New Alliances: Chapter 2

An X-Men Evolution Fanfic

After several hours of sleep on the plane and a couple packs of peanuts for supper, Scott was feeling significantly better . . . except for one thing.

“What if they say no? What do we do then?”

Jean sighed. “I don’t know.”

Their plane pulled up to the gate and the seatbelt sign went off. Several dozen seatbelts clicked open at once. Scott and Jean stood up and waited in line to exit the plane, then followed the crowd out of the airport.

“At least we didn’t have to check our baggage,” Scott said. Jean glared at him. “What, too soon?”

She shook her head. “You have the address, right?”

“Of course I do. Let’s just find a cab.”

Scott had only been to Alex’s house once, but when they pulled up he recognized it instantly. He walked up to the door and knocked while Jean “encouraged” their driver to forget about them.

“Just a minute,” came a woman’s voice from inside. Then she opened the door, and her mouth fell open. “Oh, oh my—Alex! Alex, come down here!”

She ushered the two of them inside, then cast a glance down the street before shutting the door.

Scott was never quite sure how to act around Alex’s adopted parents, and they usually seemed equally uncertain around him, so it shocked him when Mrs. Masters pulled him into a quick hug.

“We saw what happened on tv,” she said. “Alex was so worried. He tried calling your school, and they said they hadn’t heard from you. We weren’t sure what to do.”

“Sorry to crash in on you like this,” Jean said, calm and collected as ever. “We weren’t sure where to go, and hoped we might be able to stay the night, just until we could figure out something else.”

“Scott!”

Something barreled into him. “Oof!”

“I was so worried about you! Where were you? The professor said he didn’t know. Where’s everyone else? Are they okay? Are you going to stay with us? Would—“

Scott raised his hands. “Woah, woah, woah. Calm down a second.” Despite the anxiety of the day, he couldn’t help but smile as he always did when he saw his brother. “We came straight here after the fight. We didn’t think it would be safe to call anyone.”

“What about the others?” Alex asked.

Scott winced, and his stomach twisted. “We, um, we don’t know.”

Alex’s face fell. Then he brightened and turned to Mrs. Masters. “Can they stay here, mom? Please?”

Mrs. Masters looked from Alex, to Scott, to Jean. “Yes, yes, we’ll . . . we’ll figure out something. Come sit down, and I’ll get you something to eat.”

The thing about working for Fury was that he never communicated anything he didn’t have to, so you had to be prepared for anything at any time. Which was why, when Clint’s phone ran long before sunrise on his day off, he knew exactly who it was without opening his eyes.

“Hey, Fury, what’s up?”

The silence on the other side, from anyone else, would have been a deep sigh. “I have a job for you. Extraction. Hill will be there soon with the details.” Oh, joy. Maria was always so fun to work with.

“Will I be alone?”

“No, two others will meet you there.”

“Yes, sir.” Fury hung up.

As he pushed himself up off the bed, Clint said in a much lower voice than usual, “Oh, Clint, I know it’s your day off and I’m so sorry to wake you, but I really need you for this very important job.” He scooped his clothes from last night off the floor and put them on, switching to his normal voice. “Oh, no problem, boss. I’ll take care of it.”

In the lowered voice again, he continued, “I know you will. You’ve always been one of my best agents. I’m only sending the others so they can learn from your amazing example.” Normal voice again. “Oh, no no, you’re too kind. I just do my best.”

He stumbled into the kitchen and barely managed to shove a couple handfuls of cereal straight from the box into his mouth before someone knocked. He groaned.

He opened the door. “Can’t I at least have coffee first?”

Maria stared at him, unimpressed. “Where’s your uniform?”

“Give me a second, would you? I only just got up.”

She raised her eyebrow and looked significantly at the clock, which still displayed a time far too early for her to be looking at him like that.

“It’s my day off!” He protested. “I haven’t brushed my teeth either.”

She waved her hand. “Well hurry up.”

He started the coffee pot, then took a quick shower and changed into his uniform. He brushed his teeth, then barely managed to pour the coffee into a cup before she ushered him out and into her car.

“So what’s this all about?” He asked after he had drunk enough of his coffee to feel semi-human again.

