“I’m sorry,” Stallworth whispered, shoulders slouching. He cast his gaze away from her, and she could see the tremble in his hands as he clenched his fingers into fists.
“You’re a mutant?” she repeated weakly, her hand going slack on the armrest she had previously been holding on to. “Why…why didn’t you tell me?”
“Oh, right,” he snorted, anger seeping into his voice. “Because that’s completely fucking do-able. Just waltz up to you and tell you how big of a freak of nature I am and hope you don’t call the cops on me. Yeah fuckin’ right.” He glared at her, green eyes sparkling with rage and unshed tears. “I know what you’re thinking. Big freak, right? I can shoot water out of my hands, and you-”
“I,” she interrupted, shooting to her feet, “am just like you.” She tugged on her white hair, wrapping strands around her fingers. “See this? I was strapped to a machine on the top of the Statue of Liberty, was almost killed just so some sicko could use that machine to kill all mutants, and did die for a few seconds. My body was so stressed by the experience my hair turned white.” She held up her hands to his eyes, turning them over. “I could flip my power on right now and just suck all your memories and power right out of you. And you’d die.”
Max gulped, his glance alternating between her hands and her eyes. The silence stretched for a moment, and she eventually lowered her hands and tucked them into her pockets. Eventually, Stallworth cleared his throat and asked her a question she never thought she’d hear.
“Do…do you like pizza?”
000
“My uncles are mutants,” Max informed her, his voice muffled slightly by the pizza shoved into his mouth.
“Care to repeat that?” Marie asked him, amused. He rolled his eyes and swallowed, and tried again.
“My uncles are mutants. My mom told me once, when I was thirteen. The oldest one, is real name is Edward Stallworth, but he goes by Quake. He can control the taxatronic plates of the earth, or whatever.”
“Tectonic?”
“Yeah, that one. Anyway, my second oldest uncle, Jim, calls himself Gale Force or something stupid like that. He can control wind, you know? Make twisters and bend the air. That sort of shit. And then Bill, he can make fire with his hands. Just like, clap them together and a spark appears. I think he calls himself Flamethrower.”
“I know a boy who can do the same thing,” Marie said, wiping her mouth. “’Cept he can’t make it. He can only manipulate it. He calls himself Pyro.”
Max groaned. “See, that’s way cooler than fuckin’ ‘Flamethrower.’ But anyways, my dad was the only one out of four boys that wasn’t a mutant. Which, you know, really ticked him off. And you know how they discovered a couple years ago that the fathers are the ones who carry the latent genes for mutation? Well, my old man was so pissed off about that, that he spent the next years of my life telling me how worthless and how stupid mutants were. Even before they found all that stuff out, he was telling me how much of a freak I was. My mom says it’s because he’s jealous that all of his brothers got the mutation, and he only got the carrier gene. That they got so much attention from his parents, and he only got the feeling they were disappointed in him for not being like them. For not having my mutation…water bending…and being able to complete The Elements.”
“The Elements?” she asked. “What’s that?”
“My Opa and Oma had this whole…idea. It was the fifties, you know? Comics were huge and my grandparents were into this idea of a superhero team that nobody had seen before. Each of my uncles had a different elemental power, but because my dad didn’t have any kind of power it didn’t happen. I guess my grandfather resented him for it. It must have been hard, you know? To be the only one without that ability.”
“Fire…water…earth…wind…” Marie whispered to herself. “They could have been the greatest X-Men.”
Max’s head shot up from where he was gazing at the countertop. “X-Men?” He stood, shoving his chair across the linoleum. “You know about the X-Men?”
“Of course,” she said, raising an eyebrow in confusion. “I’m training to be a full member of the team. Why?”
“Nothin’,” Max muttered, throwing himself into his chair again. “Just didn’t think Uncle Charles would let somebody so young into the team.”
Marie choked on her pizza crust, pounding on her chest to try and dislodge the ragged piece of bread. “Sorry?” she said hoarsely. “What did you just say?”
“Oh…” Max muttered, wincing. “Did…I not mention that my mom’s uncle, my great-uncle, is the Professor?”
“No,” Marie said, incredulous. “Are you shitting me?” She stumbled to her feet. “This whole time…this whole damn time you’ve been giving me shit for living with Charles, for…for being an orphan, and you’ve known about everything he does?”
“Well, yeah…but I didn’t know that you knew!” he said, holding his palms out in a gesture meant to be placating. “Plus, once I made fun of you the first time…it just kinda seemed as if I had to do it. Like it was something people expected out of me.”
