Uncanny X-Men 1943

Chapter 12

"Strong deliverer, strong deliverer

Be thou still my strength and shield."

"Not that there will be a 'next time'," Emma said, slipping into the pew opposite Elizabeth, "But perhaps tell someone where you're going." She'd realised that Elizabeth was missing before she was even fully awake, and headed out to find her. The morning was bitter and the land covered in frost and in any other circumstances, the silent town would have looked rather romantic in the starlight. Emma had found Betsy in the church with minimal psychic effort, her soft, sweet singing having also been a give-away.

"I did," Elizabeth said, sitting down and looking ahead to the altar. Surely it was too early for a lecture from Emma. "I told Logan."

"Oh yes. Wonderful, terrific, given how universally renowned Logan is at his communication skills."

"I told him I was coming here, and that I wanted to be left alone for a while. He respected my decision."

"That isn't how this works," Emma said, annoyed that she cared so much, not so much that Betsy had wandered off alone, but that something could have happened to her. It didn't matter that she was an extremely powerful mutant, it mattered that this area was crawling with spies for both sides, and, now it was morning, Emma was convinced they had enemies on their tail.

Elizabeth shrugged and didn't bother keeping quiet her thoughts of wishing Emma had left her alone.

"Also, why were you singing in English?" Emma asked. "At least choose something in Latin, so as not to be so totally obviously foreign. Besides, I thought you were Catholic. Don't you people do everything in Latin?"

"I went to Roedean, I know the Church of England songbook as well as the best of them," Elizabeth said. They sat in silence for a couple of minutes, each working on barricading away their fears. "Even if we have been betrayed," Betsy said, "I don't think, I - Warren is still out there. I'd know if he wasn't. I'm sure I'd know... I - ah, I don't know if I'm feeling everything or nothing. I don't know if I can tell the difference anymore."

Emma looked ahead at the altar and forced herself not to slip into diamond form. That was the only way she was capable of feeling nothing, and now the Elizabeth mentioned it, it was just what she wanted. "Trust your powers. Back yourself. Try to come out of this alive." Gosh she wished Scott was there to do the motivational speeches.

"You too," Betsy said.

"Oh, darling," Emma said, standing up and heading up the aisle, "I will flatten the whole damned continent if I have to, but I will go home. We depart in ten."

...

 Jubilee was somewhat surprised that there was a car to pick her up from home, but she would have been lying to say it was a total shock. She was hoping all events of the day before would have been brushed under the carpet and into thirty-year secrecy archives. Evidently, not yet.

She rode in the back of the car, and it wasn't long before she realised they were not going to Baker St.

"Umm, where are we going?" Jubilee asked the driver, though she had a pretty good idea.

He looked at her in the rear-view mirror but didn't respond. Jubilee held tightly onto her bag.

A few minutes later they were driving through Whitehall, then past Westminster Square and St James' Park. The car stopped outside a building with a plaque reading "Minimax Fire Extinguisher Company", but Jubilee knew better. Jubilee was lead inside the building, escorted up a couple of levels, and into a small room with no windows and only one door. There was a table with three old, definitely non-mutant men sitting along one side, and a single chair for Jubilee on the other. The door was closed behind Jubilee, and she would have sworn she had heard the lock click shut.