“You can read about it in the file when we get to the plane.”

After a year of working with S.H.I.E.L.D., Clint should not have been surprised by the fact that they were taking a plane. He was anyway.

He had only just finished his coffee when Maria parked and they had to find the plane. When he finally got seated, she tossed him a file.

It answered exactly none of his questions.

Apparently he and two agents who still remained unnamed were supposed to infiltrate a government facility— “I thought we were government,” he told Maria, who rolled her eyes and said, “and every member of the government agrees on everything”— and find and liberate three teenagers from some boarding school in New York, along with one of their teachers.

“Well, that was helpful.” He threw down the file in disgust. “Where is this facility anyway? Are we almost there?”

“It’s in Nevada.” She didn’t answer the second question.

Wait.

“Nevada? Like Area 51? Are we going to Area 51? Cause that would definitely be worth getting up early on my day off.”

Maria ignored him, but he was pretty sure it was just cause she didn’t want to admit they were doing something as cool as raiding Area 51.

He picked up the file again with new interest and studied the images of the base, speculating on what the various rooms were and where they might keep the UFO’s.

Maria landed the plane. “We’re here.”

Clint looked up, but saw nothing but rocks and the occasional bush in all directions. “Um. I think you need to get your eyes checked.”

“We can’t fly straight to the base. They’ll see us. You’ll have to go the rest of the way on foot.” She pointed straight ahead. “It’s not that far. You’ll meet up with the other two before you reach the fence. Fury will pick you up on the roof when you’re finished.”

“Oh.” Clint stared at the red rocks that didn’t look kind to ankles or knees. At least his uniform came with sturdy boots. “I didn’t bring any water.”

“What?”

“Water,” he repeated. “It’s a desert.”

“I didn’t think you drank water.”

“I drink water.” Sometimes.

“Well, you don’t have far to walk. I think you’ll make it.”

He shouldered his bow. “I’m blaming you if I die of dehydration.”

“Noted.”

He sighed as he realized there was nothing else to do or say except venture forth through the rocky red hellscape. “It was nice knowing you.”

Maria, the jerk, said nothing.

The heat was . . . not as bad as he was expecting. He had expected a cartoon desert with cacti, a cow’s skull, and a sweltering sun. Instead it was just unpleasantly warm. The rocks, however, were just as bad as he imagined.

“Should have brought some ibuprofen,” he muttered. “Why do I always forget that?” He’d have to bully some out of Fury later, when he came to pick them up.

Speaking of “them”, he still had no idea who his backup was, which was strange. Fury usually told him at least that much, and surely Maria would have known.

After what felt like a painful, sweaty eternity, he found the fence Maria had mentioned, and, standing several yards away, two uniformed figures. Maybe one of them was Agent Avery. He liked Avery. They worked together well.

Distracted with his hopes and the aching of his knees, he got close enough to be spotted by one of the figures before he realized that those were not S.H.I.E.L.D. uniforms, and that the pair appeared to be teenagers.

“Hey, uh, kids. What are you doing here?” One of them was wearing some sort of blue, hairy costume that probably would have fit right in in Vegas. Not so much in the middle of the desert. It looked hot.

The other boy held out his fist with an angry scowl that probably would have been threatening, if it didn’t look like he was trying to give Clint a fist-bump. And if he wasn’t, like, half Clint’s height.

“Are you Agent Barton?” The furry boy asked.

Clint blinked. “Uh, yes?” Actually, he probably shouldn’t have answered that, but he was too confused about what these costumed kids were doing here to actually think about proper procedure.

“Oh, good. So can we go now?”

“Go?”

The other boy lowered his hand, but kept the distrustful look. It made Clint like him a little better. “Uh, yeah. Go save our friends. That’s what the director guy said you were coming to do.”

Clint stared at them. Surely this couldn’t be happening. “You’re my backup?”

“Actually,” Furry boy said with a smile, “I think you’re our backup.”

What?

“So are we going or not?” Distrustful boy asked.

“Two others,” Fury had said. Not “two agents”. Still, surely agents had been implied.

