Terri downed the shot of Tequila and shot down a swallow of green Irish beer as she sat down at the bar of Doolies. It had been a long day, first with the little visit from the little runt she used to idolize, followed by a hurried meeting called by Tom when they had gotten a frantic call from Anderson. Apparently, although Anderson had been successful, despite the interference of Logan and his friends, in getting those papers to the authorities, it was not going to keep Walker from selling Jennifer Anderson into the white slavery market. And, as Hades had been unsuccessful in keeping it quiet, Hades had owed Anderson a marker. It had been called in. BIG TIME! They had spent most of the rest of the day, and most of the night, locating and extracting Jennifer. It had been a long, trying, emotional day, and Pete had taken a pretty bad hit in the process. He was benched for the next three weeks while he recovered.

Terri grimaced as she remembered the sight of Pete's shoulder ripped up by the blast. She hated to see him bleed. But she had gotten her pound of flesh back for it. And when it had all been over, after Terri had found the girl and managed to get her out of the compound single handed, Pete had been so proud of her that he had picked her up, despite the pain, and kissed her soundly. Then he had carried her on his good shoulder through the Hades offices and up to the living quarters located on the upper levels, all the way up to her rooms.

There he had put her down, swaying slightly but smiling broadly, tongue lolling out, and chucked her lightly under the chin. "Ya done good, Rip." He said, a spinoff nickname on "Ter" short for Terri. "Thanks, Pete." She had replied and smiled broadly. "But you might want to have Turner check out that shoulder. You're going to get benched for that, you know."

"Yeah, I know," Pete had said, still smiling. "I just wanted to remind you that it's exactly because of what you did tonight that you belong here. You have a place on the team, and you're wanted here. You belong."

Terri smiled remembering those words again. She had needed to hear them. Had wanted to hear them. There was a warm spot in the general vicinity of her abdomen that clenched in a good way every time she thought about it. It was like a warm security blanket, and she hadn't realized how much she had needed one until it was given to her.

Logan walked through the door of Doolies, and Terri felt as though someone had pulled it away from her. She quickly walled up her feelings, not allowing him to mean so much that he could take the warm comfortable feeling away. She deliberately turned away from him and sipped her beer.

Logan watched her turn away and had seen the cold glare she had leveled at him. He knew it would be difficult, now that things had gotten this far, to take the chill out of those eyes, and try to repair the damage. But he was thinking the apology would go far. "Terri?" he said softly as he slid onto the stool next to her.

"Logan." Terri kept her tone as neutral as she could manage. She didn't want him near her. She didn't like the way he had made her question who and what she was, when he didn't know anything about her.

Doolie served Logan up a beer and discreetly wandered off to help the other three customers in the bar.

"Terri, I did some checking around." Logan began choosing his words. "I should have checked into Hades more before making the assumptions I did. I was wrong. I'm sorry."

Terri looked over at him, and she knew she had a sarcastic smile on her face as she laughed bitterly. "You looked into us, did you?" she said, and Logan knew he had chosen the wrong words. "You should have looked into our activities more, should you have?" she shook her head slowly and sneered. "You bastard." She sipped again at her beer. "You have no right to be checking into us in the first place. Everything we do is absolutely legal. We don't break any laws, and if you and your little friends had done your homework, you'd have known that."

"I know that now." Logan admitted "But I didn't before. Scott and I thought that Reynolds would have explained it like that. But he didn't, and Scott figured that meant Reynolds was hiding something. Innocent people usually explain, unless they do have something to hide."

"Tom shouldn't have had to explain." Terri snarled. "He doesn't have to justify our actions to you. You are not his baby-sitter. You had no right to ask in the first place. It was none of your business!"

Logan sighed and plunged in. "I was tryin' to look out for you, darlin'." He said. "Maybe it was because I got used to lookin' out for you in Madripoor. But I thought you had gotten in deeper than you could handle. I needed to look into it."

"You had no right!" Terri insisted. "I am not your charge, I am not your daughter, I am not your teammate, I am not your wife." She glared at Logan, now that she was really angry. "I am an adult and perfectly capable of taking care of myself."

"And maybe I thought you were still needin' lookin' out for." Logan kept going. "I sure as hell couldn't figure out what you were doing with them. And I know that if your parents were willing to hire me to keep you safe, they sure as hell wouldn't want you involved in . . ." he stopped as he got resoundingly slapped. He had, of course, seen it coming, but he had chosen not to stop it, understanding why she needed to lash out.

"I don't give a rat's ass what my parents want." Terri said in the deadly quiet that followed the slap, while Doolie and the other man watched on. "They never cared what I wanted. They didn't even want me. So I finally decided it wasn't worth it, caring what they thought."

Logan saw and scented the deep rooted pain in her green-blue eyes and reached out a hand to rub his cheek for a moment. That woman could definitely slap when she wanted to. "Tell me what happened, Darlin'." He asked quietly.

Terri turned back to her drink and sipped for a moment, feeling Logan's eyes bore into the side of her head, patiently waiting. She finally turned to look at him, her jaw feeling very tight. She met his dark eyes and she smiled ironically. "You want to know what happened between me and my parents, I'll tell you. It's no big secret. It's just like I told you. I found out that my parents didn't want me, so I stopped caring what they wanted."

Logan thought back to his time watching over Terri in Madripoor and shook his head. "Terri, I know your parents cared about you. If they hadn't, they wouldn't have hire me."

