It all started with a big bang.

At least, she thought she remembered a big bang.

Lori's vision faded in from white and everything she could see was chaos. Had New York been bombed? Because that was what it looked like. Lori and a few other people lay scattered around. Cars were pushed out of the street. Everything centered around a clearing that had nothing left in it. No light poles, no mail boxes, no large portion of the building next to it... just... nothing.

Lori shook her head until her ears gurgled and popped. That's how she first noticed her reflection in the warped glass of the building next to her.

Lightning. It was having a hay day all over her skin.

Her stomach dropped out through her feet.

She couldn't... Lori reached toward her reflection and the building screeched and twisted away from her. The glass shattered at her feet.

Mutant.

But she... people didn't become mutants this late in life.

She tried to remember what she was doing... smoking a cigarette? Walking... somewhere?

"Ma'am?"

Lori yelped and so did the guy holding the child.

Chill out. Chill out. She took a calming breath and looked at her hands until the lightning storm died down.

"Ma'am. Your baby is crying."

Your?

Baby?

Your baby.

HER BABY!?!?!?!

"I-I-I WHAT!?" The lightning started up again and the nearest car started skidding across the street. The guy flinched and placed the kid on the ground before backing away and eventually turning to run.

The kid was crying. He was singed around the edges and he was crying. So was Lori, but she packed it down until the lightning stopped and she grabbed him up. It felt all right. Like she'd done it before.

ohgodohgodohgod.

She ran all the way to Rupert's. Dropped her keys about seven times as she fumbled them out of her pocket and unlocked the door. It wasn't until she was on the other side that she felt anything like relief.

Things weren't settling down. They were supposed to: it was just one little incident. One mistake that had already been explained at length to those vultures in the press. They'd even released the video footage from the damn squad cars; what part of 'mutant burglar with wings' and 'resisting arrest' did the mutant community find so hard to swallow? If the description had been 'heavyset white guy in a grease-stained wife beater', the officers would have reacted the same. Damn minorities, always clamoring to be treated special.

Rupert sighed, and flipped the channel. What else was on?

"The Supreme Court is considering arguments against the Defense of Marriage Act—"

Well about damn time. Now there was a minority he could get behind. No stabbings, no explosions, no city-wide protests over one isolated incident of completely justified police force; just colorful parades, and good fashion sense. Rupert put down the remote, and got back to cleaning his gun. He'd been at the range earlier that morning; the world still smelled like gun power to him. The Glock was disassembled on the table in front of him on top of an old Flaming Lips T-shirt.

At his side, Flispy perked up her ears. Someone was running in the hallway. And dropping things, right outside his door. Well why not? It was a free country. Not like he was a man sitting alone with his poodle, cleaning his gun. He clicked the pieces back together, his hands working smoothly, with almost unconscious familiarity.

Flipsy started barking. Then she ran to the door, for all the world like she was expecting... well, excepting her owner to come in.

"Just who are you waiting for?" Rupert said. "I'm sitting right here."

The poodle yapped on, undeterred. It wasn't her tail that was wagging: that was just the final twitch in the full-body convulsion she had going. If she kept it up, her bones would be vibrating into jelly. The TV was still on, but he couldn't hear a word the news anchor was saying; he couldn't hear anything else, either.

"Flispy, quiet."

He was just getting up to go pick the poodle mutt up when the door opened. Instinctively, he reached for his gun; it wasn't loaded, but whoever was coming through that door didn't know that. Even a psychometrist would have to touch the damn thing to know for sure. He steadied it—

--and only then did he realized that he knew the face that was coming inside.

"Lori."

Rupert had a gun. Lori had a baby.

...He lowered the gun.

"I know that ain't mine," he said, after doing some very quick, very soul-searching math.

Gun? Lori clutched screaming baby closer as if that would save him. Rupert looked like hell. And... old, but at least he was wise enough to lower the weapon. The blonde breathed a sigh of relief. Flipsy was huge, but still as endearing as ever. The pooch got a watery smile.

She could hardly hear Rupert over the screaming baby.