No, Fury hardly ever implied anything. Either he said it or he didn’t, and this time he very distinctly hadn’t.

But two kids? Really?

“Ok,” Clint started. He was calm. He was very calm about breaking into a government facility with two untrained kids in what they probably thought were superhero costumes. Very, very calm.

“Okay, according to the blueprints—you did read the blueprints, right?”

Furry boy looked like he was afraid Clint was going crazy, which was fair. Clint was afraid of that too. “You’re kidding, right?”

Clint’s stomach plummeted like a rock.

“Of course we did,” Distrustful boy said, rolling his eyes. “Logan would kill us if we didn’t. He can break into creepy labs and government buildings by himself with no information, but if we try that . . .”

“Grounded for a month,” Furry boy finished solemnly.

Logan. That was the name of the teacher they were rescuing. Clint realized the file had never said what Logan was a teacher of, which suddenly seemed like a serious oversight.

“Right, okay. So according to the blueprints, the best way in would be through the vent around back—“

Now both boys were looking at him like he was crazy. “Or . . .” Distrustful boy began, “Kurt could just take us inside.”

Fury hated him. It was the only explanation.

“You—you realize a place like this is going to be heavily guarded, right?” The boys nodded. “And do you really think they’ll just let us in?”

“Evan is right,” Furry boy—no, Kurt—said. “I can get us in, and we can handle this.” He pointed to the front door, still far enough that (hopefully) no one had seen them. “I’ve been watching them for a while, and there’s only one guard behind that door. More on the outside when someone tries to go in, but no one is coming. And we can take out one guard.”

“You any good with that?” Evan asked, pointing at Clint’s bow.

“Pretty good, yeah.”

“Good. Then are we ready?”

“Yes, let’s go!” Kurt grabbed both their arms, and Clint had half a second to realize those hands didn’t look like a costume before something cloudy filled his vision. He smelled sulfur, then the cloud dissipated and—and—

And they were inside the facility.

As Kurt had said, there was only one guard. “What the—“ he started, before Evan shot something long and hard at his hand to keep it away from his gun or communicator. Then he pinned him to the wall with several more of the strange spikes. Where had those come from?

Clint gawked at the guard until Kurt shouted at him, “Come on! Before he gets help!”

Both boys had already run ahead. From their direction, he seemed they had made the same guess as Clint about where the prisoners were being kept. Maybe they were more trained than he had thought.

On their way down the halls, Evan pinned a couple more guards to the walls, and Clint did the same with his arrows. They made their way into a large room full of guards and what Clint assumed were scientists. Two girls, who he guessed were the ones from the file, were held in glass-walled cells with air holes. A man laid strapped to a table beside them, and several people seemed to be trying to chip a large teen out of some strange green substance.

“Ooh, sounds like a jailbreak,” the man on the table said. “Hey, firecracker, wanna help me out?”

“With pleasure,” the blonde girl said, then she threw something small and glowing toward his bonds. It exploded, and the man leapt up. Several of the guards surrounded him in an attempt to subdue him, but Clint quickly saw it was futile, especially when Evan jumped in to help.

As the guards flocked to help, the other prisoner (Clint vaguely remembered his name having something to do with monarchy. King? Earl?) busted out of the strange green substance, picked up a large chunk of it, and hurled it at the crowd of guards surrounding him with a roar.

“Hey, Blob!” Firecracker waved her hands. “Help a girl out, wouldja?”

The boy ran over to the cells and started beating on the wall until it shattered. Meanwhile Kurt disappeared in a cloud and reappeared in the other cell. He wrapped his arms around the girl with the stripes in her hair and they vanished.

Clint was starting to understand why the boys had called him their backup. He felt . . . redundant.

“I sure hope you got a plan to get us outta here,” the girl with the stripes said in a thick Southern drawl.

“We have a plane coming,” Kurt said. “We just have to reach the roof.”

“Dukes, help me clear a path,” the man from the table said. Logan, Clint assumed. He held knives between his fingers, which seemed like a strange way to hold them. Clint wasn’t sure he wanted to know where they had come from.

Dukes—not King—gave a yell and barreled toward the door. Most of the guards dove out of his way. The ones who didn’t were trampled.

