peter." He stopped to eye the grocery store. "But first, I'm starved. I'm getting some milk before we go anywhere."

At that, Ororo, Jean and Logan burst out laughing.
 
 
 
 

Forty-five minutes later, they'd ensconced themselves in a hotel room, and Ro was glad that she and Jean had been too harried earlier to check out formally. Between the two queen-sized beds and the chairs, there was enough space for everyone to sit down. Awkwardly and with no little suspicion, each group explained how they'd arrived on the shores of Lake Ontario, while Ororo observed the interpersonal dynamics. On one bed, Alex sat close to the Indian girl, leaning back into his hands and listing slightly towards her. They'd ridden together in Scott's rental, too, and had stuck like a pair of burs in the backseat the whole way. Ororo had occupied the front with Scott, having been assigned to his car while Logan rode with Jean and Madelyne. Splitting up Ro and Jean had ostensibly been to prevent anyone from getting lost, but really, Ororo thought Logan just didn't want to let Jean out of his sight, and where Jean went, the clone drifted after. So Jean had led the way with Scott behind, and Sabretooth had followed in the pickup with the child.

If Alex and Dani were an example of blooming love, Sabretooth and Maddie seemed more like an old married couple: nothing romantic in their interaction, but still clearly a pair. Ororo couldn't understand that -- how the clone could bear to be near that monster, but with their child (who'd fallen asleep almost as soon as they'd arrived), they occupied the far bed, Sabretooth on one side of Maddie and Jean on the other. If he didn't sit beside Jean, Logan had propped himself on the dresser where he could keep an eye on her while Scott sat on the same bed with his brother. And Ororo? She occupied a padded chair at the table by the floral-curtained window, as far away from the cat bastard as possible.

When explanations were over, Scott asked the predictable question. "Okay, so there's not likely to be any threat from Weapon-X for a while, and we have three of Maddie's four kids accounted for. Now what?" He'd turned to Maddie and Sabretooth. "Are you sure you won't come back to the mansion with us? You could both come, and the professor could help you -- "

"No fucking way!" Ororo interrupted, leaping to her feet.

Scott glanced over his shoulder. "Sit down, Storm."

"Don't tell me to sit down! I'm not living in the same house as that fucking beast," she replied, shaking with rage.

"You're going to wake the neighbors. Sit. Down." If the order was all iron, he'd twisted around to face her and there was . . . something else in his face. Something gentle. "Please," he added.

Crossing her arms and clenching her jaw, she sat, even as the clone said, "She doesn't want to live with Creed, and I won't live under the same roof with the one called Nightcrawler." There was less heat behind it, but no less firmness.

"What's wrong with Kurt?" Jean asked. She was protective of the German boy.

"He . . . hurt me," Maddie explained, and the two eyed one another for a moment, perhaps speaking telepathically, until Jean broke the stare and shook her head, though she didn't speak.

Scott was rubbing his eyes. "Maddie, we have to protect you -- "

"Which I already been doing," Sabretooth interrupted. "Look, kid, like I said before, I got no problems with yer coming 'round to see yer brat. But I ain't living where he is" -- and he pointed to Logan leaning against the dresser -- "nor getting involved in yer save the world clap-trap. Got it? Maddie's still got one missing kid. We'll try to find him."

"Sabretooth ­- "

"No. We're staying up here, and we'll look for the other kid."

"I want to live near Jean," the clone said, voice still quiet but adamant. She wasn't as soft as she seemed, but Ororo knew that strength didn't have to be either puissant or strident to be real. "I won't live at the mansion, but I want to live near my sister."

And Sabretooth actually paused to consider that. "Dunno where we'd stay," he replied finally, a half-hearted attempt to reassert his will.

"The professor has safe houses," Jean said. "You can stay in one of them."

The cat bastard still wasn't pleased, but he argued no further, and Jean and the clone shared another speaking glance. Scott watched them until both turned to eye him, then he blushed and looked towards his brother and the Indian girl. Ororo suspected that he was in for a reaming later from Jean for never explaining that Madelyne was her own genetic twin, but at least she hadn't proceeded to do it in public, so perhaps she'd learned some prudence of late.

Nudging his brother's shoulder with a friendly fist, Scott said, "You need training. For that gift."

Alex frowned. "I know." He was a good-looking young man, and not for the first time, Ororo wondered what of Scott's face the glasses hid.

"I wouldn't have wished this on you," Scott added.

"I know that, too."

"Do you think your adoptive parents will let you come to the professor's school?"

With a glance at Dani, Alex shook his head. "You assume they're even going to want to talk to me after this."

"You're their son," Scott said softly.

"No, I'm not! I'm their prize! And now I'm tarnished!" Getting up, he stalked out of the hotel room. Scott went after him. Dani, interestingly, didn't. The room was silent for a few moments, then Jean took over Scott's vacated role as leader. Looking at the Indian girl, she asked, "How about you?"

"I'm not sure I'm a mutant," the girl said.

"You're a mutant," Jean replied.

"Indians have been seeing visions for a long time, Jean Grey."

"But could they teleport images of themselves across a thousand miles?" That question had come from Logan. "We saw you, kid. Cyclops and me, both. We talked to you, though you was like a ghost -- and we ain't in the habit of seeing visions."

Dani didn't reply to that, simply turned her face away. "Astral projection," Jean said. "Maddie and I felt you, too, when we . . . joined. You shaped us, somehow. Your gifts are psionic, though I can't begin to guess the extent of them. The professor needs to meet you Dani. I don't think even Essex really knew who you were or what you could do. You're a wild card. You might be dangerous and not even realize it . . . ."

Jean trailed off as the girl rose up to head out after Scott and Alex, but when Jean tried to follow, Madelyne said, "No, let her be." And Jean sat down again.

Well, Ororo thought, that was certainly interesting. Jean Grey had found someone to whom she willingly listened?

When neither Scott nor the two younger mutants returned immediately -- Jean related a message from Scott that they'd gone for a walk -- Wolverine suggested that the women sleep. A healing factor ensured that neither he nor Sabretooth were particularly tired, so he kept guard inside while Sabretooth went outside, perhaps in deference to Ororo, who doubted that she could have slept -- however exhausted -- if he were present. Jean and the clone curled up beside the sleeping child on one bed, while Ororo took the other. When Logan woke them some time around ten in the morning, so they could get out of the hotel, Ro found the Indian girl asleep beside her, and Scott dosing in a chair by the window. His brother had, apparently, lain down on the floor.

Ororo wasn't sure if the short rest had been more helpful or harmful. All of them except the rapid healers looked as if they'd come out on the bad end of an argument with a truck, with scrapes and bruises and cuts on their exposed skin. "Time to go, people," Scott said, pushing himself up gingerly and wiping at his eyes beneath his visor. A day's worth of dark stubble covered his jaw. It was . . . attractive, and Ororo wondered immediately from where that thought had come. Perhaps she'd simply grown used to furry men.

"Go where?" Jean asked, feeling around the night stand for her glasses and fitting them onto her face with one hand.

"Back to Westchester," he replied. "I called Peter last night, and they're all headed north, too. The professor seems to be awake at last. Whatever you two . . . did . . . last night -- that bird thing -- it jogged him out of his catatonia." He glanced at Maddie. "He says he can find a place for you and Sabretooth." Then he glanced down at his brother, who was pushing himself up off the floor, and at Dani, who was wiping long hair out of her face. "For now, you guys come with us, too. We'll sort out the rest later."

Abruptly, he grinned. "We're going home, people!"

Some epilogues to come ... stay tuned....

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