>"I know that ain't mine"

"Who the hell else's would it be, Rupert?" She snapped and shifted the child in her grip as she tried to keep a grip on her shaky calm. It had better be his or she might just come apart at the seams. She jiggled the baby a bit and tried some shushing on him. Oh God. She didn't even know his name.

She started shaking. "Take it." Her skin was itching all over. She couldn't hold it in forever. She shoved the kid toward him and practically dropped it in his custody. She had to go somewhere safe. Somewhere... insulated.

Well, the kitchen was closest. Lori skidded behind the cabinets on her knees and hugged herself as she broke out into a lightning storm. If there was one person who wouldn't care what she was, it was Rupert.

"Still have," her muscles spasmed and locked tighter and tighter making it hard to speak, "a soft spot... for mutants?"

"Brad Pitt's? An angel of the lord's? Don't ask me where you've—whoa!" Some quick re-juggling was necessary; some items need to be prioritized, and fast. Rupert let the gun hit the floor as he got a solid two-handed grip on the baby. "Lori, you can't just throw these things! You were raised in a trailer park, not a god damn cave. You-- Lori?"

She was running into the kitchen. His kitchen. Why was she running into his kitchen? Even on the best days of their relationship, that had never been a harbinger of good. Like that time she'd tried to cook him breakfast. Scrapping burned eggs off his stove's burners hadn't screamed romance.

Burned. Something smelled burned—

...The baby?

"Sssh, sssh, it's okay," he cooed, rocking the... girl? Boy? Thing? "Lori, what the hell did you do to—?"

Oh. God. He knew what happened to the baby.

"My kitchen," he whispered; a half-choked noise.

He'd killed freaks for lesser crimes than this.

She was locked down in the kitchen unable to move for the spasms. Little fingers of electricity waving off of her in arcs like she was the globe of a tesla coil.

The kitchen? Who freaking cared. Why wasn't he freaking out more? She was a mutant. They had a kid. At least, she'd assumed that it was theirs. How could he not know? How could she not know?

"What's going on?" At least Flipsy had the good sense to keep away. "I thought we got bombed out there."

"...Bombed?" He repeated, dumbly. What, that noise earlier? To be honest, he'd heard it, but it hadn't registered; like taxi horns and screeching brakes, mid-day lightning crashes from a clear sky were just something a modern New Yorker learned to filter. "It's probably just protestors. Some mutant setting off their—"

--Electrical powers.

"Lori," Rupert said, unconsciously rocking the baby; it started settling down, reaching a hand up to his scowl. "Did you shoot cars at the city again?"

"AGAIN?" She grit her teeth and then couldn't ungrit them in order to yell more. Since she couldn't run her mouth, she ran her mind. Again? What the holy hell would make Rupert think that...

But she could see it. She had. They both had. That released something in her chest and, though tired, she started to piece one very solid thought together.

"Somebody's been f***ing with my head." She thought she was angry before. Now she was incensed. Lying on the floor was becoming less and less appealing. If she'd launched cars, she had control of this crap.

But, the worst part... She thought... she believed she was living here. She still had the key. He still lived here, but... he was older. Flipsy was older. Once she pulled herself up by the formica, she looked around the apartment more carefully. Nothing of hers was here.... except him. "What... year is it?"

"2013," he answered, slowly.

His kitchen smelled like a blown circuit breaker. Sparks still arced over her skin; luminous snake tongues, flashing out erratically. They looked like bad special effects. His ruined kitchen could have been any B-rated set of a horror flick. Or the worst domestic comedy ever to play out on the big screen. This was a dream, right? It had been nearly seven years since she'd lived here. Why did she even still have the--?

The baby succeeded in reaching his face. Its chubby hand scrapped across his four o'clock shadow. Instantly, its mouth screwed up for another round of crying. Stubble: it makes babies cry.

"Sshh, sshh—" For the first time, he really looked down at the thing he was holding.

The phrase "****ing like rabbits" came to mind. Classy, Lori. Real classy.

The baby was white-haired. Not blonde: white, like snow. He could deal with that. The ears, though? The ears were a little much. They were white, too, until their black tips. And lopy: they flopped back and forth every time the infant turned its head, unable to stay upright. She always had a thing for winking rabbit ears.