“Go left,” Clint shouted as they headed down the hallway. The closest roof access door was that way. Thankfully Logan didn’t ask any questions. He just led his students? army? agents? toward the door.

Clint gave a couple more shouted directions until the entire group found the door. Logan stopped at the bottom and sent Evan up the ladder first, then the girls. The other two boys teleported up together. Then Clint went up, and Logan followed last.

Thankfully Fury’s plane was already there, and most of the kids had boarded by the time Clint got up. As soon as Logan got the plane door shut, it took off, sending Clint and Logan stumbling into each other. The kids, who were already buckled into their seats, were fine, of course.

Two seats had been left empty at the end of one row. Logan pointedly took the one beside the girl with stripes in her hair, cutting Clint off from the rest of the group.

Logan sank into his chair and sighed as he tilted his head back. “Fury,” he said, “I should have known S.H.I.E.L.D. had something to do with this.”

Clint jerked. He hadn’t noticed his boss come out of the cockpit.

“Hello, Logan,” Fury said. “I think we have a lot to catch up on.”

“Confidence is key,” Ororo always told Kitty. “People can tell when you’re nervous, and they become more suspicious, but if you project confidence, they will trust your authority and your right to be there.”

Of course, she had been talking about school presentations, but Kitty hoped the principle still applied.

The streets were more crowded than they had been last night, and it would be harder to hide, but in their new clothes, they didn’t have to hide. Or so she hoped.

They walked leisurely down the street, away from the only part of the city she knew and toward an uncertain future. Todd walked ahead, setting the pace, which was probably good since apparently Kitty couldn’t be trusted to do that properly. She and Lance walked behind, hands entwined.

She wasn’t sure if he had grabbed her hand because he wanted to, or just to keep them from getting separated, but at the moment, she didn’t care. Yesterday, she thought she would never see him again, but they were still together. They were together and she would be grateful for that, even though her entire world seemed to be falling apart around her.

Lance made them stop frequently to rest, and Kitty was worried he had been injured the day before, until he later confessed he was worried about Todd, who apparently got sore easily from walking too long. She supposed that explained why he usually hopped so much.

As they passed a crowded supermarket, Todd started to slow, and his steps grew uneven. He nearly ran into an elderly lady’s cart, and Kitty stepped forward to help him. He waved her off, then apologized to the lady. Kitty was about to suggest they rest again for a minute, when he led them into an alley and held up a cardboard box.

“I have breakfast,” he said with relish.

Breakfast was a stretch, given that it was now significantly past lunchtime, but Kitty’s stomach, which had been churning for hours, growled loudly at the word.

Lance held up his hands. “Alright!” Todd tossed him the box, which Kitty now realized was full of granola bars. She knew she should probably tel him not to steal from nice old ladies, but she was too hungry.

Lance split up the granola bars into three parts and handed them out. Kitty opened one and stuffed the others in her pocket. Lance crumpled the box and tossed it into an open dumpster.

“Okay,” he said around a mouthful of granola bar, “Before we keep going, we need a plan.”

Kitty stared at her shoes. She had known this was coming. She had been thinking all day, trying to come up with something, anything, besides just ducking into empty buildings at night and stealing food, but her mind was completely blank.

It was so incredibly frustrating. She was the girl with a plan; her parents always said so. She thought outside the box and saw all the possibilities. When things didn’t work out, she tried every option until she found something that worked. It was what made her so good with computers.

And now, it failed her.

“Todd? What is it?” Lance asked. Kitty looked up.

“Nuthin’,” Todd said, but he kept shifting from side to side. Antsy, the way Kurt got when he had something he didn’t want to admit.

Kitty narrowed her eyes. “I don’t believe you.” Todd’s gaze shifted to her, and she stared at him until he caved.

“Okay, okay, I know a place we might could go. Maybe. It’s probably a bad idea, though.”

Kitty and Lance exchanged a glance. Lance shrugged. “A bad idea is better than no idea. Where is this place?”

Todd’s fidgeting grew even more frantic. “Still a few miles. Maybe we shouldn’t—“

“We’ve still got several hours until sunset,” Lance interrupted. “I think we can make it.”

