I want to say I'm sorry for what i did to Lizzie in the last chap, and I actually want to thank all the people who flamed me about it, because, it shows just how much people care about what happens to the kid... Well Gee, that acually made it all worth it... anyway, what's in this chap was what I planed to happen all alone, only at first it was going to be new chars i made up, but I liked Shera's better. Enjoy!
Anyway, I'd like to thank both of my editers (yep, i have two wonderfull editers) for putting up with me <G>
Black Thief, Blink and Arcane belong to Shera Crawler 007 (BWAHAHAHA MINE ALL MINE!!!!!){<sigh> some editors...}. Shadow, Lizzie, and Devin belong to me. Sinister, and Gambit belong to Marvel. I wish I were making money from this, but since I'm not, don't sue me, please?

The Sun Will Shine Again
by Raven Adams
May 1998

Chapter 13

Blink slammed Lizzie's face into the floor as he struggled with his belt. Arcane stood over them, holding her bleeding hand where the brat had thrown the knife at her. Lizzie stopped struggling. With him on top of her and her face pressed into the floor, she could barely breathe.

"Don't hurt her too bad, Blink," Arcane snarled. "I get a go at her next."

Blink laughed, and Lizzie heard him unzip his fly. He reached up and grabbed hold of the back of her shirt and started to rip it when he heard a low growl and there was the clatter as something metallic fell to the floor.

Blink's head shot up, and out the corner of his eye, he could see Arcane shrink away. The next thing he knew he was being held to a wall by a hand at his throat. "What?" the giant snarled. When Blink didn't answer, he squeezed his neck, choking off Blink's air supply.

"The Master will hear of this!" Arcane said boldly, grabbing Lizzie up from off the floor and pinning one of the girl's arms behind her back painfully.

Lizzie whimpered, but she didn't cry out. Her nose was bleeding, as was a cut in her lip, and her right eye was beginning to swell. "He will hear of it and you will be dead!"

The giant shook Blink like a rag doll, then threw him a few feet down the hall. Then he turned to Arcane. The look in his eyes was murderous, something totally alien for the gentle giant. He took one step and it brought him right up to Arcane so she had to crane her neck to look up at him.

He leaned down closer to her. "Yes, he *will* hear of this."

Arcane's mouth dropped. No one had ever heard the giant speak more then one or two words at a time. But it wasn't that, it was the fact that he'd called her bluff. "He will hear how you disobeyed him, and if you are alive when he gets through with you, I will be surprised." His voice was cold, hard, and it even had the co-leader of the Malevolent Quartet trembling. This man could break her in half with one hand.

Arcane looked like a fish gasping for air as she fought to gain control of the situation. But before she could do anything, Blink was back up and sending a herd of knives from the kitchen at the giant's back. They bounced harmlessly off him, and he turned, snarling like an animal.

Arcane took this time to drop Lizzie and run, leaving Blink to fend for himself. It never registered in her mind when she ran past Black Thief standing in the shadows.

The giant grabbed hold of Blink again, ignoring it when the smaller man's pants fell to his feet. He pushed him up against the wall and slapped him, sending his head to the left with a crack. The giant shook him again. "Touch her again, and I will *not* turn you over to the Master; I will kill you myself." After a moment's hesitation he added, "Make sure your brother knows that that goes the same for him if ever he touches the boy."

While saying this neither of them noticed Lizzie. When Arcane ran, she had dropped her to the floor, and now there she lay, Blink's belt, or more precisely, Blink's heavy belt buckle, right in front of her face. Slowly, without thinking of what she was doing, she grabbed hold of it in one hand and pulled the belt from it with the other. As if an instinct long dormant, she knew just what to do.

She felt fire start at her shoulder and make it's way slowly down her arm into her hand and to the very tips of her fingertips where it then traveled back upward and down again. A never ending pattern. Her hand glowed bright red, as did her eyes as all the hate and pain and fear that had built up inside her ever since she saw her mother's death came out in a scream of rage. She threw the buckle with the power she had inherited from her father and never knew she possessed.

She threw it at Blink, but the giant turned in time to see it and stepped in front of it, letting it bounce harmlessly off his chest and fall to the floor. Blink grabbed his pants and ran down the hall in the opposite direction that Arcane had. The giant looked at Lizzie.