To be fair, so had he: he'd just preferred them on her head.

Once the crying was under control again, he looked back over at Lori. She looked like crap. There was something in the way she pulled herself up, like she was ready to dish that crap right back out at whoever had dumped it on her, that suited her better than any heels and fancy dress ever could. This wasn't the urban sophisticate mutie he'd crossed paths with on that bridge; this was the girl from the trailer park.

Rupert swallowed.

"You kept the key."

But then, he'd kept the apartment, and the flask, and the poodle.

Twenty thirteen? Lori was pretty sure it was more like 2006 and that fact was terrifying. She was officially a few crayons short of a rainbow.

"Of course I kept the key." She growled the words because this was absolute crap. "Rue, I woke up this morning and you made banana pancakes before I left for class." But that was apparently 7 years ago. Following that logic, she could see where his question was coming from.

Lori hugged herself to keep the electric aura and damage to the kitchen down to a minimum. When would this mutant stuff chill out? She was so over it already.

"We broke up." Clearly. Since none of her crap was here. She just had to say it out loud to make sure. Lori was starting to fall into a more pensive, less furious state of mind as she turned all this over in her head.

"It wasn't like I expected it to last forever..." It was just a jarring idea. Sort of like waking up and having a child... which was another factor she was trying very hard to ignore. Surely that wasn't hers. She would know if it was, right? Her current maternal instinct was zero. In fact, it was probably a negative judging by the singed state of the baby's clothes.

Yeah. She kept the key, but, "You didn't change the locks?" She wasn't the only one holding on to things.

>> "We broke up."

He'd taken a step towards her before he could stop himself. It was how she said it; the thin layer of inevitability flatly painted over her disbelief. She remembered banana pancakes seven years ago; then she'd come home to this. He remembered the years that filled that gap, but looking at her, it didn't make any sense to him either.

"It wasn't like that," he didn't know where the words came from, and he didn't know how to make them stop. "It wasn't like we—it was just... stupid. I said some damn stupid things to you, and I never figured out how to say sorry. And you never came back to hear it." He'd kept the same college grad's apartment and he'd kept the same decade old lock, but his key was the only one that ever turned it.

"You know how bad I am with apologies, Lori," he said.

That was an apology. From the tips of his sock-clad toes to his hazel eyes, that was an apology.

"Do you... need somewhere to stay? Until you, ah..." He bounced her rabbit-eared baby, and didn't even know what he was offering.

He made it sound like they didn't end so badly... just a bit of a misunderstanding and a bit too much pride on both their parts. Maybe this was their second chance. Their chance to say sorry and start again. Rupert even started, despite the fact that he was totally bad at apologies.

"Yeah." She confirmed his apology, but since Lori didn't remember anything for her to be sorry about, she didn't bother.

> "Do you... need somewhere to stay? Until you, ah..."

She probably did need a place to stay, but going elsewhere hadn't really registered as an option yet. "I'm sorta used to living here." She tried not to feel sheepish about that, but Rupert sounded almost vulnerable in his offer. "But if that's weird I-uh I have keys." Not that she knew what they went to... Lori fumbled them out of her pocket because that was easier than facing the elephant bunny in the room. "We're still friends, aren't we? You know where these go?" She could pick the apartment key out and her trailer key... the others? No clue.

This might not be so bad, the starting over. She never left so it wasn't even awkward for her.

We’re still friends, aren’t we?

She asked it so simply, like it had to be true. She had always been cute like that: she grew up like she did, she dated men like him, she even got herself into the big city and went to college, but she still had a naive streak wide enough to swallow Flipsy whole. Did she really believe that either of them was the sort to stay friends?

Fortunately, his eyes settled quickly on another topic, before he had to deal with that one.

“The trailer key, Lori? Really? God, don’t tell me that sack of s*** is still alive. What did he do, buy a liver on the black market?”

...Not that she would know much more about her daddy than he did, right now.

“Anyway, give me those.” He grabbed the keys out of her hand. “You aren’t going anywhere until we figure out what happened to you.” And who’d wanted it done, and why. Last he’d heard, she was some fancy business woman. Now here she was on her ex’s doorstep, carting in a baby whose daddy she didn’t know, just like she was...