Todd’s mouth twisted into what he probably hoped was a smile. He tossed aside his empty wrapper and dropped to his hands. “Guess we better go then.”

Kitty stared at the grimy door, framed in an equally grimy wall. In the rapidly-disappearing light, it was getting harder and harder to make out. Honestly, if Todd hadn’t pointed out the door to her, she was quite sure she wouldn’t have seen it.

Todd hesitated in front of it, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

“Everything okay?” Lance asked.

Todd whirled around and grinned at them. “Yep! Fine and dandy!” He turned back to the door and hesitated, then glanced back at them. “Um, don’t mention you’re mutants or anything about your powers, okay?” Then he knocked.

“Wait, Todd—“ Kitty started to say, but the door opened a crack, reveling one watery blue eye.

“What?”

“Hey, Craig, it’s me!” Todd said. The eye blinked. “Remember? Todd?”

The eye scowled. “What are you doing here, Tolansky?”

Todd shrugged nonchalantly. “Decided I didn’t like the new place much. Always liked you better.”

The man grunted. “Who’re they?”

“Couple friend of mine. They heard me talk about this place and thought it sounded so good—“

“Quit the sweet-talk.” Todd shrugged. “Dunno what to tell you, boss. They want to join your crew.”

The door swung further open and Craig grabbed Todd by his collar. “How many times do I have to tell you, boy, we ain’t no crew!”

“Right!” Todd squeaked. “Sorry. They want to join the family.”

“Sure.” He let go of Todd and scanned Kitty and Lance from head to toe. “A big happy family. That’s what we are. And you want to be a part of it?”

Kitty was very sure she didn’t, but as Lance had said before, a bad idea was better than no idea. She nodded.

“Well,” Craig said, “Like I said, we’re a family. And family takes care of each other. So you better have a good reason for me to take you.”

“I’ve got a good reason,” Lance said. “You want protection?” He dropped Kitty’s hand and held both of his up, slowly clenching them to fists. As he did so, the ground beneath their feet shook, enough that Kitty heard something shatter in the kitchen.

Craig’s eyes widened for just a second. He tried to cover it up, but Kitty saw it. He made no other response, just turned to Kitty. “And what about you, girlie? Got anything to offer your new family?”

Todd had said not to mention their powers. “Craig was my mentor,” he had explained just before they reached the apartment. “Taught me everything I know.” Kitty knew he wasn’t referring to math or computers. She knew what Craig would want from her, but she didn’t see that she had a choice.

“Yes,” she said softly. Todd made a strangled noise and tried to catch her eye, but she refused to look at him. She phased her hand through the wall.

Craig’s eyes narrowed. “Interesting.” He stepped out of the door. “It’s late. We’ll keep talking in the morning.”

A part of Kitty screamed at her that she shouldn’t go inside this strange, scary man’s home at night. Another part of her, the tired part of her that had been numb ever since she was separated from her team, didn’t care, and she followed Todd inside.

The door led straight into a cramped kitchen, which shared a wall with the mostly empty living room. Two closed door led out of the living room, along with an open one that showed a perfect view of—

“A shower,” Kitty breathed. “I mean, I’m going to go take a shower.” She glanced at Lance. “Unless you wanted to go first—“

He shook his head. “Go ahead.”

“Oh, good,” she sighed. She didn’t think Todd would fight her for the privilege, so she took off for the bathroom. She flicked on the light and shut and locked the door, then looked in the mirror.

Oh.

She looked horrible.

She had tried to neaten her hair as best as she could that morning and throw it into her usual ponytail to look normal, but apparently that hadn’t been enough. And she was so sweaty and stank and—

She took a breath. One thing at a time. She dug through the cabinets and drawers until she found a brush. She didn’t usually brush her hair dry, but she would deal with the frizziness just to get it manageable.

If she could just get the hair tie out.

She dug her fingers into her curls and tried to untwist them from around the hair tie. When several minutes of that yielded no results, she grabbed the brush and tried to brush out the ends, hoping to work her way up to the tangled hair tie. The brush got caught in a knot and pulled hard. Tears stung her eyes.

