Rated: probably PG - R
Warnings: Blair angst galore, AU-land, this sure isn't Kansas (or Washington) anymore.

Blair gasped. His mother, but...not? She looked like a June Cleaver with red hair, though her dress was shorter and cut in a style an affluent woman of 2000 would wear to her Red Radiance Flower Club or the Women for the Preservation of Historical Cascade Society tea...still, the high neck and the...pearls, and the spiked heels, that click-clicked across the floor--that was *so* not his own Naomi of the flowing saris and gossamer scarves.

His not-mother stood at the foot of the hospital bed, observing him in all his bruised, saddened, unclean, unshaven glory. She trailed her beautifully manicured fingers along his feet mounded under the spread. That's when Blair noticed the Difference in her.

Diamonds glittered on her fingers, and an emerald snake bracelet nestled around her wrist, its fanged mouth swallowing its own tail, the chilling blood red ruby eyes nestled at her thumb, poised to strike. God, a serpent coiled around his mother's hand?

Her voice was even different in pitch as she spoke. Not familiarly or gruffly, but very clipped. "No, you're not my son."

Blair became very still as Naomi walked round the side of the bed, and placed her sparkling hands over his throat. Expecting his own mother (No, Not my mom!) to strangle him, he was shocked when she caressed the line of his stubbly jaw.

Her hands were perfumed silk as she splayed them over his cheekbones, ran her finger down his retrousse nose, into the hollow below his nose to the swollen full lips. She smelled so differently, too. Chanel no 5 or White Shoulders-y, not like Naomi, lavendar and lemony and herbal gardenish.

The woman pressed her soft lips gently to his forehead in a tender kiss. Very unexpected motherliness. Tears threatened to leak out of his eyes. There is something sweet in this alien place, after all. Blair closed his eyes, took a deep breath so he could be surrounded by his Moth...no, but...

"You're not my son, but I can barely tell the Difference--I know the NSA has experimented with cloning cells from Sentinels...as to whether they've been successful...that information has not trickled down to my level, yet."

Blair's eyes shot open at that word from his moth...Naomi's lips. She said *sentinels*!

"...but I don't think they've even begun researching Guides; the foundation's uppermost concern right now is with cloning sentinels in the lab who can seek out true human guides on their own. The last I heard from Brackett at the SNGRF was that several microbiologists were studying the possibility of altering DNA sequences to possibly create artificial guides for these manufactured sentinels but...you're human, not a clone, I would definitely know. You're a replica of my Blair, his twin who never was born."

Blair lay back in bed, glad his head was cushiony supported, because he was totally dumbfounded. He stared in horror at the woman. He was amazed, awed, tremorous, nervous, shocked and frightened at these words flowing from his Mama's uh...this stranger with my mother's face.

Now I know.

I know I'm on another planet.

An Earth-2.

An alternate reality.