There were certain things that James Lester just did not do, and get drunk in a seedy pub was one of them. That he was even in the pub in the first place was out of character enough; the fact that he was working towards getting drunk was a surefire sign something was wrong.

Three members of his team had been missing for several weeks now, stuck in time. Stuck, with no way to get back. Stuck, with no way to be rescued. And they'd tried to rescue them. Captain Becker was leading another rescue mission in the morning, actually, which meant that if Lester wanted to be alert enough to see them off, he really should stop drinking now and go home.

But drinking was easier than sitting at his flat, the not so little flat in the city that he used during the week. Sitting there made him think which only made him feel worse, and then he'd just be right back here anyway.

And so he sat at the bar, working on his second beer in less than half an hour and contemplating the extremely attractive redhead sitting a few seats away and wondering if he could get away with propositioning her.

Dani wasn't exactly sure about whether it had been a good idea to agree to Mikhail's request for this meeting or not. Then again, if she thought about it, she was pretty sure that she didn't have much say in the matter. Mikhail wanted to talk to her and was relentless about getting what he wanted. If she hadn't finally agreed to talk to him somewhere not the store, he probably would have found some way to follow them back to the mansion...

That would have been bad.

This bar had been a concession of sorts. It was a public place with just enough privacy to talk -- and it was run by someone who didn't hate mutants. Loosely translated, he thought Dani and the girls could do no wrong. Rachel had assured her this would be a safe meeting and that she didn't have to worry too much.

It was that too much that Dani didn't like.

When Ororo and Logan found out what she was doing, however, neither one of them had wanted her to come here. They both protested and Logan had reminded her that he was the one holding her together when the team had found her in that burning building.

It was Kitty who had finally convinced her adoptive parents to let Dani go -- warning Dani that if she was gone more than 24 hours without telling them where she was, then Mikhail was as good as dead.

"I thought X-Men don't kill."

"We don't, but he tried to kill you, Danielle." She hated it when Ororo used her first name like that. "I don't think that certain others of the girls would think about the fact that X-Men don't kill if you end up disappearing."

"They're students and not X-Men, yet," Logan reminded her.

Dani sighed, playing with the gloves she was wearing. She didn't even know why she was going to listen to what Mikhail wanted to say. She had lost everything that day three years ago.

It'd been a little over three months since the incident that had brought the two of them together, and Stephen was pretty sure he and Abby hadn't spent more than a single night apart since. She didn't like being alone, and he wasn't going to make her be alone. Especially not when she had nightmares some nights and had trouble functioning some days. Neither thing was surprising, given what had happened to her, but he knew how these things frustrated her. The two of them staying together was their way of trying to at least make things a little bit normal.

They'd pretty much unofficially moved Abby into Stephen's flat; for all the fact that Abby still had her place, she was never there anymore unless it was to grab a few things. It seemed like all her clothes had somehow migrated their way into Stephen's flat, but more telling was the fact that Rex had made his way over to Stephen's flat.

They were in the middle of their usual routine, with Stephen clearing away the dinner dishes and Abby curling up on the sofa. Once he'd finished, he went to join her, leaning over to kiss her cheek. "Tired, love?"

Lester wasn't at all sure about any of this, much less why he had an interest in a seventeen-year-old girl. He also wasn't sure about the sanity of her so-called guardians, that they would willingly let a forty-one year-old man come to visit her, but he was used to doubting people's sanity -- look at his team, after all -- so it wasn't anything out of the ordinary.

He wasn't even sure if Morgan actually knew he was there yet. She hadn't been home when he'd arrived; Kitty had, thankfully, been the one to answer the door for him. Kitty was the sanest of the three permanent adults in the household, and he used that word extremely loosely. But she was also the one most likely to not kill him five minutes in, therefore she was his current favorite.

Doubly so since she'd stashed him in a guest room and promised to let Morgan know he was there.

He'd dragged the unpacking out as long as he could; he was about five minutes away from going and exploring the house, things like privacy be damned.

Mikhail hadn't had a very good couple of years. Losing Dani had taken a lot out of him. She'd been 18 to his 28 when they'd gotten together and 19 to his 29 when she'd died. She'd died far, far too fucking young. Oh, it was the risk they took, no doubt about that, but he had never imagined she would die that young. He'd always imagined her going out in a blaze of defiant glory in her thirties, when he hadn't been secretly imagining the two of them dying of old age in each other's arms. Besides, the defiant glory thing was more her style.

He'd been wandering the country a lot in the past couple months, feeling like there was someplace he needed to be but not knowing where that someplace was. It was a feeling he was used to, sadly, but lately it had been even more intense than usual.

But even he had errands to run, which explained why he'd ventured out of his apartment in the middle of the afternoon instead of early in the morning or late at night like he usually tended towards. Stores generally appreciated your business during business hours, after all.

Not that he was giving this place much business. He was too busy hiding across an aisle, pretending to inspect the pet food while watching as a moderately pregnant woman and a woman who looked suspiciously like Dani cooed over baby clothes. It was the cooing that made him unsure about if it was Dani or not, aside from the whole obvious thing of Dani being dead. Because Dani cooing over baby clothes was just as out of character as he could imagine.

But still, this woman looked so much like her that he couldn't help but watch her anyway.

There were times when life felt almost normal for Katherine. She would be working, or studying, or hanging out with Elena or their friends (because most of Katherine's friends were also Elena's friends), and then something would remind her of Stefan and the carefully constructed walls she'd built to push it all away in her mind would come crumbling down.

Those would be the times when she picked fights with people. Or went to the campus gym and punched the ever-loving shit out of the punching bags. Or went to bars with her fake ID -- a bizarre birthday present from Damon on her and Elena's last birthday, actually -- and got into fights there. She knew Elena had the same moments, but Elena's reactions were quieter.

Katherine was just getting back from a shower after working out. Toweling her hair dry with one hand and tugging her t-shirt down with the other, she entered the dorm room she shared with her twin sister.

"... you, too, huh?" Katherine guessed when she saw the pensive look on her sister's face.

Tables for Muses in Play coming soon.