They fell, leaving tracks down her cheeks. She tried to take a deep breath, but it shook. She took another. She carefully untangled the brush from her hair and tried again.

“Ow!” It was caught again.

She couldn’t brush her hair. She couldn’t even take her hair down. She needed a shower and food and sleep and she couldn’t get any of those until she got this stupid hair tie out.

Fine, she wanted to scream. She let go of the hair brush, and it just hung there. Fine. If the hair tie wanted to be difficult, she could be difficult. She dug through her pockets for the pocket knife Scott had given her shortly after she moved to the mansion.

“We’re always here for you,” he promised then, “but just in case.” Well he wasn’t here now. None of them were.

After letting them in, Craig decided he was done with them for the rest of the night. He grabbed a beer and headed to his room, which Todd promised Lance was normal. Lance checked the door to make sure it was locked, and Todd grabbed a couple of blankets from the closet. “There were only two,” he said. Lance was pretty sure he had seen more than that, but he decided not to argue.

“Hope you don’t mind the floor,” Todd said, hopping over.

Lance had slept worse places. “That’s fine. And I guess Kitty can take the couch—“

“Couch is off-limits,” Todd interrupted.

Lance stared at him, then at the couch that looked older than him with large stains he didn’t want to think too hard about. “Okaayyy. Guess we’re all sleeping on the floor, then.”

They spread out the blankets, one in the corner, and the other right beside it. Under the pretense of spreading out the wrinkles, Todd moved closer to Lance. “I told you not to tell him.”

“I didn’t think I had much choice,” Lance said. He had met plenty of people like Craig in his life. Even Mystique was like him, in a way. He’d give them what they needed, but only for a price, and Lance, with his newfound control, could offer him a lot. At the moment, it seemed like a pretty good deal.

“I’m not worried about you,” Todd said. “He couldn’t make you do anything. But do you really think he’s going to let go of your pretty kitty now he knows what she can do?”

Lance grunted and kicked the corner of the blanket aside. He had been trying to forget the hungry look in Craig’s eyes when Kitty phased through the wall.

“Hey, you don’t hear the shower running, do you?” Lance asked.

Todd frowned and cocked his head. “Uh . . . no.”

Lance walked over and knocked on the bathroom door. “Hey, Kitty? You okay?”

The silence that answered filled him with dread. What had happened? Was she hurt? He knocked harder. “Kitty?” Still nothing. “Kitty? Can I come in?”

The lock clicked open, and he breathed in a sigh of relief. He opened the door.

Kitty was crouched in the middle of the floor with her head in her hands. An open pocket knife laid on the edge of the sink, and scraps of . . . something laid scattered all over the floor.

“Kitty?” He knelt down in front of her. “Are you okay?”

Her shoulders shook, and he realized she was crying. His hand brushed one of the scraps, and he realized it was hair. Her hair.

“Hey.” He cupped one hand under her chin and tilted her head up. “It’s okay.”

Tears streamed down her face and she shook her head. “I don’t know what happened,” she sobbed. “I couldn’t take my hair down.”

“So you cut it with a pocket knife?” That sounded incredibly unsafe. “You didn’t hurt yourself, did you?”

She shook her head. “But it looks, like, completely horrible, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, it looks awful.”

Lance turned to glare at Todd, who was standing in the doorway. “If you don’t have anything helpful to say, can you go away?”

“What?" Todd whined. “I was going to say I can fix it.”

Kitty stared at him. “Fix it?”

Todd shrugged. “Yeah. I mean, I’m no stylist or nuthin’, but I can make it look better than that.”

“You can cut hair?” Lance asked. Amazing the things you can still not know about your roommates even after two years.

“Who did you think cuts mine?” Todd asked.

Lance hadn’t really thought about it. He looked back at Kitty, who nodded.

“Cool.” Todd hopped off. “I’ll be right back.”

Lance helped Kitty up and closed her pocket knife before handing it back. He swept the cut hair tie and all the loose hair on the sink into the trashcan. Todd came back with a bar stool and a pair of scissors.