‘Trailer trash’ seemed too harsh, no matter how hereditarily apt.

The baby had grabbed a keychain between two pudgy fists, and began gumming at it, its ears swiveling with the same abstract attention that its eyes were watching them..

“...You two can have the bed, I guess.” The couch would be fine for him. It wouldn’t be the first night he’d spent on the thing. It would actually feel roomy, compared to some other evenings.

Really? He had the cajones to start in on her family? "Don't even start with me, Rupert. I don't want to accidentally set you on fire or... sh*t." Ohgod. What was her dad going to say? He hated mutants as much as she did. Lori folded her arms and hugged herself tight. This suuuuuuucked.

Rupert took her keys. Whatever. Her life was over. This wasn't happening. She felt like she'd been a mutant for 5 seconds and already her life was ruined.

Pack it in. Suck it up. If she could do that, maybe she could make it go away. Lori ran her hands through her hair collecting more than a few fizzles and pops of static in her hands as she went. "Seven years... Nobody invented a cure?"

Bed was sounding pretty good right about now, actually. Rupert staying on the couch was laughable. Not that she wanted to do anything, but... snuggles. They'd snuggled this morning. Surely, surely they still could snuggle.

Wait. You two? "I don't know the first thing about babies." Didn't they need diapers? Bottles? She had no diaper bag. Ha! Proof it wasn't hers? Or... maybe it was back at the bomb site? Either way, Lori held her hands up so he couldn't pawn the thing off on her. "I don't even know if it's a boy or a girl." She didn't even know its name.

Her body language was clear as day; so were the little leaps of lightning following her fingers down her arms. He looked at her—the old Lori, the one he'd known years ago—and he wanted to tell her that it was all okay; that they'd work through this, like they had a hundred other little things that came with living together. He wanted to hold her.

He didn't want to get electrocuted.

Rupert stayed were he was, awkwardly bouncing a baby who was starting to fuss, his arms growing more and more tired. The kid couldn't even be a year old, yet; how was it so heavy?

"The company you worked for was working on a cure," he said. "I saw it. On the news. They just... aren't quite there yet."

He didn't know what position she'd held in the company. Researcher? Public relations? Designated pretty face to the media? All he knew was he'd turned on the TV one day, and there she was, promising that a vaccine was in the works. He'd been too caught up in seeing her to think beyond that; to think of why she was involved with that kind of project at all.

Seven years. Seven years of being a freak, and she'd never lost sight of what was best for the world: removing mutations from humanity's gene pool.

Good, she was sexy. Even when she was crackling with power.

"Why don't you go... freshen up," he said. "You know where the towels are." Never mind the extra t-shirts, and sweats. Things hadn't changed much back in the bedroom; his clothes had sprawled across into her half of the closet, but that was all.

"I'll make a list, and we can go shopping for little, ah," she didn't know. If it was a boy or a girl. Well; there was an easy way to fix that. The rabbit giggled as Rupert ran a quick check.

"For little Roger," he finished.

Until she volunteered a better name, that was the first that came to mind when he looked at the kid's charming face.

She had been working on a cure? Lori stood in a daze for a moment with absolutely no thoughts in her head at all.

Then it snapped back together. Maybe she hadn't turned into some stranger after all. "Of course I was working on a cure." Why wouldn't she? "Nobody wants this crap." And holy mackerel did a shower sound good. She could kiss the man just for offering. But, you know... potential pain and/or death were a hazard.

Instead she tippy-toed past the designate baby-holder and off toward the bathroom. Though, she did have to stop and weigh in about the name.

"We are not calling him Roger." A boy. That was good. Only one *** to worry about, after all. She could think up a name in the shower.

How quickly things could start to feel normal again! She turned on the water, full blast hot and stuck her hand in.

Her hand shot back out with a loud CRACK and a black scorch mark across the tub. Oh crap! Really? She looked at her hand and it was all sizzles and sparks until she stuffed it into the tiny towel shelf and between two towels. Nonononono!

She sank down to her knees and let her head fall against the shelf with a slight thud. Couldn't she have just this one thing? Please, universe? Please?