Angry, Marie chucked a slice of pizza at him, satisfied with the wet slop it made when it hit his shirt. “Asshole,” she hissed, grabbing her jacket and slinging her bag over her shoulder. Ignoring his protests and his cries of her name, she only paused at the door to hiss, “You’re just as bad as I thought you were.”
“Marie!”
But she was already gone.
000
Marie slammed the door to her room and pulled her bag off from around her shoulders. Still seething, she threw it almost violently into the corner, and was startled by the muffled, “Oomph,” that came in response. Starting, she turned to find the source of the noise.
Logan sat on Jubes’s bed, clutching her messenger bag in his lap. “Jesus Christ, kid,” he winced, shifting the offending object onto Jubilee’s mattress. “I know I’m damn near indestructable and all, but that still hurts.”
She offered him a meek smile and sank down onto her own comforter, shoulders drooping with exhaustion. “Sorry,” she mumbled, shrugging out of her jacket. “Just a little stressed out right now.”
Logan frowned and moved across the room, sitting next to Marie and massaging her shoulders lightly. “I heard you got assigned a partner project with Max Stallworth. Is that why you missed our meeting today?”
Her eyes widened and she groaned, burying her face into his soft leather jacket. He pressed a kiss to her head and sunk a hand into her dark hair, concern coursing through him. It wasn’t like Marie to forget their tutoring sessions, and if Stallworth had anything to do with her lapse in memory and her apparent exhaustion, then he really needed to get to the bottom of this. “What happened?” he asked quietly.
Sighing again, she pushed away from him only to nestle back into his embrace, her back to his front. “We have this stupid English project where we have to analyze the progression of characters in The Great Gatsby, and I got stuck with Max. So I go over to his house and there was this whole thing with a fire-”
“A fire?” Logan repeated, tightening his grip in alarm.
“-and Max just like, throws out his hands and water comes pouring, and I mean like gushing out of his palms. Turns out,” she bit out angrily, “he’s a mutant just like you and me. Not only that, but I find out that his mom’s uncle is Charles. This whole time he’s been giving me crap for…for living with Charles and being an outcast, he’s known exactly what I’ve been dealing with and he’s just…just…” She sighed, collapsing against him. “A jerk.”
Logan pressed a soft kiss to the skin of her neck, running his hands down her shoulders and arms, squeezing comfortingly. “I’m sorry baby.”
She turned to face him, brushing her lips against his own. “It’s okay,” she whispered, nuzzling her nose against his throat. His eyelids fluttered shut and a soft growl rumbled through his chest. “Wanna calm me down?”
With an answering growl, he flipped her onto her bed and attacked her mouth, relishing in the sound of her delighted squeal.
000
The next day, Marie dutifully avoided any contact with Max. It wasn’t for lack of trying on his part. Whenever his lackies weren’t hovering around him, he was trying to talk to Marie, and whispering low pleas for her to please just please listen to what he had to say.
Her opportunities for avoidance, however, ran out when she found her arm in a firm grasp, and herself being pulled into the janitor’s closet. “What the f-“
A large hand settled over her mouth, muffling the end of her statement. She bit down on one of the fingers over her lips and smirked at the curse that followed. “What do you want,” she hissed.
Max glared at her, cradling his hand to his chest. “I want you to listen,” he whispered back. “I want you to hear me out so I can fucking apologize and stop feeling so damn guilty about this whole thing.”
Marie looked down at her feet, shuffling the flats along the ground. “I’m listening.”
He ran a hand through his hair, sighing. “It’s just…I was scared, okay? My whole life I’ve been raised with a man who hates everything about mutants. He hates his own family, and if word ever got out about my mom’s connection to the Prof, or about my mutation, then I’d be totally screwed. My dad’s a powerful man, and he could totally screw up my chances at getting a scholarship for college.” He placed his big hands on her shoulders, easily cupping the appendages. “Marie…I don’t know what to do with myself. And I’m sorry for giving you shit all these years, I don’t even really know why I did it. And I know you can’t forgive me for what I’ve said or done to you in the past, but right now, under these circumstances, I need somebody on my side.”
She eyed him warily, curiosity sending her eyebrow to a peak. “What do you mean, ‘under these circumstances’?”
“Didn’t anybody tell you?” he whispered, leaning closer. “Marie…there’s a war coming.”
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