“First of all, don’t ever cut it with a knife again,” Todd said as Kitty sat on the stool and he dug through the drawers for a comb. “That’s a good way to break your hair and get it really uneven.” Lance sat on the edge of the tub and watched as Todd brushed all the loose hair off Kitty’s shoulders, then carefully combed through it.

When he finished that, he twisted most of it on top of her head and tied it with another hair tie he must have found in one of the drawers. Then he split the little bit of hair he had left down the back into two sections.

Kitty bit her lip as she watched him. “Your hair is pretty straight. Have you ever cut curly hair before?”

“My mama’s hair was much curlier than yours, and I cut hers a lot more than I ever cut mine,” he assured her. “I’m told I got my dad’s hair. Shame, cause I would’ve liked an afro.”

Kitty giggled. Todd grabbed the scissors, made a few quick cuts, then untied the bun at the top of her head and loosened a little more hair.

“How’d you learn to cut hair anyway?” Lance asked.

Todd tied the hair back up, adjusted the curls, then made a few more cuts. “When I was a kid, my mama’s favorite thing was to get her hair done. Took a while to find a stylist she liked, but when she did, she went there all the time.”

It was almost mesmerizing to watch Todd’s hands as he worked. Lance usually only saw those methodical movements when he was picking locks or putting the radio back together, but now he combed his fingers through Kitty’s curls, letting them fall where they wanted, then snip, chopped off the ends with barely a thought. And somehow it looked good.

“And when she got sick, that was what she missed most. She hated having her hair long and not being able to take care of it, but she couldn’t get out of bed, so the stylist was out of the question. So I started going by myself, after school. All the ladies there knew me, and they’d let me watch. If it wasn’t busy, I could ask questions sometimes too.”

Kitty’s hair, now falling to her chin, was mostly even now, but Todd kept cutting, tugging on one curl after another, trimming off the ends. “First time I cut Mama’s hair, it was bad. Like, really bad. I washed it and cut it a lot, though, cause she liked it short, and eventually it started to look kinda nice.”

Lance wondered how he had never heard any of this before. He didn’t remember anything about his parents. All he had were memories of the various foster parents he shuffled between until Mystique found him, and he had assumed Todd was the same way. Todd never talked about family or his past before Mystique, and Lance hadn’t wanted to bring up bad memories, so he hadn’t asked.

But Todd must have lived with his mom for a while, and he had clearly loved her. Had he just never mentioned her because no one asked?

“There, all finished!”

It looked so much better than Lance had expected. Kitty obviously agreed, because she spun around and threw her arms around Todd. “Thank you! Thank you so much!”

Todd looked like he had been attacked. “Ack! Uh, no problem.”

“It looks great,” Lance said, and Kitty smiled. “We better get this cleaned up before you try to take a shower, though.” He pointed to all the hair on the floor.

She made a face. “Oh, yeah.”

Todd found the broom, and they swept everything up. Then Lance and Todd dug through the cabinets and fridge to find some food while Kitty took a shower. Lance took a shower after her, and when he got out, he found Kitty and Todd sitting at the kitchen table in the middle of a quiet conversation. They broke off when they spotted him and suggested they go to bed.

It was . . . strange. Kitty and his team didn’t usually mix. Occasionally she would join in their teasing of him, or they would be polite to her when she came to visit him at the boarding house, but he always worried they were just tolerating each other for his sake.

But this new alliance between Kitty and Todd . . . it felt different. He hoped it lasted.

“There’s only two blankets,” Todd said when they finished putting the food away.

“I think we’ll manage,” Kitty said.

They didn’t discuss it, but Lance took the spot closest to the door, and Todd the spot against the wall, leaving the space between them for Kitty. She accepted it without comment.

Lance had assumed they would have to find some way to overlap the blankets to make them fit over all three of them, but to his surprise, Kitty slid close and wrapped her arms around him, pulling his blanket over them both and leaving the other for Todd.

“This is okay, right?” She mumbled sleepily in his ear.

Well, if she wanted to be close to him, he certainly wasn’t complaining. “Yeah, yeah, this is good.”

Pietro hated walking. Well, no, that wasn’t exactly true. He hated what other people called walking. Trying to match their pace was excruciatingly slow, and it left him nothing else to do but think.