Her head hurt, and suddenly, everyone's mind in the underground--now she knew she was underground--structure was in hers. She could hear everything they were thinking...

Fear! Everything in this place screamed out FEAR! PAIN! TORMENT!

She saw Devin's dream as he tried to sleep on his little cot in their cell. A man, old, dirty, pushing him off train tracks... Black Thief's thoughts were on a thin, oriental-looking man with blue eyes, hidden behind designer glass, and cold hands groping her, and then when she fled his advances, her being sent to IT... a man, the giant, cold, hungry, pain wrecking every muscle in his body, sitting up, naked, in a black coffin shaped box and being told he was the Master's new toy... Blink's thoughts drifted to her as well. Him, on top of Black Thief, hurting her more then he'd hurt Lizzie. His brother, Cobra making advances on him, and Blink getting scarred in the fight from Cobra's venom.

Thoughts not her own raced through her head like a car going back and forth, leaving bloody tracks all along her brain. She saw memories that weren't hers, saw things she herself wanted to forget, her mother's dead body, her taking the locket--where was it? Where was her mother's locket, she'd forgotten all about it.--She saw the TESTS.

She couldn't ever remember them, and now, there they were in full life. Strapped to a table, needles in her arms, wires attached to her everywhere. Bright light, brighter then the sun, shining in her face, changing colors, and...

Pain! Searing, white hot pain! What were they doing to her, why was this happening?

no no no No NO "NOOOOOOOO!!!" She didn't even know she had screamed it, didn't know that the word was her own, and not what everyone else felt, what they thought. "LET ME OUT!" she screamed again before collapsing to the floor, and balling up into the fetal position, crying.

The memories crashing together in her mind like a car wreck.

And then suddenly, out of the aches, a picture came, voices, sounds, thoughts "I love you. I always love you, from now 'til de end o' time. No matter wha' anyone say t' you in de Guild, you always be in my heart and I never goin' t' let you go." Her poppa. How could she have forgotten her poppa?

She put her thumb in her mouth like she use to do when she was scared, and she rocked back and forth, her eyes closed as she pictured the sun rising over the bayou, a big red ball of light, and her poppa's arms around her as he told her he would always love her.

Black Thief was kneeling at her side in an instant. She reached out to touch the girl's shoulder, but Lizzie kept rocking, as if to rock herself to sleep. "I... I should have stayed... I-I'm a coward." Thief hung her head.

The giant leaned down and picked up Lizzie. "No. Being scared does not make you a coward." He said, holding the girl close to his chest and wishing. "You came to me. I see it as you are now a hero... and do not worry. They did not see you. The Master will never know."

He turned and walked down the hall and Thief watched him go. She nodded to herself, a hero for once... maybe one day, she'd be a hero for real.

Lizzie snuggled up against the giant's chest, getting comfortable. Her head no longer hurt, and she felt all her pains going away. Her swelling eye went down. What should have been a broken nose stopped bleeding and fixed itself, and her back didn't feel bruised from were Blink had been pushing her up against the kitchen counter.

She took her thumb out of her mouth and put her arm around his shoulders. "You c'n talk good, non?" she asked softly, laying her head on his shoulder, what had happened to her already fading from her mind.

"Yes."

"Were you tellin' me de trut', 'bout n't 'avin' a name?"

He smiled. "Yes."

She closed her eyes, picturing the bayou in her mind. "My poppa come get me." She whispered. She didn't feel him stiffen or see the hate flash in his eyes.

"Maybe." He tried to keep his voice steady, but he kept walking, bringing her to the cell she shared with Devin.

Dev was asleep on his cot, sweat on his forehead, tossing and turning, crying out. The giant gently laid Lizzie on her own cot and pulled a blanket over her. "Shadow," she said. He nodded and touched her head lightly with one finger, watching as she fell asleep. Then turned and did the same to Devin and the boy's thrashing stopped as all dreams were replaced by nothingness.

He moved over to the wall beside the cell door and sat down, deciding to keep watch in case someone thought to mess with one of his children again.

Continued in Chapter 14

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