"You're not listening to me Logan." Terri shook her head, smiling slightly. "I never said they didn't care. I never even said they didn't want, precisely. What I said was they didn't want ME. They didn't necessarily want Teresa Natasha Thompson." She saw Logan's surprised and doubtful expression and chuckled without humor. "We come from different backgrounds, Logan. And to understand what I'm trying to say, you have to understand the circles I grew up in."

"Then explain it to me, Darlin." Logan said, taking out a cigar and settling himself to listen. "I'm listening, Darlin'." He lit up the cigar and took a long pull, and blew the smoke out slowly.

Terri took a sip at her drink again and smiled at the pictures on the wall behind the bar. "See all those people on the wall, Logan? My parents would say that I am different from those people. I don't belong with those people any more than those people belong around me. See, according to my parents, I am a young woman of breeding, that intangible quality that only children raised in the right environment have. And the right background is one of money. Old money. Third and fourth generation money. But that's not the kind of money my parents have. That only made it worse for me."

She pulled out a pack of smokes and lit one up, inhaling deeply, the smoke mingling with that from the cigar as well as the residuals from the old man at the back of the bar. "See, my parent made their money." Terri said, flicking some as into the tray provided by Doolie. "They were relatively well off to begin with, but their millions they made on their own. So they were new money. But they tried to fit into the old money group. And they tried to do everything that those people were into. They belonged to all the right country clubs, and donated money to all the right causes." She inhaled again.

Logan flicked some ash himself. "There's nothin' wrong with that, Darlin'." He said.

"You're right." She replied, smiling slightly. "There is nothing wrong with that. And there's nothing wrong with trying to fit into the group you wish to belong to. But then there came a time in their lives when then hit the right age to have children. Because all their socialite friends had children. So they got pregnant, and they had their child. Me."

"And there's nothing wrong with that either." Logan said, sipping his beer.

"Nope. Nothing wrong with that." Terri said, taking another drag. "And there was nothing wrong with making sure that that little girl went to the right daycare, and belonged to the right play-group, and wore the right designer clothing, and ate the right brand of baby food. There was nothing wrong with making sure that the little girl went to the right kindergarten, and the right grade school, and studied the right classes. There was nothing wrong with enrolling that little girl in the right riding school, so she could learn from the right teacher, and there was nothing wrong with making sure that she went to the right tennis instructor, and the right dance instructor, and the right music instructor." Terri snorted a little.

"And they made sure they spent the right amount of time around this little girl, too." She went on after taking another drag. "They all went on the appropriate family vacations, where they made sure that the little girl was driven to all the right activities, and played with all the right children, and had all the right manners at the dinner tables. And during the times when they took her to the wrong places, out of necessity?" Terri smiled at Logan and patted his cheek in a mock gesture of fondness. "They got her the right person to look after her for the time and place."

Logan had by now picked up on the pattern forming in her words and deduced the rest. "And then you hit puberty, and you turned into a mutant. And all of a sudden, you weren't right anymore, and they didn't want you." He said, and was surprised when Terri burst into delighted laughter.

"Oh, that is truly funny, Logan." Terri said between gasps of laughter. She finally managed to regain control of her laughter and lit up another cigarette. "No, that was not the case. On the contrary. When they found out I was a mutant, they were very supportive, because Carlton Heffler, Senator Heffler's son, had been arrested for drug possession only the week before, and the Senator had stated that every parent must support and help their children. They likened being a mutant to being retarded, and therefore it was something they needed to be supportive about." She laughed again, the sound filling the little bar.

"Another beer, Lass?" Doolie asked, walking back behind the bar, never one to lose out on his customer's good moods.

"Aye, Doolie." Terri said, smiling broadly. "Set us up." She pulled out a few bills and paid him while Doolie set up a fresh round of drinks.

Logan smiled slightly. "You know, Terri, there are a lot of people who would consider you lucky. Most parents aren't as supportive of their mutant kids." He said when Doolie had moved off again, granting them their privacy.

"Oh, you still don't get it." Terri shook her head smiling. She sipped her beer. "Let's see if I can put this a little more plainly for you. My parents enrolled me in all those stupid classes because it was what the other parents in their little social circle were doing. They put me in the same schools with all the other kids in their circle. I hated those stupid tennis classes. I wanted to take karate. But that wasn't the right class for the children in those circles to be enrolled in at that time, so I had to do the tennis thing. In other words, if the other parents enrolled their child in certain classes, that's where I was. And the driver brought me to classes, and to school. My parents trotted me out at social functions, and then sent me to my room to play alone during the party. Other than that, they spent as little time as possible with me. They were strictly appearance parents. Whenever they needed to present the image of a family, I was trotted out for display. Insert kid here. That was me."

She shook her head and Logan caught the scent of irony again. "They didn't have me because they wanted a child. They had me because it was the right thing to do in their little social circle. And they made sure that I went to the right classes and made all the right connections. And they put up with all the little rebellions, like the tantrum I threw in Madripoor. It was what children did. And hiring you was the right thing for the circumstance, because I liked you, I listened to you, and you had connections. Everywhere we went, when I made a scene, they found someone else to watch out for me. They called all of them my personal body guards, and that was even socially right. They had the unique experience of setting a trend, and a short time later, little socialite children throughout New York were getting their own little body guards." Terri's tone was quite dry. "My parents were so pleased."