Back when his mutation first developed, he had appreciated Evan’s habit of taking his skateboard everywhere. They always got to school or back home much quicker than they would have walking, and no one thought much of Pietro walking faster to keep pace.

But now there was no Evan (not that he wanted him around) and no skateboard, and no good excuse to got faster than what the rest of the world considered a normal walking pace because now everyone knew about mutants and were watching for them.

So. He was walking.

Walking back to the hotel after a long day of looking for a job and getting turned away again and again.

He had watched every news report on his dad’s fight he could find and made sure that none of the cameras had actually focused on his face. They hadn’t. Most of them had been too focused on Wanda.

(He’d also watched what every reporter called his father’s death a dozen times. He didn’t believe it for one second. Anyone who thought his father had died being crushed by a metal robot clearly didn’t know him.)

So no one had seen Pietro’s face. No one knew he was a mutant. They still wouldn’t hire him, but that probably had more to do with the lack of identifying documents and a permanent address than anything else. All of his important belongings had been packed away in Lance’s jeep, along with everyone else’s things, ready to go at a moment’s notice once they rescued Wanda.

Ha.

That had gone well.

Technically, he didn’t have to find a job here. Technically, he could go back to Bayville, get his stuff, and they could move and look elsewhere.

Except.

Well.

Wanda wasn’t exactly in a good state to up and move. Or to be left alone for more than several hours at a time.

But it was fine. He’d figure something out, just like he always did.

He turned a corner and noticed there was something different about this street. It took him a minute to realize what it was.

This street smelled good.

He spotted a bakery, which explained it. Thinking of the last time he stopped at a bakery, he decided to stop at the window and look at all the desserts on display to see if—yes! He found a chocolate cupcake.

It wasn’t exactly like the one Wanda had liked so much, but it was still cake, and still chocolate and chocolate piled on more chocolate, so it was probably close enough. He glanced at the counter and the tables to make sure no one was watching, then darted in, grabbed one off the display, and hurried back out into the street.

Pleased with his prize, he could almost ignore the sluggish pace he had to keep all the way back to the hotel.

“Hey, Wanda, I’ve got a surprise for you,” he announced as he walked into their room. He kicked his shoes off and locked the door behind him.

Wanda was sitting at the window, exactly where he had left her early that morning. She turned slightly to look at him.

He held out the cupcake. “Ta da! I found it on the way home. Would you like it now?”

She shook her head and turned back to the window. “No, thank you.”

“Oh, okay.” He was a little disappointed by her lack of reaction, but it was still early in the evening and she probably hadn’t eaten dinner yet. Maybe she just didn’t feel like eating something sweet at the moment. “I’ll put it in the fridge. You can have it later.”

He exchanged the cupcake for an egg sandwich he had saved from that morning’s breakfast, then flopped onto his bed. He chose to ignore how neat the covers on the other bed were. Maybe Wanda had made it right after she slept.

He grabbed the remote and turned on the tv. “What do you want to watch?”

“I don’t care.”

She hadn’t cared yesterday either. Or the day before. Then again, she probably didn’t watch much tv before coming to the boarding house. She probably didn’t know what was on.

“How about the one we watch last night? It was funny.” She shrugged and didn’t look at him.

He found the right channel and watched while he ate. He watched as the sun set and the programs switched from family-friendly shows to adult cartoons his dad probably wouldn’t approve of.

Wanda never moved from her spot. Never ate dinner. Never ate her cupcake. The only thing that changed were the shadows on her face as the natural light faded and the street lights turned on.

He left the tv on while he brushed his teeth and washed his face. The noise felt good.

“Well, guess I better go to bed,” he said when he finished. He turned the tv off. Wanda didn’t move. “Okay, good night, then.”

“Good night.”

He climbed into bed and turned off the lamp. As he his eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness and the empty bed beside him came back into view, he was suddenly reminded of the first few nights after Wanda had . . . had moved away. He’d stayed up all night staring at her empty bed until his father had taken it out of their room. He still didn’t know where it had gone.

“It’s not like that,” he reminded himself as he closed his eyes. “She’s here now. She’s here, and everything will be fine.”

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